In your opinion, what is the most underrated video game system? (including computers!)

[+jgkspsx]

Panzer Dragoon is head and shoulders the best game for the R-Zone, and one of the most common games to find (which is not to say cheap) because I think a lot of Sega collectors kept them when many parents threw out the other carts. 
 

Others I have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of: Daytona USA (dirt cheap), Indy 500 (dirt cheap), Mortal Kombat 3 (way better than MKT), both Virtua Fighters (cheap), Virtua Cop (cheap), Road Rash 3 (not cheap), Millennium Falcon Challenge (cheap), Apollo 13 (very not cheap), Toshinden, The Lost World Jurassic Park (not expensive but not cheap), all of the Star Wars games (also easier to find because Star Wars collectors saved them).

 

I do not recommend the Batman games, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Primal Rage, or Area 51.

 

I still haven’t figured out if NiGHTS into Dreams is garbage or if I just don’t know how to play it.

 

Here’s a great overview: http://videogamekraken.com/tiger-r-zone

 

Here’s the officialest of the many threads: 

 

 

I wrote some capsule reviews there.

[Montrealer]

2 systems come to mind.

 

First is the Sega CD/Mega CD. The convoluted setup alone was a huge deterrent, and the marketing went absolutely wrong by showing off all the crap FMV games as a selling point made it feel like the system wasn’t worth people’s time and money. I’m a huge 3DO fan

and I feel it gets more recognition as a strong underdog, but if you take a critical look at both consoles libraries the Sega CD blows it out of the water, if only because of the JRPGs and shooters.

 

Second is the Atari Lynx. 

[Tanooki]

On 7/7/2021 at 5:18 PM, Zoyous said:

I haven't looked into it, but I think you'd have to at least be open-minded about the nature of the tech and appreciate the unique limitations of it and strengths of segmented LCD games. Bearing in mind that, at the time they were new, the other home games they were up against were very blocky, low-resolution pixel-based games, while LCD games looked like little hand-drawn illustrations. The only game like that I ever had was a Nelsonic Pac-Man watch (the one with the small joystick) and, playing it years later, I felt it played a decent game of Pac-Man all things considered.

Oh I do keep that very in mind, I keep it in mind even now if I find one and feel I'd enjoy it or just not care and pass on it.

 

Back in the era I know for a fact I had their baseball in green, castlevania II, mega man II, and I think I had karnov and gauntlet(or at least on those two, a friend and played them a heap) and also I remember using someones batman quite a bit as well.  It was maybe like 7-8 years ago now, I had such a hard flashback that got me back into them some.  Guy at a flea market had thrown 4 of them into a big zip bag, with the old manuals no less for a $1 each, since I took them all he gave me one for free (football, which I traded out.)  The others though?  The very same baseball, castlevania, and karnov...I still have them in my desk.  I then specifically sought out and got MM2 back too.  I've had a few others come and go since, another I retained for being nice is Ninja Gaiden.  One I wish I hadn't sold, Sub Wars, has super sound, it's a lot of fun because it's on the advanced side of those things, plays super well.

That aside I used to have a large-ish Game & Watch collection (15-20 of them) and these days I've got 4 if you count the ball remake (smb, parachute, pinball), also have got back around 20 years ago my old nelsonic zelda game wrist watch and it's a blast.  I don't mind the way they play, if the way they play is still compelling and fun.  Shame G&W pricing is so utterly disgusting I want a few others back but I'm not about to drop like $1000 on 4-5 specific ones.

[Tanooki]

Oh and good post there on the R-Zone, there's a decent amount of info kind of on Planet Virtual Boy since there's the overlap of the faux 3D vs red panel of the monocle version so I guess it got some traction there.  If anyone cares they did compile a list of the known games both confirmed and rumored/unconfirmed here it is:

 

Confirmed Games List:

Apollo 13 (Extremely Rare)
Area 51 (Very Rare)
Batman Forever (Scarse)
Batman & Robin (Very Common)
Battle Arena Toshinden (Common)
Daytona USA (Very Common)
Independence Day (Extremely Rare)
Indy 500 (Scarce)
Jurassic Park: The Lost World (Very Rare)
Mask of Zorro (Beyond Insanely Rare)
Mortal Kombat 3 (Very Rare)
Mortal Kombat Trilogy (Very Rare)
Nights into Dreams (Very Rare)
Panzer Dragoon (Very Rare)
Primal Rage (Scarce)
Road Rash 3 (Extremely Rare)
Star Wars: Imperial Assault (Scarce)
Star Wars: Jedi Adventure (Common)
Star Wars: Millennium Falcon Challenge (Scarce)
Star Wars: Rebel Forces (Very Rare)
Virtua Cop (Rare)
Virtua Fighter (Scarce)
Virtua Fighter 2 (Very Rare)

 

Unfortunately most games are scarce or rare as most buyers never went beyond playing the pack-in game.

Rumored/Unconfirmed Games:

Judge Dredd
Men in Black
NASCAR Racing
Road Rash
Star Trek
VR Troopers
Waterworld

 

 

I've seen around and also parroted there that VR Troopers and MiB are real

[BassGuitari]

On 7/7/2021 at 8:16 AM, wongojack said:

You guys are being very convincing that the R-Zone is something I need to try.

As someone who had an R-Zone when they came out, believe me: it's not. ?

[+jgkspsx]

3 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I've seen around and also parroted there that VR Troopers and MiB are real

I have seen photos of Judge Dredd, VR Troopers, and passed up an MiB on sale. Also, there’s a (France only?) soccer game called simply Football. It’s likely that that is the rarest game since it only came as a pack in in one country. Mask of Zorro, same deal, but there seem to be more copies circulating.

[IntelliMission]

I'm a bit confused as to:

 

- How could a company decide to release such a console in 1995, based on this LCD "fixed position" graphics.

 

- How could SEGA, Lucasarts, Midway or Electronic Arts release games for it.

 

Can someone explain this?

Edited July 10, 2021 by IntelliMission

[roots.genoa]

1 hour ago, IntelliMission said:

- How could SEGA, Lucasarts, Midway or Electronic Arts release games for it.

They didn't, their IPs were licensed by Tiger like for their traditional LCD games. At first I was confused because I didn't realized it was still LCD based since there were (some kind of) carts, and several are based on 3D games... Which makes me wonder how Mortal Kombat Trilogy is different from Mortal Kombat 3 except using different characters - only 2 per game I guess.

[Tanooki]

15 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

I'm a bit confused as to:

 

- How could a company decide to release such a console in 1995, based on this LCD "fixed position" graphics.

 

- How could SEGA, Lucasarts, Midway or Electronic Arts release games for it.

 

Can someone explain this?

Easy why not?  Think about it.  When they hit the market the system itself was $30, then it added the super screen for that price dropping the original lower, then dropping it entirely as it sucked for the XPG I have hit the stores to replace it as the portable vs the tabletop that cost more using the super screen overlays.  Tiger handheld themselves sold commonly for $20 a piece give or take a little for licensing, could be another +$5 or so.  So having their own value out there, they came in less, because there's far less in that little cart in a blister pack, then having a full blown handheld device so it made sense.

 

It's easy money when you can make a segmented module for pennies to the dollar on a wee sized cart that slots into that cheap device.  Gameboy at the time was like a $100 system, games commonly were $30, sometimes $35.  You could get a Tiger one off for $20, a R-Zone for $30 and games for like $10-20 a piece.  There was some savings there, it was a cheap gift for people who grew up on segmented games or a safe one for kids that was hard to break compared to a costly gameboy in comparison or moreso the color stuff (GG, Turbo Express, Lynx.)

 

There has always been a market for them, commonly even the crap brand garbage licensed or not say from MGA, Radica, and others were $15-20 too.  They got into this nook of space between the ghetto LCDs from themselves and others, and then the dedicated full blown playable portable systems and it worked.  Licensees lined up for years to use them as a cheap marketing ploy.  Mid-upper 90s Symphony of the Night of all things was ported to it, a year or two back they started doing Wii like tabletop light gun games that surprisingly worked well(I had Virtua Cop which was probably more fun than it should have been.)

 

Look I get it, they're unilaterally across the board crap compared to what the 8bit handhelds of the time did, definitely the 16bit ones (TG, Nomad) but for what they were, at the price point, some of them were very well designed beyond any right they had to be, and were good fun.

Edited July 11, 2021 by Tanooki

[+jgkspsx]

And there are plenty of “real” games that are a lot less fun than many LCD games.

 

@roots.genoa Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy are vastly different games.
 

MK3 has three planes, two of which you can fight in, and it has background images that represent different stages. It only has one special move for each character except Sindel, but there are different appropriate special attacks for the different characters. The character sprites are very different and are surprisingly effective at representing different characters. It has a lame boss - Shao Kahn who morphs into the other characters (dude; that was Shang Tsung).

 

MKT has much less variety in characters- it’s all ninjas and robot ninjas and the princesses. It has different attack combinations but the attacks are all the same. There are no backgrounds and only one plane. The big difference is that it has two bosses - Kintaro and a lame-ass Shao Kahn who just sits there and chucks stuff at you.

 

Here’s a good (although extremely negative) overview: https://www.mksecrets.net/index.php?section=kolumn&lang=eng&contentID=4053

I think MK3 is pretty fun and MKT isn’t so much. The Virtua Fighter games are the best fighting games on the system (admittedly not a high bar).

 

@IntelliMission those are better questions to ask about the game.com  

[RetroSonicHero]

The Wii U hands down.

 

- It had a TON of potential, but suffered from bad marketing (seriously, half the people in my family didn't even know what it was supposed to be when it was announced).

 

- Plenty of excellent 1st party titles and console exclusives (although a good number of them have gotten ported to the Switch).

 

- While it was gimmicky, the Gamepad with its screen allowed for some really creative elements to be put in games, and I really don't think it was ever fully realized or taken advantage of.  Hell, you could use the gamepad as the 2nd screen for DS games on the Virtual Console!  Something that to this day baffles my mind as to why no one talks about it, as it really is a big deal when you consider games with touch controls.

 

- I still consider it to be the best way to play Wii games.  It does an excellent job upscaling them, and it has near-perfect compatibility thanks to its "Wii mode". 

 

- Absolutely INCREDIBLE modding potential.  There's so much you can do with it.  You can use Emulators, play cool Homebrew, play game backups, and even unlock the ability to play Gamecube games!  With everything I said about playing Wii games on it holding true here as well.  There's also a ton of other things you can do, but far too many to list.

 

Say what you want about this system; it's not my favorite by any means either, but I absolutely do not think it deserved to fail in the way it did.  If I had to guess, this console will suffer the same fate as the Dreamcast: largely forgotten when it was relevant, but adored later down the line.

 

Edited July 20, 2021 by RetroSonicHero

[youki]

There is so much underrated machine i think.

 

as console i would say the 3 mores are :  Epoch Super Cassette vision  ,  Amstrad GX 4000 and Creativision.    Theses consoles have lot potential  never really exploited.

 

as Computer the list would be so long, there were so much good 8 bits computers in the 80s...  

But if i had to choose only one , i would say :  the Lansay Enterprise 128 .

 

Look at the spec in 1982! :

Z80 4Mhz

128k RAM  (64k version existed also)  extensible up to 4Mega!

256 Colors

Graphics Resolution form 84x28  to  672x512 !

3 voices sound processor

 

however no hardware sprite as far i know

 

[+wongojack]

4 hours ago, RetroSonicHero said:

 

 

Hell, you could use the gamepad as the 2nd screen for DS games on the Virtual Console!  Something that to this day baffles my mind as to why no one talks about it, as it really is a big deal when you consider games with touch controls.

 

 

 

I always suspected that this was the plan with the Wii U.  Are there any DS games that actually do this?  I wasn't aware that it was ever implemented.  If the answer is yes then can you play all DS games like that if you hack the thing?

 

 

[+jgkspsx]

2 hours ago, wongojack said:

I always suspected that this was the plan with the Wii U.  Are there any DS games that actually do this?  I wasn't aware that it was ever implemented.  If the answer is yes then can you play all DS games like that if you hack the thing?

As far as I remember, I only ever played DS games on the GamePad alone in TATE mode. I need to see if it does this!

[RetroSonicHero]

@wongojack @jgkspsx Yes!

 

New Super Mario Bros. DS on the Virtual Console does this for item management and a couple of other things.  You use the gamepad to use your reserve item.  It works this way for every DS game on the Virtual Console, I can confirm with experience from doing it myself.

 

I'd assume this also goes for hacked DS games too, but I'm not 100% sure.

[bluejay]

1 minute ago, RetroSonicHero said:

@wongojack @jgkspsx Yes!

 

New Super Mario Bros. DS on the Virtual Console does this for item management and a couple of other things.  You use the gamepad to use your reserve item.  It works this way for every DS game on the Virtual Console, I can confirm with experience from doing it myself.

 

I'd assume this also goes for hacked DS games too, but I'm not 100% sure.

NSMBDS on an actual DS does the same thing, and same applies to probably every other DS game. They didn't make it up just for Virtual Console.

[RetroSonicHero]

14 minutes ago, bluejay said:

NSMBDS on an actual DS does the same thing, and same applies to probably every other DS game. They didn't make it up just for Virtual Console.

Sorry, I worded that wrong.  I meant to say that it works with the Gamepad as if you were using the 2nd screen on the real hardware.

Edited July 20, 2021 by RetroSonicHero

[bluejay]

3 hours ago, RetroSonicHero said:

Sorry, I worded that wrong.  I meant to say that it works with the Gamepad as if you were using the 2nd screen on the real hardware.

Oh, well then yeah, you’re right. 

[Leeroy ST]

Loud console fans have Isolated non-PC computers so I'd say all computer platforms are underrated these days.

 

.....maybe not Amiga yet...maybe.

 

On 7/9/2021 at 7:50 PM, jgkspsx said:

Toshinden

Isn't that the crazy goofy fighter with the guy swinging around a chainsaw? I remember when people compared that series to Tekken.

Edited July 21, 2021 by Leeroy ST

[carlsson]

18 hours ago, youki said:

Lansay Enterprise 128 .

 

Look at the spec in 1982! :

Z80 4Mhz

128k RAM  (64k version existed also)  extensible up to 4Mega!

256 Colors

Graphics Resolution form 84x28  to  672x512 !

3 voices sound processor

Well, to be honest the Enterprise was finally released in June 1985 after having spent a good two years in development hell after it first was announced in 1983. I would suppose the spec was closer to reach the longer time passed. It probably still is one monster of an 8-bit computer but for newcomers it is worth pointing out that this was not available in 1982 nor 1983.

[youki]

28 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Well, to be honest the Enterprise was finally released in June 1985 after having spent a good two years in development hell after it first was announced in 1983. I would suppose the spec was closer to reach the longer time passed. It probably still is one monster of an 8-bit computer but for newcomers it is worth pointing out that this was not available in 1982 nor 1983.

I'm pretty sure to have seen on sale  in 1983  in France.  May be it was the Enterprise 64.

[carlsson]

Perhaps you saw a wooden mock-up of an Elan 64 at some expo. I know they displayed it early on, but there was probably nothing inside. They changed the name of the computer quite a number of times during development until they finally could settle with Enterprise which definitely didn't go on sale until 1985.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_(computer)

 

It is kind of interesting to compare the VTech Creativision, which has a small library entirely made up of first party titles, mostly clones of popular games, with the Epoch Super Cassette Vision which was a few years later but where they managed to license a couple of 3rd party titles to add to the library. I know the Creativision received quite some positive press in US magazines after VTech displayed it at CES but apparently it never was released there. Also it seems it mostly was sold as mail order in Europe, which probably limited the interest from major publishers to even license their titles since the competition by 1983-84 was fierce. From a programming point of view, both probably are interesting but when it comes to enjoying the existing library both tend to lead to shorter sessions, at least for me. While the games often are solid, it seems some element is lacking. I don't want to say it is the well known branding that defines which games are playable or not, but somehow clones really need to add something extra to prefer them over the real deal.