What's the most underrated /vr/ console?

Anything with a large untranslated Japanese library. I would have said the Saturn a while ago, but its been getting more recognition lately, so I'll probably go with the PCE-CD.

>>2916175
Saturn is the only sega console I haven't played extensively, It's kind of cost prohibitive to buy an Australian model, but I'm thinking of just getting a Japanese model with a bootdisk, those are quite inexpensive and there is a good chance I'd be mostly playing imported games anyway.

>>2916175
Saturn always got plenty of love on /vr/ desu. PC Engine is a good choice.

I never see much PC-88/98 discussion either. Although that is obviously very obscure to western audiences.

>>2916237
>I never see much PC-88/98 discussion either
Do those even have decent emulators? What about the PC-FX?

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It's the VCS as its library gets consistently shit all over despite being great. You could maybe go with OPs argument considering the 7800's backwards compatibility but since it rarely even is discussed it's easier and more accurate to say the 2600 is the most underrated.

>>2916260
>It's the VCS as its library gets consistently shit all over despite being great

Outside of first party and Activision, 80% of its library is mediocre to holy God what the fuck is this.

>>2916274
Same with the NES and PlayStation to be honest. And they're (rightfully) considered great systems.

>>2916279
I dare you to find a game on those systems that can top the following. The video game crash happened for a reason and it wasn't because the vast majority of the VCS's library was high quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArYO71fdFWw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzI1RBdK2_g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PKzoJcNGyA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKA59dzz8do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCPpgt0s70U

>>2916283
>The video game crash happened for a reason
Yeah, it's called ET. How long have you been on the internet?

I'd say in this order
>Dreamcast
Things were going really well for it until the Playstation 2 was announced and released in 2000 and suddenly discontinued in 2001. I don't even thing developers even tapped the true potential of the console.
>Saturn
Did well in Japan but didn't do so well elsewhere. Sega's awful marketing and handling of the Saturn outside of Japan was a disaster. It could of competed with the Playstation in the US or 64.
>PC Engine
NEC dropped the ball on this one.
>Neo Geo
Does this one count really?

>>2916305
Don't you think it would be strange that the lone game could break the entire US market? It's like to say Gavrilo Princip killed Franz Ferdinand was the reason of the World War I.

>>2916312
>Neo Geo
I know it was expensive as fuck but its games are regularly mentioned and praised, it was like the most powerful system of the fourth generation.

Probably Neo-Geo Pocket Color.

>>2916283
Easy

NES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2oZJ_0YkQw

PSX:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZmudJbvVgM

Most 2nd gen stuff.

I'd say Coleco Vision, good console, much better than Atari 2600.

>>2916369
>I'd say Coleco Vision
Intellivision games are pretty good too though.

There seems to be no collecting bubble for 2nd gen games as there is for NES and up. You can usually find crateloads of them at flea markets for like $2 a piece.

Saturn, definitely.

>>2916369
>>2916379
There's no debating that Colecovision and Intelivision are more powerful than VCS by a wide margin. Everyone knows that and points it out every time i.e. they're not underrated.

VCS was so long before those consoles it should be no surprise it has distinctly weaker hardware but it was much much less expensive at all points it competed meanwhile having a far more extensive library of games.

The underrating of the 2600 and the crash are both a direct responsibility of unethical business practices by publishers (Atari included) who noticed games all sold about equally regardless of development budget then greedily tried to take maximum advantage of that fact like a bunch of jews until the consumers literally rebelled and completely stopped buying new games

>>2916412
The VCS is only two years older than the Intellivision and the TMS 9918/19 chips that make up the guts of the Colecovision. However, the latter two benefited from the collapse of memory prices in 1980 while the VCS was developed in the 70s when memory was costly. The VCS had only 128 bytes of RAM and 4k of cartridge ROM while the Intellivision and Colecovision both had 1k of system RAM, plus an 8k BIOS. Colecovision supported 32k cartridges while Intellivision allowed almost 64k (everything in the CPU address space minus the system RAM+BIOS).

>>2916305
One bad game didn't cause the crash of the video game market. You should watch Atari: Game Over. It's on Netflix, it's about ET and digging up the landfill where the ET games were allegedly buried. I forget the name of the guy who did the ET game, but it was the same guy who did some of the Atari's best-selling games like Yar's Revenge. He was trying an ambitious approach to the game for the time, and tried making an almost 3D world with the combination of top-down view and sidescrolling, but had five weeks to make the game, so he didn't have enough time to polish it and really make the concept work. Any game will be bad when made in that timeframe. Also, Spielberg played it before its release and gave it the OK. So I mean really Spielberg could have stopped it from launching if he really wanted to.

>>2916359
Cheetahmen II wasn't even licensed though.

There was no way to stop the flood of horrible third party 2600 games. Intellivision and Colecovision had BIOSes designed to lock out unlicensed titles, so this problem did not affect them.

In the early days, only Atari themselves developed for the console and they weren't exactly giving away tech info to the public. The first third party dev, Activision, were ex-Atari programmers so they already knew how the thing worked, but what happened next is that other people reverse engineered the 2600 and by 1981, electronics magazines were running articles about how it worked and how to program it, so now any code monkey who knew 6502 assembly language could write a 2600 game.

Even worse, many of these shitpile games made by fly-by-night devs trying to milk the video game craze were barely playable and the carts sometimes poorly made and liable to damage consoles. One of the important things Nintendo did was ensuring that any game released for their consoles would actually run, could be completed by the player, and wouldn't damage the thing.

>>2916464
No VCS games were licensed

>>2916312
The Saturn flop didn't really have anything to do with how it was marketed. People were frustrated with Sega over the Sega CD and 32x abandonment. Nobody trusted Sega anymore in the states. Plus the pack in title Virtua Fighter was a huge arcade hit in Japan and never really caught on here.

NEC didn't drop the ball on the PC/Turbo either. They marketed the shit out of it. Unfortunately it was hard to program for and had little or no games at launch. It was lost in translation a bit. I had a turbo grafx16 when they came out and I think it's one of the most underrated systems ever though.

NeoGeo is underrated to an extent but if you don't like arcade style games or fighters than its a pretty underwhelming library. It holds up well, but at the same time alienates alot of gamers. Plus the quality of the stories and translations are brutal

>>2916305
>ET alone
No, the entire market at that state was just unsustainable, and ET was just one of many terrible business moves by Atari.

>>2916457
I have issues with that documentary because it practically whitewashes the poor quality of ET.
>"It wasn't a bad game"
>"It was actually really good"
No, fuck those guys, ET might not be THE worst game, even on the 2600, but it was not by any means GOOD.

>>2916558
>The Saturn flop didn't really have anything to do with how it was marketed

Actually it was because SOA insisted on marketing to dudebros and niggers so they only cared about sports and fighting games and as a consequence we never got any of the console's many JRPGs.

>>2916252
>What about the PC-FX?
Who wants to pay a bunch of crappy fmv & date sims? And nothing of value was lost.

>>2916312
Neo Geo was overpriced, NOT overrated.

>>2916827
Weeaboos might go for the dating sims.

>>2916827
>Who wants to pay a bunch of crappy fmv & date sims?
I do.

>>2916237
>I never see much PC-88/98 discussion either. Although that is obviously very obscure to western audiences.
I played through the PC-88 Snatcher and PC-98 Policenauts a few years ago. They have pretty serviceable emulation. At any rate, the PC-88 Snatcher is much better than the MSX2 one just for the loading times alone.

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>>2916558
>Unfortunately it was hard to program for and had little or no games at launch.
False.
>These specs seem a tad inferior to what the Mega Drive and Super Famicom offered only a few scant years later, but since the PC Engine ran so quickly, and since its architecture was simple enough that it avoided many of the bugs and arbitrary limits imposed on programmers with other consoles, the system’s software was able to compete evenly with its 16-bit competition remarkably well. Indeed, the mere fact that it was still handling straight-on arcade ports (like Street Fighter II Dash) in 1992-93, five years after it was designed, is a testament to the latent power held inside. (Hiromasa Iwasaki, ex-game-mag editor and programmer on games like Ys Books I & II and Linda Cubed, brings up how easy the PCE was to code for in pretty much every interview he does.)
http://magweasel.com/2009/05/09/pc-engine-white/#more-60

The reason the TG16 failed in the US, whereas the PCE did well in Japan was because NEC didn't know how to market the system in foreign territories. They could gotten a head start over the Genesis by launching the TG16 in 1988, but they wasted that opportunity to give it a redesign it didn't need without actually giving it features it actually needed like RCA jacks and extra controller ports.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/225466/stalled_engine_the_turbografx16_.php

>>2916883
It did Okay in japan. Its like saying the wonderswan did well in japan. You are talking magnitudes difference in success. The PC Engine was known as a poor kid system in japan because it was bargain bined hard.

>>2916168
Neo Geo Pocket Color.

>>2916934
It also catered to more 8-bit centric tastes. It was frontloaded with the same types of games that dominated on the NES, i.e. shoot 'em ups and action games and platformers.

Game Boy Color.

It was known as that "console for Tetris, Pokakmen and shitty portable games" but it had many brilliant games in it's own right.

>37 replies
>no one mentioned the Master System
The majority of the good games are JP or PAL only, but the SMS had some damn good games. Rarely gets mentioned around here though.

>>2916934
sold better than the mega drive

PC Engine seems like a reasonable choice. I want one so bad but the games are so expensive. Even Gradius is around $40 on eBay.

Also, the Sega CD also had some good games once you got past the FMV shit.

>>2916934
The CD-ROM2 was considered great for because it had far more storage and lower production costs than SNES cartridges while having greater potential since Japan liked the Turbografx more than the Genesis.

>>2917303
*great for JRPGs

>>2917313
And adventure games too.

>>2917243
What happens if you play a 50Hz PAL game ROM in an NTSC system using an everdrive?

Are there patched ROMs available?

Do emulators play 50Hz PAL games at 60HZ?

>>2917413
if its optimized for the slower 50hz(or if its European exclusive) then it will run faster than it should, and in some cases there may be graphical issues(and possible other issues but that depends on the game).

Dunno, about patches, but in emulators you can switch between regions(and I think some does that automatically)

>>2917413
>Do emulators play 50Hz PAL games at 60HZ?
No, they play them at 50Hz, but your modern monitor doesn't really give a shit. One of the best things about emulating is being able to play games from other regions without issues.

>>2917413
why the hell would you download an European rom anyway?

>>2917541
Can't tell if bait or dumb.

>>2916252
Barely anything on them is even translated

>>2916237
Huh? We've had plenty of threads dedicated to PC-98 games and emulation.

>>2916558
>The Saturn flop didn't really have anything to do with how it was marketed

It took an already horrid situation and made it worse. Deciding to keep the vast majority of it's library from coming over for being either and RPG or 2d, or worse yet, both left slim pickings and renforcied the "Sega isn't supporting this" idea made all the worse by the "Saturn isn't our future" statement well before Sega was actually ready to put out a new console played into that even more.

And the sudden "Available now" left a LOT of retailers pissed with Sega and eager to stop doing business with them.

>>2917243
this yo

the sega master system is the most under-appreciated /vr/ console. it is almost never talked about. i see pc-engine shit way more often.

>>2917739

I could find something to like on the PC-Engine. I could find not one solitary game I gave a nickel-plated shit about on the Master System.

>>2917783
Not even The Lucky Dime Caper?

>>2917580
>Deciding to keep the vast majority of it's library from coming over for being either and RPG or 2d

What did Sega not like about 2D and RPGs?

>>2918220
they thought only losers liked that shit, and rightfully so

>>2917783

>I

That's the problem. Try to be less biased

>>2918220
They wanted to market to ghetto niggers and dudebros.

>>2918220

>>2916779
SOA had this tough guy swagfag image and they thought all games had to be macho stuff like Virtua Fighter, racing games, sports sims, etc. As for their dislike of 2D, that was because of an autistic desire to one-up the PS1.

Where Sony won in the end was because unlike Sega and Nintendo, they didn't have a particular image or target demo for the PS1 so it could just be all things to all people.

>>2917783
Zillion.

>>2918265
yeah NiGHTS and Astal are real dudebro material. You have no idea what you're talking about.

>Where Sony won in the end was because unlike Sega and Nintendo, they didn't have a particular image or target demo for the PS1 so it could just be all things to all people.

Sony absolutely aimed the PS1 at 20something club goers. Kind of like how Sega aimed the Genesis at teenagers and as a result kids bought it too because they thought teenagers were cool, Sony aimed it at 20 somethings and had the same trickle down effect.

>>2918220
Everyone hated 2d at the time. Sony's American arm also was like that rule, even in the PS2 era. Capcom had to threaten making RE2 a Saturn exclusive to get Sony to okay MM8 for a US release.

2d was last gen and outdated and everyone wanted their console to look cutting edge, and that meant 3d and a lot of it. It didn't hurt Sony at all because the PS1 had a ton of 3d games, but with the Saturn 2d was a massive hunk of it's library.

As for RPGs that can be put down to Bernie Stolar. He'd been in charge of the PS1's lunch in the US and had a same rule. The idea was "RPG's are not popular in the US, and are mostly 2d so they don't make our system look good and powerful/cool." Shortly after he left Sony FF7 lunched.

Stolar is a famous fuck up. The "Saturn isn't our future" line was from him, and under him support for the Saturn stopped in 1997 leaving a whole year were Sega wasn't putting out games for the Saturn, but the Dreamcast wasn't out in the US yet. About the only remotely positive thing anyone can say about him is he's responsible for the creation Dreamcast because he pushed for an all new system the second it become obvious he wasn't turning the Saturn around in the US. So even that was done by once more throwing the Saturn under the bus.

>>2917783
Zillion
Govelius
Phantasy Star
Ghostbusters
Wonderboy in Monster land
Alex kid in miracle world
Alex kid in hi tech world
Castle of illusion
Ys
Outrun
Rocky

Master system is highly underrated

>>2917243
>>2917739
4chan is largely American, and the Master System had very little market presence in North America, that's probably why.

>>2918610
We do have a fair bit of Yuropoors spamming the computer general thread with Amstrad and Amiga crud.

And it just occurred to me that any discussion about PC-88/FM Towns/X68000 is always fat white weeb neckbeards. I have never seen a real Japanese person participate in those threads even though a nip now runs this website.

>>2918358
>2d was last gen and outdated and everyone wanted their console to look cutting edge, and that meant 3d and a lot of it. It didn't hurt Sony at all because the PS1 had a ton of 3d games, but with the Saturn 2d was a massive hunk of it's library

That's the thing though; all those 2D games weren't an issue apparently in Japan. They didn't see the stuff as uncool or outdated there. Why was it a problem here?

>>2918629
bullshit, the japs pushed for 3D just as much as the west

>>2918640
This. Everybody was pushing for 3d. Virtua series games were huge for sega, Tekken was kicking ass in arcades, people around the world were frothing at the mouth for home 3d. Arcades were still huge in Japan and sega was the king of arcade games, arcades were starting to die in the mid to late 90's in the states. Sega saturn capitalized on its arcade prowess in Japan 2D and 3d. It was literally lost in translation to the west. Capcom never even ported over some of their great arcade perfect Saturn games because of the western market. This was a big factor in the sales difference along with Saturn's poor marketing.

>>2918793
>Capcom never even ported over some of their great arcade perfect Saturn games because of the western market.

Some of that was because they couldn't. Any of them that needed the 4MB RAM cart was impossible to bring over because Stolar refused to let any of the expansion carts to be brought to the US, I believe the reasoning was no game should ask the customer to have to buy a peripheral to work. But it meant that well fighters were still big the Saturn in the US was unable to leverage how much better versions it had for the big 2d fighter.

>>2918960
The 4 meg cart was just bundled with my copy of X-Men vs Street Fighter

>>2918585
I'm playing through the consoles library right now, minus the BR games.

Action Fighter, Aerial Assault, Air Rescue, Aleste, Astro-Warrior, lotta good stuff so far.

Addams Family is a graphically superior version of the Ocean NES game. Not a great game, but if you are gonna play you might as well make it this version.

>>2916283
Those games aren't even bad.

>>2919039
Yes Sega of Japan did that, but Stolar didn't even want it released that way.

Unfortunately, the Internet was in its infancy in 1995 because today you'd have gaming websites calling for Stolar's head.

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>>2919134
Oh they were

>>2918619
>I have never seen a real Japanese person participate in those threads even though a nip now runs this website

/vr/ is a very small board and we have probably one japanese poster in total,how is that surprising?

>>2919234
>never having flags on /vr/
>this life

3DO, Jaguar/CD, Master System, Vectrex, and N64-DD.

>>2916412
>There's no debating that Colecovision and Intelivision are more powerful than VCS by a wide margin. Everyone knows that and points it out every time i.e. they're not underrated.

Everyone knows that they re more powerful, but they don't get as much love from classic gaming fans.

Not by a wide margin.

>>2916883
>The reason the TG16 failed in the US, whereas the PCE did well in Japan was because NEC didn't know how to market the system in foreign territories. They could gotten a head start over the Genesis by launching the TG16 in 1988, but they wasted that opportunity to give it a redesign it didn't need without actually giving it features it actually needed like RCA jacks and extra controller ports.

And have another system beating on the poor 7800.........

OTOH, it did have a lot of great games.

>>2918960
>I believe the reasoning was no game should ask the customer to have to buy a peripheral to work
At least Sega learned.

>>2919221
>URL
It seems we've lost the author forever.