Underrated Consoles

[Blanka]

I have always felt that the Dreamcast was given enough credit. I found it to be a pretty decent console myself.

[CJC]

I was quite fond of the Gamecube, though relative to other consoles in that generation it did rather poorly. Doesn't help that Nintendo released it right before the internet console craze.



Dreamcast was definitely way ahead of its time. Sega had that problem, they frequently released products that the gaming community was not ready for. Had it come out a generation later it would have done quite well. Sad, really, when innovation is the downfall of a company.

[Zim]

Dreamcast seemed great to me, I just never bought one. Shenmue looked like the best game of all time for the time, and those other games like Virtua On were pretty great, and I got to see some of Sword of the Berserker that was pretty sweet too.

Turbo Graphix 16 is/was pretty great for it's time too, and I've never seen another one aside from the one I had for awhile, nor any real talk of it either.

[Ventus]

Dreamcast was definitely way ahead of its time. Sega had that problem, they frequently released products that the gaming community was not ready for. Had it come out a generation later it would have done quite well. Sad, really, when innovation is the downfall of a company.

The DreamCast was way ahead of its time, but I also know what aided in its downfall was piracy on it, Sega didn't really have to way to stop the game piracy.
I mean you have to do is obtain some game disk images burn to CD and play, there was nothing else that needed to be done... Well except a few games that needed a boot disk.

Its a shame that sega released a model of the console with the ability to play burned games taken away too late in the console's life.
I'm sure that some developers didn't want to make games on the console in the first place since it was so easy for people to play the games for free.

But damn the DreamCast had some pretty damn good hardware through I mean the graphics were great, just as good as the PS2.
Really through the console was way to advance for its time and it fell through peoples hands and landed in the trash.

But really though the DreamCast was truly a underrated console it had power and it had some great games.

[Aliem]

I loved me some GameCube. I know the controller was wonky as hell, but I remember being quite fond of it... except for the shoulder buttons. The hell was up with those clunky bastards?

I never owned a DreamCast, and I think I have only played one once in my life, but by all accounts, it was a solid console that simply came out too early. Weird.

I think there's a chance of the Wii U going down this route, though whether it'll be rememberd as 'underrated' or just 'subpar' remains to be seen. Or, who knows, maybe it'll start selling like crazy?

[SUCCESSOR]

I love the Gamecube. Though it wasn't a perfect console it was a great one. It was a lot of steps in the right direction, but it couldn't make up for the damage done by the N64's limitations and Nintendo burning bridges with developers and fans. The lack of support for the GBA link-up was BS. The whole life of the GC produced like 2 quality games that utilize it.

The Dreamcast being too "ahead of it's time" was the least of Sega's problems. They never learned a lesson from Nintendo's success. They lost the trust of their fans by pulling the plug on the Saturn too early. Piracy is often claimed to be the greatest downfall but i hardly think it made much of a difference. Pirates are a very small portion of gamers especially back then and frankly the Dreamcast's lack of developer support and the overwhelming presence of the PS2 killed off any chance it had. Don't get me wrong. The Dreamcast was great. It had some great games for the way things turned out. It had a lot of potential. It's a Shame Sega couldn't pull it off.

I think the Wii was an underrated console. Sure it sold well, but a lot of people disregarded it as a casual gaming console for your grandmas house when the kids visit. There are some amazing games for the Wii. I've done more gaming on the Wii than my Xbox 360.

[travis.ross88]

what about gameboy advance ??

[Gleeok]

TurboGraghics16! :P (Unfortunately they had little good titles for it...)


what about gameboy advance ??

That would be a handheld, not a console.

[Chris Miller]

The Sega Master System.

[Tim]

The Sega Master System.

I used to play Altered Beast all the time. I used to play a baseball game on it a lot too.

[Aliem]

The Sega Master System.

I didn't even know the Master System was a thing till just a few years ago. On a similar note, how about the Atari 7800?

[MasterSwordUltima]

What about it? It's incredibly easy to find NIB (sealed even) atari games. Including 7800 games.

You wanna talk about underrated consoles?
http://www.art-rash.com/pixelform/videobends/painter/images/painter-02.jpg

Not sure if the definition of a console requires external media to be inserted to play. Either way, this thing was tits.

[King Aquamentus]

This might be something of a stretch, but I'm going to toss the Microsoft MSX computer into the mix. Stretch, because A: computer, and B: possibly the overrated of the underrated. However though, in terms of gaming, the MSX ran a lot of parallels with the NES, with quite a few of the same games the NES got. Oftentimes though, especially those released in 1986 and later, the SCC sound chip meant that while the games were still graphically inferior to the NES, the music and sound were incredible. The MSX2 got Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and the graphics for that version of the console definitely were a touch above the NES. One of the games, Space Manbow, looks so much like a 16-bit arcade that you really have to double-take at it and say "no, there's no way that's the same console Metal Gear came out on."

Plus, there's the fact that with some of the stuff Konami released on this console, it is almost as if Konami made this *their* console. It features two completely unique Gradius titles (one of which has only been remade on other obscure computer consoles like the sharp x6800), and a dramatically different version of Life Force, with an actual plot that feels almost RPG-ish for a shoot em up.


Gradius without the chip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmwfp6I9Nkc

Here's Gradius *with* the chip. Notice the big difference?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ZRc6r4BzQ

And here's Space Manbow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugXjAW8nRGQ