As long as we’re talking about early home computers, a home computer that actually took game cartridges was the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A.
The TI-99 was absolutely fucking awesome. It wasn’t cheap to make and a price war with Commodore killed them both, but holy shit did the TI rock. All TI-99 owners knew the greatness that were “Parsec” and “Tunnels of Doom.” Tunnels of Doom was years ahead of its time.
what no love for hunt the wumpus? lol, i learned how to play that game by trial and error … I had no instructions for the first 3 months I had it and only found out how to shoot the arrow by accident … and the TI version of Blasto was a way better version of the tank part of combat
I loved blowing up my brother with the mines lol But the ti/4a c64 and vic 20 made me realize I would not have a career in computer programming … i hated typing in the games … even ones I made up my self …
although sega of America was the most underrated game company in the 80s and 90s for customer service … especially if you wanted hints codes walkthroughs etc … you just called them and they sent them to you for free and
sometimes if they were aware of you being a big fan let you get around the long-distance calling charges to their hint line, by giving you the extension number to switch from the 1800 service line to the hint line saving you hundreds of dollars in long-distance calling fees , heck they didn’t care if it lost them money either
When I had my Saturn the memory died and since it was out of warranty it would have cost me 30 bucks for shipping to san Francisco 50 bucks for them to look at it and another 20 or 30 for parts and repair and I made the remark well id have to call back because I didn’t have that much money that late in the month but after the first would be ok because my SSI check would be in …
he paused for 30 seconds and said let me call you back he apparently walked outside called me on his car phone and told me he was going to save me a ton of money he gave me the battery number and said radio shack had dozens of them …
well come to find out the memory was just a big watch type of battery that you pushed up on this little door I guess on the side hit the tiny red button and the holder with the battery popped out and radio shack sold said battery to me for 7.95 and I replaced it in 30 seconds ht also helped I lived 5 minutes from RS lol
before that, they helped me get a month’s free game rental at what was known as “major video” (a medium video store chain that would get swallowed up by blockbuster)
See phantasy star 2 was so obtuse in the beginning that sega packed a “use as a last resort hint book” with the game … well theirs usually ended up disappearing or used til they fell apart etc and to get a new one thru their distributor was like 12.95. each … I called sega to see if I could buy one on my own to keep around … and they sent me two free of charge
I mentioned I had two of them in the store and they offered me 30 bucks in-store credit for both of them and I accepted…So I was a sega fan for years and years
There’s a number of them. The Commodore VIC-20 and C64 also took them (the only worthwhile games on the VIC-20 were on cartridge, as an unexpanded VIC-20 only had like 3.5K of RAM after starting up, while a cartridge had, I believe, 20K of ROM available.) Despite its limitations, the VIC-20 had a surprisingly good version of both Donkey Kong and Omega Race.
The C64 was mostly disk/tape-based, but it had cartridges available. The Atari 400/800s had something like 300 cartridges available as well. TRS-80 also had some on cartridge but, like the C64, was more disk/tape based for the good stuff.
I don’t know… the SNES never seemed to take off, but the Sega Genesis definitely did.
I kind of feel like “underrated” needs better definition. I think the Sega Dreamcast was highly regarded, but just didn’t sell well. Same thing for the SNES.
I’m having a hard time thinking of a console that wasn’t well reviewed, but that still was a great game platform. About the only thing I can think of is the c64, and mostly because it was THE hardcore gamer machine of the mid-late 1980s, even though it wasn’t really popularly considered much of a gaming platform except within the serious gaming community, and the NES had the popular crown.
In my neighborhood, everyone had SNES, nobody had Genesis. OK, that’s an exaggeration, but it was literally like 90-10 in my immediate sphere. But looking at the North American sales figures, it seems Genesis did have an edge, but not an overwhelming one. By the time I graduated high school (1993), Genesis had 13.5M in sales in North America, SNES 11.3M. Worldwide, though, the SNES is ahead.
Huh, I don’t remember that. It’s been a very long time, of course.
Regionally the Genesis/Megadrive sold well in UK and Europe and the SNES did not, possibly due to licensing and import, I remember the SNES being much harder to get over here.
I’d say both the Gamecube and N64 were underrated at the time, with people writing off Nintendo at the time, lack of third party, yet both machines had all time classics of them, and were completely unlike anything else at the time. So when I was playing PC games, I had no need for Xbox or Playstation, but the Nintendo ones offered a different experience. I, however, am talking of the Gamecube here, I realise Goldeneye and Perfect Dark were much more PC like games on the N64.
However, I loved a bunch of N64 games too.
I don’t really think any consoles are underrated. People have a pretty good handle on everything. Maybe the original Xbox doesn’t get enough credit for inventing the modern console experience, but that’s kind of a dubious argument since they just copied it all from where the PC space had been for years and the Xbox 360 gets plenty of credit for perfecting it.
if I had to pick one, it’d be the NeoGeo that tried to bring an arcade-quality experience to the home. The problem was that experience cost a ton of money and no one was going to spend $200 on a game in the 90s. By the time the technology got cheap enough to work, the arcade scene was long dead and no one wanted to play that type of game any longer.
It’s a good thing Nintendomade stuff like the Gamecube, though. Its sales were disappointing, but it was a part of the natural progression to the Wii, which was a revolutionary step forward in gaming and a huge success, Wii U, and then the Switch, which has been a sensational commercial success and is just indescribably awesome.
They weren’t super popular – from what I can see, about 400-500 cartridges were made for the system. The C64’s game library is something like 10K+. I know I had a lot of VIC-20 carts, but I don’t think I had anything for my (C64 compatible) 128. It was all about disks and pirating at that point, and a cartridge didn’t really have much advantage (and many disadvantages) over disk-based games, except for load times.
Here is a small list of the Commodore 64 cartridge games:
Commodore 64 Cartridge Games List – The Complete Collection – retrotechlab.com