10 Perfect Video Games (You've Never Heard Of)

Unless you have a time machine, there's just no way you can play every great game that gets released. In fact - short of booting each game up to the title screen before moving onto the next - you probably can't even play half of them.

Though this "too many games, not enough time" problem has definitely got worse in recent years thanks to post-release content roadmaps becoming the norm, live service games feeling like jobs, and AAA titles increasing in scale to the point of bloat, it's actually a problem that's existed for decades.

After all, we can't be engaged with every different ecosystem, platform, and genre, and with each passing year, there's bound to be a load of awesome stuff that doesn't even blip your radar.

The positive spin here is that - should you ever find yourself in a dry spell where you don't know what to play - there are hundreds of incredible games out there that you originally missed, or, in some cases, didn't even hear about.

So, on that latter note, here are some recommendations: those hidden gems and forgotten gaming greats that most people missed entirely.

We may be living in the golden age of superhero video games thanks to world-class dev teams like Insomniac and Rocksteady, but that far-off land of the 1990s still had the occasional standout title in the comic-book realm.

Based on an obscure French-American animated series (which was based on an equally-obscure comic-book hero), Phantom 2040 is, for lack of a more elegant term, the absolute bee's knees. You play as the title character, a costumed crime-fighter operating in the futuristic city of Metropia, battling mechs, robot insects, and perhaps the most evil villain of all... a faceless corporation.

With Metroid-style exploration and a totally banging soundtrack, Phantom 2040 is a quintessential '90s side-scroller, though it also manages to feel ahead of its time by incorporating player choice and multiple endings - around two-dozen, in fact.

It may lack originality, but everything it does, it does perfectly. The game is also elevated by the awesome, cyberpunk-y vibe of The Phantom IP - and unlike a certain other cyberpunk, this one won't glitch out on you every five minutes.