From Viva Piñata to The Saboteur, these forgotten Xbox 360 masterpieces deserve another shot today.

The Xbox 360 era was a marvelous generation and the last time publishers regularly bet on strange, original ideas. Plenty of those bets paid off, from Gears of War to Assassin's Creed. But time hasn't been kind to all of them, and some of the generation's best games have been out of the conversation so long that a whole new wave of players has never heard of them.

A few of these were genuine hits at the time, while others were cult classics sunk by bad timing or studio closures. A couple had their legacies buried by disastrous follow-ups, and one isn't even available to play on any platform. What they share is that nobody talks about them now, even though their ideas still hold up against games released this decade. If your Xbox 360 collection is missing any of these, you skipped some of the best games the generation has to offer.

Viva Piñata, a social garden simulator developed by Rare and published by Microsoft Game Studios, launched on Xbox 360 on Nov. 9, 2006. Players turn a scrubby patch of dirt into a garden that attracts living, candy-filled piñatas, each with its own appetite for certain plants, foods, and mates. The game arrived two days after Gears of War, and it created a contrasting Xbox 360 double feature that could match Barbenheimer in its absurdity.

Viva Piñata was loved for its vivid art style, its whimsical soundtrack, and its surprisingly deep strategic gameplay.

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