5 Rockstar Games That You Forgot Were Awesome

Rockstar Games has become one of the biggest developers in gaming, thanks to massively successful series like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. However, the developer has a long history of great games, stretching back to the late ’90s. With such a large catalog to pull from, there’s bound to be a few hidden gems that most players don’t remember these days. Rockstar’s probably never going back to any of these anytime soon, but that doesn’t make them any less memorable.

Here are the five Rockstar Games you forgot were awesome.

5) Smuggler’s Run 2: Hostile Territory

The Smuggler’s Run series sees players trying to deliver illegal goods across massive maps without getting caught. Both games were developed by the studio that would eventually become Rockstar San Diego, which is now behind the Red Dead Redemption series.

Smuggler’s Run 2 is the better of the two games, but it wasn’t a massive step up. Instead, Hostile Territory was a slight iteration on the original, still delivering that same great racing gameplay while taking players to a few new maps. The largest addition is probably the increased competence of the police chasing you. Now, they’ll come at you much faster and can pull off more complicated maneuvers, making smuggling much harder but more satisfying.

4) Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis

Table Tennis was such a strange announcement from Rockstar. The developer was known for gritty crime dramas and over-the-top action, but in 2006, it revealed that its next project was a highly realistic ping pong simulator. What many didn’t realize is that Table Tennis was essentially a very polished tech demo, as Rockstar was trying to understand how to make the Xbox 360 hardware work for their next big release.

Don’t get it twisted; Table Tennis is a great game that still looks phenomenal. The on-table action is layered and strategic, feeling as close to a real-life table tennis match as we’ve ever gotten. That said, everything around the gameplay and visuals is incredibly slight. It’s a shame we didn’t get a classic Rockstar story mode with Table Tennis, but it’s still worth a try.

3) Midnight Club II

In addition to its work on Smuggler’s Run, Rockstar San Diego put out four Midnight Club games. All four games are solid racers, but MI2 takes the top slot just above MI3: Dub Edition. That said, if you’re looking for a stylish racer from the 2000s, the entire series will satisfy your needs.

Midnight Club 2 has a few things working in its favor. First is the addition of motorcycles, a series’ first. Being able to swap between four and two wheels might not seem like a big deal, but you clearly haven’t played Midnight Club 2. It also features great renditions of major cities like Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo. Racing through those real-world locations was always a blast. While Dub Edition added licensed vehicles and Los Angeles let players loose in a map based on the real city, neither could quite live up to the action in Midnight Club 2.

2) Manhunt

Manhunt is not an easy game to play. Not only are you unwillingly participating in the creation of snuff films to earn your freedom and save your family from the evil director. It’s heavy subject matter, and it’s not like the protagonist, James Earl Cash, is a good guy who’s been wronged by the system. The guy is on death row after committing several crimes over the years.

And the kills in Manhunt are some of the most gruesome you’ll ever see in a video game. Rockstar did not pull any punches with Manhunt. You’ll probably need a long shower after wrapping up a session. Still, it’s a unique premise that pushed video games in an entirely new direction. Manhunt is a stealth game that gives players more freedom than usual for the era, which helps build tension to make for one of the more gripping games of the PS2 era.

1) The Warriors

The Warriors film hit theaters in 1979, so when Rockstar announced that its next game was a beat ’em up based on the cult classic movie, fans were befuddled. Remember, Rockstar had just launched Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, one of the most expansive games in the series’ history, the year before. Now, it was going back to the ’70s for an adaptation of a film most fans had never heard of?

It sure is a good thing Rockstar does its own thing. What seemed like a bonkers idea for a project turned into one of the company’s best games. The combat was top-tier for the brawler genre at the time, which was a bit surprising, given how average GTA melee combat has always been. Beyond that, Rockstar brought back most of the original cast to voice their characters and used its pull to put together a phenomenal soundtrack. It’s safe to say that fans could, in fact, “dig it.”

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