Hey guys this is Austin. There have been a lot of great consoles over the years but here
are my top 5 most underrated. Kicking things off we have the Nintendo GameCube from 2001.
As the fourth home console from Nintendo the GameCube had some big shoes to fill. It had
fairly powerful hardware, so much so that when it came time to make the Wii Nintendo
largely just reused the specs of the GameCube. It had a solid lineup of games as well including
the always great first party Nintendo titles like Luigi’s Mansion along with a fair few
third party games. This was important as one of the major problems with the Wii and Wii
U was the lack of major games like Call of Duty, leading a lot of people to go buy an
Xbox or PlayStation. It also shipped with a fairly controversial controller that’s
aged fairly well, so much so that when Nintendo launched Smash 4 on the Wii U they started
selling the 13 year old GameCube controllers again. As the first Nintendo console to drop
cartridges the GameCube uses mini DVDs which are a lot smaller than a traditional disc
but only had 1.5 gigabytes of capacity compared to up to 8.5 gigs on the Xbox and PS2. And
it was ultimately the PS2 that hurt it the most, selling a massive 155 million consoles
compared to just 22 million for the GameCube. Still though, it holds up as one of the most
underrated consoles ever. Coming in at number four we have the Sega Saturn from 1994. Sega
was all over the place in the 90s. The Genesis put up a serious fight against the Super Nintendo
but then they released a series of weird add ons before moving on with the Sega Saturn.
Even though the Saturn was the worst selling Sega console it actually had a lot going for
it. It featured a design that was ahead of it’s time with dual CPUs ten years before
this became the norm in consoles which was a big deal, it gave the Saturn the power to
play games straight from the arcade like Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter. The dual CPUs gave
it a lot of theoretical power compared to the PlayStation 1 but it was incredibly difficult
for developers to take advantage of. Unfortunately things went wrong almost immediately. Sega
did a surprise launch four months early...without letting some stores know, prompting them to
drop the Saturn or indeed Sega altogether. Oops. Couple this with the lack of big name
titles like Sonic and Sony’s new console outsold the Saturn by a massive ten to one
ratio. The Saturn was a great console but things just didn’t work out for Sega this
time. Next at number three we have the Sony PlayStation Vita from 2011. Nintendo just
launched the 3DS, the followup to the massively successful DS and Sony was coming off the
PSP, the first handheld to really challenge Nintendo ever. It’s rocking a big, high
resolution five inch touchscreen with some of the best physical controls ever put on
a portable and even cool features like a rear touchpad. There’s just one problem: a little
thing called smartphones came along. With most people already having a decent gaming
device in their pockets portable consoles have hit some serious issues. The 3DS has
handled the transition reasonably well thanks to it’s library of excellent first party
titles like Mario, Pokemon and Zelda but the Vita hasn’t been so fortunate. It has some
decent games, especially Japanese titles but in North America the big games like Minecraft
are nearly all available on other platforms. It still has some life in it but Sony has
been focused on things like PS4 Remote Play and PlayStation Now instead of pushing major
titles to the Vita. It’s a shame because the Vita really was awesome but it was the
wrong console at the wrong time. At number two we have the Nintendo Wii U from 2012.
The Wii U...yeah. Like the Saturn Nintendo had just come off the enormously successful
Wii and immediately into big problems. The big draw of the Wii U is the tablet like GamePad
which is legitimately cool but most people thought it was an accessory for the original
Wii rather than an all new console. To add insult to injury where the Wii was priced
significantly lower than the Xbox and PlayStation the Wii U is only slightly cheaper than the
technically superior Xbox One and PS4, mostly due to the expensive GamePad that’s included
with every Wii U. Like the Wii it’s been hamstrung by a lack of third party support,
making the Wii U almost entirely reliant on first party Nintendo games. Thankfully there
have been quite a few terrific titles such as Smash 4 and Splatoon but with an install
base of less than 10 million consoles it’s behind both the Xbox One and PS4 even with
an extra year head start. Nintendo has already started talking about their next console,
the NX which we should find out more about next year. The Wii U is shaping up to have
one of the shortest and most disastrous console runs ever which is a shame because it really
is a good console. Unfortunately that’s just not enough. Coming in at the number one
spot is the infamous Sega Dreamcast from 1998. The Dreamcast had so much potential. Sega
learned from the overly complicated Saturn and designed a clean, easy to work with console
that had a big head start on the other consoles of its generation. It brought a lot of firsts
as well including a built-in modem for online play years before it became popular. With
the VMU it brought an early second screen experience way before the Wii U that doubled
as the memory card for the system and some games were powered by Windows three years
before Microsoft launched the Xbox. It even had several big games like Crazy Taxi and
Sonic Adventure which were a big step up graphically than anything available at the time. The Dreamcast
had a big, successful launch but surprise surprise, Sony pulled the rug out from under
Sega with the hugely popular PlayStation 2. The already weak Sega crumbled and less than
two years after they launched the Dreamcast in the US Sega entirely pulled out of the
console business and the rest is history. If you enjoyed this video and you want to
see more like this definitely be sure to subscribe to the channel and I will catch you in the next one.
There’s a fly in the room right now. Look he’s right there.
Ohh so close! This video will never be done.