I have 2 picks:
PES (yeah it was big in Latin America and Asia but never truly beat FIFA popularity worldwide except in the early 2000s), if I had to pick a specific version, is either PES 2010 or 2013, 2016 was also great.
FIFA street 1: Almost 2 decades later and still think it’s the best FIFA game ever, not even the street sequels were able to surpass it. FIFA 11 and 13 were good too but those aren’t underrated in any way.
Edit: wow y’all old lol
1080 Snowboarding on Nintendo 64. I used to spend all my time on this game whilst everyone else was playing the tony hawk games.
Forceball from SWTOR
Cyberball. Football, but with robots.
I liked Basewars on the NES. Wiki says it got a B- but I liked the fighting and the fact that you could blow up the robots.
The arcade version of Cyberball has very clean gameplay with a wry sense of humour.
Side-by-side play is excellent on a Cyberball 2072 cabinet.
The spiritual predecessor, 10 Yard Fight, is pretty fun too(shake joystick to break tackles)
I love Ten Yard Fight. It’s like the dev team in Japan had one guy who “totally knows American football!” and he explained it to the rest of them while they were all out drinking, and then the next day they were provided with 5 minutes of footage from the Burt Reynolds version of The Longest Yard.
But all in the best way.
Well FM still goes unnoticed by anyone but the nerds like me
Does Supergiant Games’ Pyre count?
Ha, I came here to post Pyre, and I love no two people have the same way to describe it.
My favorite is Darren’s “Wizard Basketball Plus Reading”.
I call it by two names, depending on how cheeky I’m feeling that day
Cheeky one is “hashtag-Basketball4Freedom”
Non-cheeky one is “one of three video game stories that made me legitimately cry, like straight up bawling – With a fantastical version of NBA Jam bolted on the side”
NFL Blitz 2000!
With a crap ton of random cheats enabled, of course. Really this game is the only good thing to come out of football or the NFL.
It’s so good it oughta be illegal!
NHL hitz with bobble head mode.
NES - Blades of Steel
Nhl would benefit from only losers get a penalty for fights
Maybe it’s underrated these days because I imagine almost no one would be playing it these days but back in the actual days of the NES, Blades of Steel was beloved, at least here in Canada.
That was just called Ice Hockey. That’s the one I played most on NES.
On the NES, I always enjoyed Base Wars. It was baseball, except not boring. Instead of a player being “out” when you got the ball to the base ahead of him, you fought for the base.
There’s so much I love about this game. I’m not a baseball game fan in general but I keep coming back to Base Wars. The fights triggered by a runner sliding into a base as the ball is arriving was always fun. The velocity of the ball when you hit a homerun was awesome. Great pick.
Wii Sports
I think I’ve never played so much of a mini game collection that’s meant to teach you controls. Maybe Solitaire comes close. The Tennis matches we had were legendary.
People say Wii Sports is underrated? Everyone I know has played Wii Sports even all of my non-gamer friends.
I know a few people that never bought any other games for their Wii.
Rally’s a sport, nobody mentioned DiRT Rally 2?
One of the best sims ever
That’s a racing game
I really liked the fight Night boxing games it’s a shame EA ditched them I genuinely think they were the most fun games they made.
I loved PES, had it for ps2. Never got to use the network play though
Mario Hoops 3-on-3 took actual skill to be good enough just to beat the game and unlock the really cool square enix characters.
Probably the most precision required out of a stylus based game, but really fun mechanics and multiplayer.
I feel like it was a smash hit for it’s time though.
It’s never talked about these days but yeah, back in the day it was a pretty well known hit. I don’t know why but almost nothing makes me laugh harder than playing the BMX event on the Atari Lynx version and just making this poor bastard on the bike eat shit in the worst ways.
Everyone I knew during the 16bit era had a version of California Games.
