1996 was a banner year for video games. We were treated to all-timers like Super Mario 64, Duke Nukem 3D, Crash Bandicoot, Resident Evil, Pokémon Red/Blue, Tomb Raider, and Quake. Just an absolute murderer’s row of beloved games that have easily stood the test of time. However, those high-profile releases weren’t the only games coming in ’96. These cult classics might be less remembered than the games mentioned above, but they’re still worth playing if you missed them. Here are five cult games from 1996 that kids of the era will remember fondly.
People were just trying things in the ’90s. Realms of the Haunting is a weird mix of full-motion video, point-and-click adventure, and first-person shooter. It’s like somebody took every buzzword from the mid-’90s, threw them into the mix, and made a video game trying to appeal to everyone. It doesn’t quite hit that mark, but it’s still worth checking out, especially if you’re looking to feel deeply unsettled.
Realms of the Haunting takes you to several environments, but each of them does a great job of keeping you uncomfortable. You never know what’s around the next dark corner, and it’s easy to get lost in Realms of the Haunting‘s puzzling worlds. Sure, the combat is a little sluggish, but you’ll get used to it relatively quickly. It’s a solid mix of genres with a compelling plot that starts with a haunted house and ends with you fighting to stop the apocalypse. Seriously, they don’t make ’em like they used to.
Beat ’em ups were all the rage in the ’90s, so it’s no surprise the team at Treasure partnered with Sega to make one of the best Saturn games of all time. Not only does this one feature crunchy, combo-based combat, but it also has several branching paths depending on your decisions. You’ll also level up your character between each level, and Treasure even added a karma system, which moves into the negative if you kill civilians.
It’s one of the best beat ’em up RPGs of the era, but the praise doesn’t end there. Guardian Heroes also includes a versus mode, which lets up to six players fight each other to the death. Thankfully, Guardian Heroes received a remaster in 2011 on the Xbox 360. That makes it relatively easy to dive into these days, which you should absolutely do if you’re looking for your next beat ’em up fix.
Let me be clear: Ripper is not for everybody. If you want tight gameplay and puzzles that consistently make sense, I would ask you to look elsewhere. Ripper is a different animal, taking everything players love about the FMV genre and turning it up to eleven. It is deeply strange and hilariously campy. Plus, it’s got a blockbuster cast of Hollywood talent.
Ripper stars Christoper Walken as Detective Vincent Magnotta. He’s joined by Burgess Meredith, John Rhys-Davies, Paul Giamatti, Karen Allen, David Patrick Kelly, Scott Cohen, John Ventimiglia, and several others. Most importantly, all of them buy into the ridiculousness of making an FMV game. If you want to have a blast laughing through a murder mystery, Ripper has the juice. And the killer is randomized each playthrough, so you can easily dive back in. It’s probably not going to blow your mind, but if you have some friends over to play through this lengthy FMV masterpiece, you’re going to have a great time.
Look at that screenshot and tell me you don’t want to play The Neverhood. Okay, sure, there are people out there who don’t like claymation, but Klaymen is adorable. The Neverhood is a surreal point-and-click adventure game that prioritizes puzzle-solving. You won’t find any combat, but the developers also don’t use the standard inventory-based puzzles fans of the genre are used to.
Instead, The Neverhood lets you interact with the world to solve its problems. You have to be careful, though. If you make a wrong move, you can easily run into a game over, and one of those will force you to restart from the beginning. That can be daunting, as can some of the puzzles, but the world is so beautiful and filled with wonder that you’ll quickly get past any of the annoyances. The Neverhood did get an official sequel, but it’s a platformer. Thankfully, most of the development team came back for Armikrog in 2015, which serves as a spiritual sequel to the original.
Toonstruck is another great ’90s game that features FMV, and like Ripper, it also has a star-studded cast. Christoper Lloyd plays protagonist Drew Blanc, and he’s joined by Dan Castellaneta, Tim Curry, David Ogden Stiers, and Dom DeLuise. However, in an interesting twist, only Lloyd appears as himself. Everyone else is playing an animated character. It’s kind of like Who Framed Rodger Rabbit?, but even more adult.
Lloyd’s character is a cartoonist who is suffering from a creative block. One night, he’s taken inside one of his own creations, where he has to help the inhabitants fight back against an evil character named Count Nefarious (voiced by Curry). It also has great puzzles, captivating visuals, and some unsurprisingly great performances. Toonstruck was supposed to get a sequel using cut content from the first game, but the project was scrapped relatively quickly. Thankfully, it was re-released on PC in 2016, so you can play through the cult classic relatively easily.
