Oldest 'hidden gems' & 'best of' lists.

[nickfil]

ok hear me out- I have a theory here. My theory is that the oldest 'hidden gem' lists and the oldest 'best of' lists haven't changed since they were made. The discourse has never been updated, just repeated.

However, finding the old lists has been *tough.* You are able to beat the google algorithm by searching in a specific timeframe. Here is what I've learned from that- the term "hidden gem" didn't really rise in popularity until the mid 2000s. Before that I was searching for things like "underrated snes games" to get any kind of decent return. Even then, a lot of the lists didn't differentiate from hidden gem or best of games. The internet back then was just "hey I liked pocky and rocky" and people chatting about that specific game. If it wasn't about a specific game, it was just "Jaxbird's top 100 snes games" broken into 100 html pages. Weirdly- A lot of the hidden gems lists that pop up were racketboy lists. The snes list from this site was from 2004, but was updated in 2021. Which syncs with the searches I was doing.

So my question is this- do you have an old list that you refer to? Anything non-racketboy? What lists were you finding in 1997? Looking to compare the old lists to new ones.

As an aside- the internet in 1995 was extremely charming. Nothing was built to optimize clicks or sell anything. Nothing was part of a regular stream of content looking to get some ad revenue from clicks. There wasn't anything about a secondary market. It was just "here is a video game I like. I want to share that with like minded people"

[Ziggy]

Do you have any old lists?

I wasn't searching for under-the-radar games on the internet pre-2000. The SNES library was so vast, I was constantly finding out about new games without the internet. Either from randomly finding something on the shelf in a rental store, or something a friend brought over, or something I read in a gaming magazine like GamePro. It wasn't until a couple of console generations later (post 2000) that I exhausted those "normal" ways of finding new games, and then started to look up best of and hidden gem lists. In other words, during the life of the SNES my time was spent playing well-known games. I might have found a few lesser known games on my own, but it wasn't until post-2000 that I had already combed through the well-known stuff. So it wasn't until that time that I NEEDED to search for hidden gems.

One thing I have been thinking about though, in regards to hidden gems, is there any real hidden gems left? All of the under-the-radar games that were talked about in the early to mid 00's, we've had 20 years now to learn about them. So how many GEMS are still HIDDEN? I think not many. I just took a look at Racket's SNES Hidden Gem article, and so many of those games are well known in 2022. In fact, quite a few of them have been re-released or remastered in some way.

DoReMi Fantasy and Plok are fairly well known at this point, perhaps only hidden gems to new comers.

Joe & Mac were never really all that hidden (as was quite a few games on the list) and had a re-release as a Caveman Collection for the SNES.

Demon's Crest - Definitely not hidden any more.

Rendering Ranger R2 - Got enough attention to get a release from Limited Run Games

EVO - Definitely not hidden any more.

Zombies Ate My Neighnors - Received recent re-releases, definitely not a hidden gem (I don't think it ever was, really).

Tales of Phantasia - I feel like it's pretty well known now.

Live A Live - Just got a remaster on the Switch!

Star Ocean - This got insanely popular with the English patch, and RetroUSB use to make a repro of it. And it has a remaster on the PSP.

Illusion of Gaia - Not sure if this was ever all that hidden, but it definitely isn't now.

Terranigma - Use to be a true hidden gem, but no longer is.

Perhaps the hidden gems are only that for people who are new to the system. Otherwise, for those of us that have been gaming on a retro console since it was released... How often do you find a new hidden gem that you previously didn't know about? It's pretty rare these days. And I feel like I sometimes scrape the bottom of the barrel, playing games that aren't actual GEMS but just OK, just for the sake of playing something new.

As an aside- the internet in 1995 was extremely charming. Nothing was built to optimize clicks or sell anything. Nothing was part of a regular stream of content looking to get some ad revenue from clicks. There wasn't anything about a secondary market. It was just "here is a video game I like. I want to share that with like minded people"

YES! No click-bait, no chasing algorithms. There were so many fan sites that had no other purpose than they were built by a fan for fans. Maybe an ad banner here and there, but nothing that annoyed you.

[nickfil]

Do you have any old lists?

Let me do some digging and post what I find. I need to organize it in a coherent way.

One thing I have been thinking about though, in regards to hidden gems, is there any real hidden gems left? All of the under-the-radar games that were talked about in the early to mid 00's, we've had 20 years now to learn about them. So how many GEMS are still HIDDEN? I think not many. I just took a look at Racket's SNES Hidden Gem article, and so many of those games are well known in 2022. In fact, quite a few of them have been re-released or remastered in some way.

I have the same thought/theory. There is nothing hidden anymore on the snes that is for sure. Not only have we had decades to mine the library, but you can just download a pack of roms like a filthy pirate very easily and play *EVERYTHING* in any region you ever want to.

I think there are still hidden gems, but on the snes? no way. I don't think the psp, ps vita, or ds/3ds have been mined yet. Part of that is that it is tough to get captures from hardware for youtube/twitch. So less people play them. Since less people play them, the libraries fly under the radar.

[Ack]

Yeah, the major systems have all been mined heavily. We know what is in the collections for the SNES, Genesis, N64, Dreamcast, so on and so forth. In fact, I'd say we at least contributed to that with our articles and discussion, even discounting the number of folks we influenced who have since go e on to continue mining game libraries. At this point, what would I say is hidden for the SNES? Shien's Revenge?

At this point, I'm mainly playing on the PC and spending my days digging through Steam's immense library to find whatight be fantastic hidden gems there, but Nickfil going with mid-2000s handhelds is a smart move on this topic. Another issue I see with digging through some of those handhelds is the counterfeit market's interest in them. It's kept me from doing more with the GBA library, that's for sure.

[o.pwuaioc]

I was more into top 100 lists. SydLexia put out a top 100 NES in 2006, and at some point not sure when there was a top 100 SNES one, too. I always wanted to do something similar: get a bunch of like-minded people and compile a "top list." Started that years ago with Key-Glyph and sevin0seven, but it went nowhere!

Racketboy was the first place I really started seeing "hidden gems," but after finding dud after dud in these types of articles, I generally avoid them now. With the march of gaming progress, I do feel like there's much more discussion that can happen on older games, but so much of it now gets stuck at the fundamentals and then the conversations shifts back to ooh shiny post-2000.

I am thankful for GameFAQs (which is under-utilized now sadly) and the various fan-made wikis (ditto) that helped fill in the gap.

[marurun]

Lists like the ones here at Racketboy are part of the reason hidden gems aren’t so hidden any more. Emulation and the wide availability of ROMs made it possible to explore even the most obscure games. Those lists of hidden gems were originally compiled by looking at the state of internet discourse on system libraries and ide tidying those titles worth playing that people were just not talking about and weren’t aware of at the time. I think the articles are still useful as a historical account of our hobby.

[PretentiousHipster]

The best way I was able to find hidden gems before were in magazines that had some great scores, but were forgotten years after. As for me exploring DOS games that look interesting I'll spend tons of hours browsing through them to find some lol.

[Ziggy]

The hidden gem type articles are still useful for new comers to a system. There's still people that are just getting back into a console from their childhood, or resisted owning a particular console until now, or even youngsters that realize how awesome some old consoles are. There's tons of Top X and must-play lists, but after you've exhausted those then you need to start looking for hidden gems.

Personally, I believe there ARE still hidden gems for some of use even if we've already mined a console's library heavily. As I age, I find that I can appreciate certain games that I previously couldn't. So there's tons of must-plays and hidden gems that I previously discounted, but then rediscover now.

I also like how we can ask for personalized recommendations in a forum such as this one. For example, you can ask for a game recommendation in a specific genre. You can list games you've already played in that genre, and which ones you liked. Then you can explain which points about the genre you like/dislike. Then people can give you a recommendation, and possibly a game you never heard of or just never thought to give a try.

But this brings up a good point... Should the Hidden Gem articles be updated? And if yes, then how so? Should they remain geared towards the newcomer? Or should they be retooled to make sense to a person that has been actively mining a console's library for the past 20-30 years? Or should it be split to cover both somehow?

[racketboy]

My answer for "old lists" would have been forum threads on SegaXtreme and the like, but I was usually the ones soliciting the feedback and collecting recommendations.
At the beginning, I did it primarily for a list of games to add to my download collection, give a try and decide if I wanted to add to my physical collection.
This was especially handy when I had to decide what Sega CD, Saturn, PS1 and eventually Dreamcast games to download -- especially when on either dialup or other slow connections.

But my frequent forum activity back in the early 2000s was what prompted me to start the blog and start publishing a bit deeper content (even if it was rather sparse compared to my newer guides)

[racketboy]

But this brings up a good point... Should the Hidden Gem articles be updated? And if yes, then how so? Should they remain geared towards the newcomer? Or should they be retooled to make sense to a person that has been actively mining a console's library for the past 20-30 years? Or should it be split to cover both somehow?

I've thought about this off and on over the last few years.

The "Hidden Gems" was intended to be the next level of games to look at that weren't "Defining Games". A decade or two ago, that would have been sufficient for "Hidden Gems". But the retro game culture is so much deeper now.

At the same time, I don't want to assume that every person that stumbles on the site is a seasoned veteran than knows all the games already.

So I've thought about having three levels: "Defining", "Next Steps", and "Hidden Gems". However, at this point, this feels like quite an undertaking.

Another approach, which I feel like it more do-able in the short term, is to promote some games from "Gems" to "Defining" and then promote some of the best "Gems" Honorable Mentions to be more highly featured. I've VERY slowly been doing this and hope to continue -- especially if I get some volunteer assistance. If anybody wants to join the initiative, please let me know!

Here's a thread I started to work on the PS1 Hidden Gems "remake"
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=53515