Pokemon Gen 3 - Underrated or Underappreciated?

[The KKM]

I am feeling the userbase of this forum may actually be much younger than I expected. How come so many people's first contact with the games was Gen 3?

I personally like Gen 3's games and pokémons, with some slight indifference- I had Red, I had Yellow, I had Silver, and then years later I had Soul Silver, so my experience with Gen 3 is mostly by dicking in Emulators.

Didn't like the overworld sprites though, they all seemed like fat over-tanned midgets.