Most under-rated games ever?

[Gespenst]

Juiced & Juiced2: HIN. Great racing games.

Fatal Interia

[system11]

Final Fight
- The moves are limited due to it being the first Capcom beat-em-up, but it's still one of the best. Why even think about Crime Fighters or Double Dragon 3 when you have this?

This was hugely popular in the day, and revered even now - not sure it really belongs here. Amusingly you /did/ tag a genuinely underrated game there though - Crime Fighters is absolutely fantastic, but you have to avoid the crappy 4 player version.

[EinhanderZwei]

Juiced & Juiced2: HIN. Great racing games.

Funny. These games can be found in every CD/DVD store in my city

[louisg]

Psi-5 Trading Co
Breach 2
Realm of Impossibility
Epyx Destroyer
Speed Buggy / Buggy Boy <-- sadly very overlooked
Powerdrome (the first one from the 80s): Invented the 3d semi-sim futuristic racing genre (like Wipeout), but never gets mention
Test Drive 2 with the California Challenge expansion pack: a very early Need for Speed-like game (think some of the same people might have been involved). This might be the earliest instance of that particular kind of semi-sim racing game.
Polarium
Radmobile - great game but almost always overlooked

[louisg]

This is my problem with all the snobs. Instead of trying to measure the games to a high bar, appreciation and enjoyment of the games as they are make them just fine for me. I tire of people who continue to cry and whine when a console game is not like an arcade game. I have developed angst to arcade games and the snobs who are high up on them because of they attitude…
SMS games for me are very fun and enjoyable and I don't bother to measure them with upgraded versions (Genesis) or as arcade "ports"

I agree. I don't understand the "but it's not exclusive!" argument. To me, answer to the question of whether a console is good is "does it have games you want to play", not "did it make the company a buck because it has exclusives"-- although there really is something to be said for a good first party game. Besides lazy multiplatform attempts, if a game is ported well, I think that particular version might be worth a look. Ports tend to play just a little differently, and occasionally I prefer them to a perfect rendition.

Speaking of which: in the post-MAME era, is the Atari 2600 now underrated?