What Is the Most Under-Rated Console?

[simbalion]

What do you think is the most under-rated console made? My vote would have to be for the Bally Astrocade, after playing a couple games on the console that shows what it could do. With the capability of at least doing some limited computer programming and being able to support decent graphics and good sound, the Bally should have been a winner. If only Bally had marketed it better and supported it longer instead of flitting off towards another venture.

[Bill Loguidice]

What do you think is the most under-rated console made? My vote would have to be for the Bally Astrocade, after playing a couple games on the console that shows what it could do. With the capability of at least doing some limited computer programming and being able to support decent graphics and good sound, the Bally should have been a winner. If only Bally had marketed it better and supported it longer instead of flitting off towards another venture.

 

The Astrocade is a great console and the very first that could be turned into a functional computer. It's really clever technology. Unfortunately, the software never really evolved beyond that first generation of titles. It would have been interesting to see how the software could have developed had Bally not dropped it so early on and it was relevant user base-wise into the third party era. With that in mind, I'm not sure I'd classify it as underrated in the traditional sense.

 

For me, I'd probably say the Odyssey2 was underrated. It didn't have the audio-visual capabilities of even the Atari 2600, but the games were colorful, generally flicker-free, and often different than a lot of what you got on the competition. Unfortunately, because of its modest audio-visuals (although obviously The Voice support is rather impressive and adds to the audio part), I think it gets overlooked quite a bit more than it should. Of course, there are lots of other "underrated" candidates...

[+GoldenWheels]

I'd say the 7800. Good library of it's own, can play almost all of the 2600 library, active homebrew community. Great starting point for classic gaming, whereas many people seem to start at the NES.

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

I have to go with the Odyssey 2. Other than the nifty built in membrane keyboard, it has a decent library of games like K.C. Munchkin, K.C.'s Krazy Chase, UFO, Pick Axe Pete, Killer Bees, Turtles, and Smithereens. In addition the homebrew market is not too shabby either. Sure the games were primative and not compared to the 2600 or Intellivision. It still packs some good replay value. The Voice is a cool peripherial as well.

[BassGuitari]

I'll also chime in with the Odyssey 2. It seems like that system's reputation has actually gotten worse over the last 15 years for some reason. I mean, it always had a reputation of being inferior to the Atari and Intellivision--and it is--but I don't think people ever used to dog on it like they do now. For every person that praises the dozen-odd great titles in its library, its well-built joysticks, its innovations, or anything else about it, there are five that dismiss it altogether.

I'd actually suggest the Arcadia 2001 as well. It certainly doesn't stack up to the Atari 5200 or Coleco, but it's not a terrible console compared to the 2600. It's a quirky system with the most obscure arcade ports imaginable, but it's actually got some decent games. Nothing I'd call "must-play," but decent.

I don't know if I'd call the Bally underrated exactly. People who know about it tend to know it's a good system with only a few standout titles. Those standouts really stand out, though. Still--and I say this as a Bally fan, and one who likes games like Star Battle, A-Maze-ing, and Sea Wolf/Bombardier--there really aren't enough "A-list" games to warrant more popularity for the Bally than it has. Its failure rate and cost really work against it, as well.

I'm not sure how I feel about the Atari 7800. On one hand, it does have an entertaining library with some solid original titles. On the other hand, its library is largely redundant and full of rehashes, and even its original titles tended to be Nintendo-alikes. On the other other hand, homebrews; the 7800 may have been kind of a second-rate system during its life, but some truly great stuff has come out for it during its afterlife. I dunno; split the difference and the 7800 is probably right about where it should be.

[+GoldenWheels]

I'm not sure how I feel about the Atari 7800. On one hand, it does have an entertaining library with some solid original titles. On the other hand, its library is largely redundant and full of rehashes, and even its original titles tended to be Nintendo-alikes. On the other other hand, homebrews; the 7800 may have been kind of a second-rate system during its life, but some truly great stuff has come out for it during its afterlife. I dunno; split the difference and the 7800 is probably right about where it should be.

 

 

 

I wouldn't mention it at all if not for it's ability to play the 2600 library. Certainly the 2600 is NOT underrated but as a dual introduction to BOTH libraries, I'd take the 7800 over a woody any day (*ducks*).

[Flojomojo]

I would say Odyssey 2 as well. Yes, it's laughably crude now, but it seems unjust that crap like early VCS games (the numbered games like Home Run) get rereleased over and over again, while no one seems to care about Pick Axe Pete or KC Munchkin.

[CatPix]

I can't name the Odyssey²...

Simply because the Videopac, while not being a huge devastating success in Europe, was and is still appreciated.

 

I do console expos with a retrogaming club, and the Videopac is ALWAYS part of the fun.

 

To me, I would have liked to see more Super Cassette Vision games.

It was dual released in Japan by Epoch and as a rebranded system in France by Yeno (and dual released because unlike many dodgy import of the time, the Yeno logo is carefully printed on the system case, and the front panel in plastic is reprinted in French, no glossy stickers here but professionnaly made work).

 

 

 

The system's colors and sound are a bit limited, but it can still hold up to early NES titles. Some of those titles, for 1984/85 are to me even better than the NES, notably by being flicker-free.

 

F-Zero in 8 bits :

 

A compilation of other titles for the system.

 

Nintendo and Sega quickly ended the weak Epoch attempt; both had secured developers to wrok for them and develop new games where Epoch could only rehash the licence they had from their LCD/VFD games. And so the SCV was pulled off the market around 1987.

[Bill Loguidice]

I have a Super Cassette Vision (and its predecessor) and like it, but I wouldn't exactly call it underrated, mostly because it didn't make it out of Japan (EDIT: Excepting the limited European release as described in # 8 ) . It's hard for others to place something under consideration/discussion when it was limited to a single territory.

 

I'm not sure if the 7800 is underrated either. It had its issues and lacks a certain diversity of software that its direct competition at the time, NES and SMS, didn't. I think underutilized might be a better term for the 7800.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Bill Loguidice

[Seob]

I also think the o2 is a bit underrated. Look at a few of the colorfull games Revival studio has put out, if the programmers back then had dived more into the hardware i think it could have been a bigger player on the market.

More 3th party support would have been better for the console.

[+save2600]

Underrated and underutilized - terms sometimes go hand in hand, while in examples like the 7800, agree that it does not. Then there's overrated or overvalued and I'd define that as a combination of what things sell for and its popularity.

 

The ones that stick out to me include:

 

Jaguar - underutilized and overvalued (what a shitty combination!)

 

7800 - underutilized

 

NES & SNES - overvalued

 

Astrocade - underutilized... can't say underrated as most everyone that's played one, loves it

 

Amiga CD32 - underutilized as the multi-button game machine it was intended to be, but the capability to turn it into an A1200 brings it up to overvalued today.

 

And I'd say the O2 is a little underrated here in the States. Bulk of the library borders on primitive and the best of the rest tend to get overlooked as a result.

 

Then I always felt like the Saturn (Dreamcast too) didn't have a long enough lifespan that they deserved. Saturn less so in the States and what a shame. So probably a combination of underrated and undervalued across both systems (except for the top tier Saturn games that fetch big bucks) maybe.

[+GoldenWheels]

 

 

I'm not sure if the 7800 is underrated either. It had its issues and lacks a certain diversity of software that its direct competition at the time, NES and SMS, didn't. I think underutilized might be a better term for the 7800.

I think that is fair, surprisingly I still run into a fair amount of video game fans who are largely unaware of it (or even go "you mean that huge thing?"--the 5200). I'd even be ok just calling it just somewhat unknown.

 

Per it's competition; I guess I am thinking of underrated in terms of now, was this perhaps meant to be about the original time period only? (I'm not the only one who mentioned homebrews)

[godslabrat]

This might be a surprising answer, but I'm gonna say the Gameboy and, to a lesser extent, the GB Color. Yes, they were massively popular, but too often get dismissed as only offering "watered-down portable versions" of games. Often, the games on the GB were excellent in their own right, and were either original games in established franchises or exceedingly well-done ports.

[cimerians]

It seems the Atari 2600 is underrated everywhere but here.

[BassGuitari]

This might be a surprising answer, but I'm gonna say the Gameboy and, to a lesser extent, the GB Color. Yes, they were massively popular, but too often get dismissed as only offering "watered-down portable versions" of games.

True, but it wasn't always a negative thing. My friends and I thought it was awesome to have portable adaptations of N64, SNES, and sometimes even NES games. The DX series was excellent; Zelda DX is probably my favorite Zelda game. And of course it had some great "exclusive" games as well; Pokemon was [trumpmode] YUGE [/trumpmode] at the time, and originated on the GB/C, IIRC.

 

It was especially nice for us junior-high aged PlayStation owners who couldn't afford to also get a Nintendo 64, at least we had our own taste of the Nintendo side of things without having to go to our friends' houses and play their N64s (which we of course did anyway, as they did likewise with our PlayStations). And yeah, we knew games like Turok 2 were nothing like the console version, but we still thought they were neat.

 

WWF Attitude sucked, though. I still remember when I bought my copy at Funcoland, the salesman actually tried to talk me out of it, but I decided to judge for myself. Swing and a miss, but hey, I was 13. Lesson learned: when even the guy whose job is to make you buy things tells you NOT to buy something...listen to him.

[CatPix]

I have a Super Cassette Vision (and its predecessor) and like it, but I wouldn't exactly call it underrated, mostly because it didn't make it out of Japan (EDIT: Excepting the limited European release as described in # 8 ) . It's hard for others to place something under consideration/discussion when it was limited to a single territory.

 

I'm not sure if the 7800 is underrated either. It had its issues and lacks a certain diversity of software that its direct competition at the time, NES and SMS, didn't. I think underutilized might be a better term for the 7800.

Then we should remove the O2 from being cited here, as the Videopac was more popular in Europe/made a more lasting impression than the Intellivision.

And we can remove the Astroacde as it was never released outside of North America (was it released in Canada either?)

[wolfy62]

It seems the Atari 2600 is underrated everywhere but here.

No the Atari 2600 was always over rated as a better system. Atari did have all the Arcade games but even those looked bad on the 2600. But the most under rated system, as it has always has been is the Intellivision which had more games that were unique to it.

 

I love my Intellivision!!!

[carlsson]

Since the world of collectors these days is so international (with the exception of a few individuals who refuse to sell or buy things from abroad), I don't think the original availability should be much of an issue when it comes to what we consider underrated today, because that is one of the aspects that this thread is about?

 

Personally I don't mind the SCV being underrated, because that means I can still get several games for affordable prices. What I'd pay from a Japanese seller for a boxed SCV game is about half of what I would pay for a loose NES game of similar rarity, which is really mind boggling when volumes and availability are taken into account, but then again I understand that demand > availability drives up prices. Graphically though, the SCV reminds me of a beefed up VIC-20 or Arcadia 2001. It may hold its place against the SG-1000 on early titles, but I must admit even early Famicom titles look more higher definition so over time I'm not surprised it didn't keep up the competition.

 

When we speak about hybrid console/computers, the VTech Creativision probably could have had a bigger run if it had been properly introduced in US and some 3rd party development going on. After all it shares the "custom" chipset with the much successful Colecovision and several others, so in its time frame it probably would've given the Atari 5200 a run for its money.

[wolfy62]

Some great responses here, Catpix had a very cool looking system posted........and I love my Odyssey 2 as well!

[akator]

Many non-Nintendo handhelds are underrated. Lynx, Game Gear, Turbo Express, Neo Geo Pocket, PSP, are all awesome. That's OK, it means more for me

[+wongojack]

I think the 7800 is rated about right, and the Astrocade is too. The comments about those systems have already covered about how I feel on them.

 

The Saturn and Dreamcast came to mind for me as well, but I'm not sure that fits. Just because a console lost it's generational battles doesn't necessarily make it underrated.

 

Edit - and my original response was actually going to be the Lynx! What an amazing device that was for the time; only to be squashed by a Tetris machine.

[Austin]

I feel the 7800 is rated just fine where it's at, it's not underrated at all. It has a very limited library consisting a large percentage of early '80s arcade conversions, many of which can be had elsewhere. Most of what else it does just isn't done very well compared to its competition. The homebrew is nice, but many systems have quality homebrew and the 7800's features even more arcade ports. That's not saying it's a bad system at all, but we're talking about something that is geared towards a very specific type of audience. Because of that, I can't just recommend it to anyone, whereas I can with its contemporaries (NES and SMS, far more varied libraries).

 

I have to agree with others that the Lynx is underrated. It has a fairly high-quality and fairly varied library overall.

[SSG]

Odyssey 2

[+cvga]

I think the Turbo Grafx 16 is underrated. It has a bunch of great games (Devil's Crush, Galaga '90, Bonk's Adventure, Bomberman, Neutopia, Military Madness, Blazing Lazers and more). Lots of people are fond of the TG16 but it doesn't get anywhere near the love that the NES, SNES, or Genesis gets.

 

I also think the Commodore 64 is underrated in terms of a game machine.

[adamchevy]

I think the dreamcast was way underrated .

Edited May 11, 2016 by adamchevy