Mine has to be Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime, a DS spin off of the Dragon Quest series that sees you playing as a slime operating a tank and rescuing the people from your town. You run around the overworld, collecting items to use as ammunition and saving money to upgrade your tank. The art and music are just as great as you’d expect from the Dragon Quest series. It made fantastic use of the DS’s dual screens. It’s also written for a younger audience, so a lot of it is just really silly and fun! Try it out for sure, I’m so sad there’s no sequel :(
Puzzle Pirates was a MMO in the early to mid 00’s. Each task on board the ship had a puzzle mini game associated with it. Sailing was sort of like Dr. Mario, pumping out the bilge was a match 3 game, loading the canons was sort of like Chu-Chu Rocket. The thing I liked about it was that your character’s ability to preform a duty had nothing to do with what gear you had equipped or how many skill points you had in a stat (there were none), it was all about how well you, as a player, could play the particular mini game.
In battle, sailors would generate movement tokens to allow the captain to maneuver the ship, gunners would reload the canons after they’d been fired, carpenters would repair any damage you’ve taken, while the bilge pumpers would keep the ship from foundering. Once you closed in and grappled the enemy ship, everyone would participate in a Super Puzzle Fighter-like sword fighting game; defeat the enemy crew to pillage their hold.
Absolutely incredible obscure game. Foil-duels with the great sword fighters on the docks until you learn how to perform instant kill attacks was a highlight of my childhood
You tart. Glug glug glug. Then you play poker for hours.
10/10 experience.