10 Forgotten Sci-Fi Video Games You Need To Play

In video game space, everybody in your house can hear you scream.

by Jason Russell
Binary Domain
Sega

Science fiction and video gaming go pretty much hand in hand. If you want to get technical, the genesis of this union could go all the way to 1978's Space Invaders.

When asked to elaborate on his inspirations for the arcade classic, developer Tomohiro Nishikado credited Breakout, The War of the Worlds, and Star Wars.

Alien worlds, space travel, futuristic technology, the cornerstones of science fiction storytelling tend to provide wonderful source material for gaming. This has been witnessed recently in much-hyped genre releases like No Man's Sky (2016) and Cyberpunk 2077 (2020). Of course, while both of these titles failed to live up to the hype surrounding them, they do still serve to remind the industry that the demand for good sci-fi gaming is as fervent as ever.

There have been countless examples of solid science fiction gaming in the years since Space Invaders, so much so that assembling a list of just 10 gems is like asking for a Trekkie's top 10 favorite Star Trek episodes across all series.

Instead, we'll take a look at 10 entries of science fiction excellence that have largely fallen silently out of pop culture's fickle psyche that are still worth a play today.

10. EVE Online - CCP Games (2003)

Binary Domain
Atari

Back in 2003, World of Warcraft was yet a year away. Gamers looking to delve into the massively multiplayer online role-playing scene discovered many institutions that WoW would make staples of the genre shortly thereafter in EVE Online: Players were able to participate in a number of in-game professions and activities, including mining, piracy, manufacturing, trading, exploration, and combat.

Perhaps most impressive is that while EVE Online never managed to gain the publicity or mass appeal of World of Warcraft, it is still going strong to this very day and free to play to boot.

EVE Online is nothing if not anomalous. It has been quietly doing its thing for nearly two decades. The video game industry is such that when something new and shiny comes along, gamers are generally quick to migrate en masse, leaving servers of yesteryear's classics to be shut down in the process.

This underrated gem defies all industry statistics and shows no sign of slowing.

Contributor

Jason Russell has been working in video game journalism since the early 1990s before the internet existed, the term "fanzine" had meaning and sailors still debated as to whether or not the earth was flat. The first time. More recently he has been the guy responsible for the Retrospective column for Old School Gamer Magazine, pens up a Game Skinny column on a plethora of video game topics. He's somehow managed to author nine novels, writes and runs the blog CG Movie Review, is co-founder of the science fiction publishing house Starry Eyed Press, and sometimes, when the planets align and the caffeine has fully left his system, it's rumored he sleeps.