I get why people love lost media. Thereās something thrilling about the idea that a half-forgotten cartoon or bootleg VHS might still be out there, waiting to be found. The internet eats that stuff upāforum deep dives, YouTube essays, decades-long hunts for proof.
But hereās what gets me: the flip side. The stuff that was everywhere. Huge hits. Critically adored. Easy to find. And yetā¦ somehow, no one remembers. Not lost media. Lost consciousness. And itās way weirder.
One of them is the band Everclear. They were a major part of the ā90s alternative scene. They sold millions of albums, were critically respected, and you couldnāt escape their music videos on TV. But now? No one talks about them. Somehow, one-hit wonders like Harvey Danger get more nostalgic shoutouts than Everclear. And damn itāI still love that band. Yet their subreddit has only 874 subscribers. Thatās shockingly low for a group that should be iconic.
Another exampleāthis time from filmāis Road to Perdition. It was a box office smash, earning $180 million. Nominated for six Oscars. Won Best Cinematography. And yetā¦ itās like it never existed. When people talk about Tom Hanks movies, this one rarely comes up. Even in gangster movie lists, it gets ignored. If youāre in your 20s or younger, you probably donāt even know this movie exists.
Now hereās another case of lost consciousness: Trine.
It came out in 2009. Sold over a million copies. On Steam, it has a 95% positive rating across 12,000+ reviewsāone of the most beloved games of its year, at least on paper. It launched a five-game franchise, and each sequel sold millions in turn. And yetā¦ no one talks about Trine.
You have to understand how significant this was. In the 2000s, 2D platformers were mostly dead on PC and consoles. If you wanted one, you had to go handheldāGame Boy Advance, maybe DS. On other platforms, there were a few indie exceptions: Cave Story, Braid. But back then, āindieā wasnāt what it is now. In the 2000s, no one even knew what indie meant. And most indie platformers of the time? They lacked polish. Great ideas, sureābut not a lot of visual flair or technical sophistication.
Then came Trine.
It was gorgeous. The visuals still hold up today. Beautiful sprite work, luminous lighting, detailed backdrops. Trine had a beauty that other 2D platformers didnāt. And I know it was special because I actually finished itāand I donāt finish most games. I even left a review on Steam. I said something like: āTrine is about entering a vibrant world where you solve problems through unique characters. In this, it shines. Itās a true PC classic.ā And I still believe that.
It wasnāt just the art. The physics-based puzzles were brilliant. You had to think in terms of motion, weight, momentum. And instead of one playable character, you got three: a wizard, a thief, and a knight, each with unique abilities. The wizard could conjure boxes and teleport. The thief had a bow and a grappling hook. The knight had a sword and shield. Super fresh.
Also? Co-op mode. That was a huge draw. Not many 2D platformersāespecially in 2009āhad that. I didnāt play much co-op myself, but I know people who bought the game just for it.
So yes. Trine is incredible.
And yetā¦ obscure. Forgotten. Go to YouTubeāno retrospectives. No nostalgia posts. No āremember this?ā energy. Itās like itās disappeared from memory.
Why?
I think part of it is that Trine was ahead of the curve. It brought back the 2D platformer before the revival fully kicked in. It helped revive the genreābut didnāt get the credit. Another factor? It was made by an indie studioāFrozenbyte, based in Finland. And while Trine became their flagship, theyāve made other titles too: Nine Parchments, Has-Been Heroes, Boreal Blade. I even liked their earlier top-down shooter, Shadowgrounds.
But Frozenbyte isnāt Nintendo. Theyāre not Capcom. Not even Devolver. Theyāre small. And even when the little guy wins, they rarely get their due.
Another reason: Trineās fanbase was mostly on PC. Yes, it came to PS3, but physical copies are rare. So I suspect most players were PC gamers. And for some reason, PC gaming classics donāt get the same nostalgic glow as console games. You donāt hear about Hexen or Divinity the same way you hear about old Nintendo or Sony titles. Thatās something Iāve noticed for a while.
I hope it changes. But Iām not holding my breath.
StillāIāll scream it to the heavens: Trine is amazing. It deserves to be remembered. Itās one of the most compelling, fun platformers Iāve ever played. Every minute I spent with it was worth it.
They released 4 sequels. I have all the 5 games.
I wouldnāt call it obscure or forgotten.
Oh, theyāre successful and sold a boat load of copies. I already mentioned that.
But thereās no retrospectives. Go on YouTube, thereās nothing about how groundbreaking this title was. No articles written about it in the same way as something like Cuphead or Shovel Knight.
Popular, yes. Very much so. But also culturally forgotten.
Its 16 years ago and the series continued. Last year my wife got all games and played them because she remembered playing the first one back then.
I donāt think it is āculturally forgottenā. Also as the amount of media increases it becomes more difficult to define a āmainstreamā that everyone remembers as defining. This has happened to literary eras like a hundred years ago already. Now with music you dont have just MTV, the local radio station and maybe the one internet forum where all the fans of one genre gravitated to. So it is more difficult to be exposed to other people who didnāt forget
Games move at the speed of light, so theres always a shiny new toy to draw focus away from even great games of the past.
I played Trine when it came out but I never felt a strong pull to stay with it. It seemed neat, like a Lost Vikings successor, but ultimately I had other things that I liked more.
You live long enough and you start to see the elements of a new gameās DNA. Most games build on another that came before it. For example, Undertale takes a lot of inspiration from EarthBound.
What this has meant for me is that new games have a harder time really gripping my attention because I often think āwell, that part was fun, but this other mechanic was much better implemented in this other game.ā
I donāt have the patience anymore - nor the free time - to stick with any game that doesnāt do something special. And for me, gameplay is more important than anything else. Great visuals donāt make up for unfun game mechanics.
To each their own, of course.
Trine 5 was released in 2023, so if no one remembered this game, there would not have been so many sequels. Trine is a good game, though not a masterpiece.
I still bring Trine up everytime the topic of platformers come up.
I canāt stand platformers. I donāt think Iāve played any of them for more than half an hour before moving on. Yes, that includes Mario, since itās first incarnation (sigh, Iām old).
Yet Trine hooked me in the first five minutes. The puzzles and mechanics were so much fun. The art style was also beautiful and vibrant. It is the only game in the genre that I have ever finished.
I reckon when I retire one day, I might get the whole series, and finally play them all.
For me up to including 4th game. The fifth somehow didnāt manage to draw me in that much.
āAnyoneā is a bit of a stretch. I think this is an example of how fragmented media and experience has become.
Selling millions of copies in impressive but there are billions of people in the world. And there is also new stuff being released all the time in the worlds of music, tv, film, books and gaming. All of this is jockeying for media attention and peoples attention.
These things were important to you as they were part of your formative years or had some emotional resonance., so it makes sense you are aware of them, but your lived experiences arenāt the same as others.
For example, Iām a gamer, Iāve heard to Trine but never played it.12,000 reviews on Steam is pretty impressive. But its a 16 year old game and when it comes to older games there are huge titles like Skyrim or GTAV that dominate attention still from that eraor earlier.
The Road to Perdition is a decent film but have a look at a list of Oscar winners - how many have you actually seen? The Oscars isnāt representative of films that were widely popular but rather films that were popular or important to people on Hollywood itself, or to the movie makers. It won one Oscar for cinematography.
And it grossed $180m - not bad but if you look a box office mojo the top 3 films in 2002 were Lord of the Rings 2 towers, Harry Potter and Spiderman. Road to Perdition was the 25th biggest film of the year, and bigger films includes Gangs of New York, Catch me if you can and Minority report. It was a decent film in a year of bigger films commerically.
As for Everclear, sorry to say Iāve never heard of them. Looking them up on wikipedia, they didnāt seem to troubled the charts outside the US and Canada, and for some reason New Zealand. And they did well in the Alt Music charts but they never broke the top 10 in the popular charts. So they are a bit niche even if they were popular in their own right and did well.
All of us have different things we love or were formative for us, and even the āmainstreamā that gets the attention is still really only a fraction of whatās going on.
And Iād add the nature of taste and preference is so different that the stuff that gets big and crosses over into a mega hit is either generic/inoffensive commerical slop backed up with massive marketing or rarely so extraordinarily good that it spreads through word of mouth. There are so many gems out their like Trine or Everclear but most people will never come across them. Keep spreading the word about the things you love so others can enjoy them too.
Oh I also really like trine. I think it was a bit hard to run at the time requirement wise. Had a great time cooping with good friends. there was this hectic moment where I was almost dead as the thief, enemy in front of me, steep cliff behind - me screaming to my buddy ādo somethingā, as he was the wizard. I panicked, he panicked, I was preparing my jump, he tried to anticipate and build me a platform mid air. So I jump, just for a plank he mistakenly summoned above me to bonk on my head and falling to death. We were in tears from laughing that hard. Great times, thanks for the memory š
One thing I always loved about the game was that it was not only one of the relatively few co-op games on PC, it even went as far as to support multiple sets of keyboard and mouse on a single PC. Yes, it was janky. Yes, it got cramped really fast, particularly in front of the small 4:3 LCD monitors of the time, but it was a blast anyway.
Grandia II anyone?
There are like 5 of them, and at least one spinoff.
Super Meat Boy also broke 1M, and I donāt see anyone talking about it these days either. Itās not really the same metric out was back then
I heard about Super Meat Boy quite a bit, it always popped up in must play indie games lists. I never heard of Trine before, so itās definitely not the same.
Dude, the same people made nine parchments which got me and my friends through the pandemic. Itās such a good game and I donāt think weāll ever get a sequel :(
It worked for us because you could do combo co-op: my wife and I sharing a switch at our place, friends (also a couple) on their switch at their place.
Itās a bit like a very simplified Diablo, with friendly fire. Minimal loot and a
56? Iām pretty sure itās 6 color elemental system. Mostly achievement based unlocks. Has a permadeath mode where if you wipe as a party, you have to start the campaign over. Fun, whimsical art and the music aināt bad either. My only real criticism is that they put so little effort into the plot I wonder why they bothered at all, but it does stay out of your way for the most partI donāt know about āmasterpieceā. People who liked it really liked it, but coop games always struggle a bit with reach, and it gets harder to revisit them for streamers and the like, since gathering more people is a hassle. Once that ship sails and they start pumping out sequels itās easy to just decouple from it and let its community have it their way.
Road to Perdition is a bit of a different story. It sits with Watchmen or From Hell as comic adaptations that arenātā¦ bad, but theyāre also not as groundbreaking as the source material. If youāre going to revisit there are two separate other things you can focus on that arguably hold up better than the movie.
But yeah, hey, the memory hole exists. We are in a winner-takes-all culture where viral things explode and the next rung below that is obscurity. Thatās why I mentioned that From Hell got a movie adaptation and you went āOoooh yeaaahā just now.
Trine was okay. Trine 2 was better. I didnāt care for the other sequels at all.
Road to Perdition was fine. Not great in my opinion.
Everclear did kick ass. But they did well for themselves, and their fans still remember them.
