Personally, the PS3 is my favourite. The OG backwards compatible one. And the emulation capabilities are still awesome to me.
Whilst I have always been a playstation guy, I find that it all changed with the Xbox 360 vs PS3 war. Xbox 360 had some of the best games and ports. Xbox live was waaaay ahead of Sony for a long time. Basically started the indie scene for consoles.
The Nintendo wii
PS3. It’s probably wholly nostalgia but it was where I grew up playing games, even though the PS4 was well into its heyday by the time I got mine. So many games on there that I adore
The Steam Deck, if it counts. I can play most of the consoles pictured here on it.
If not, gotta go with SNES.
Valid but glhf with your PS3 emulator on steam deck
There are actually a surprising number of PS3 games that run well on Steam Deck. Plenty don’t, of course, notably Infamous 2.
Ngl I love the wii
The SNES will always be my favorite console. It’s got some stinkers in the library, but the best games of the console still frequently rank among the best games ever made
16-bit pixel art is basically the standard that all modern “retro” games use and the SNES was one of the best for it. Neo geo also was amazing for that art style.
I got the SNES Classic just for Donkey Kong Country. The other games were a nice bonus. I have some novelty electronics that I never use anymore but that one gets pulled out on the regular.
Dreamcast, that system was awesome back in the day.
You beat me to it. I loved my Dreamcast. It had so many great innovations like the VMUs, those chonky controllers, high density discs, and some really excellent games. If you picked up a VGA box it could also display on a PC monitor and you got super crisp video output…I played a ton of Phantasy Star Online and this was the ideal setup. Sadly, Sega screwed up their timing on the release since the PS2 was around the same time, if I recall correctly, and I think that is what ended their contention as a serious console maker since I am sure they lost bucket-loads of money.
I finally unloaded my DC about 6 years ago during a yard sale to a console collector…ahh well, good times.
The SNES had the perfect balance of old school arcade simplicity that anyone can pick up and play and modern sophistication for the era. Most of my favorite games of all time are SNES games.
The Dreamcast and Wii are what comes to my mind.
The DC was ahead of its time and has a kick ass library. It also had a sweet gimmick with the VMUs. If SEGA had supported the fuckin’ thing, it could have been even better. Perhaps even gotten further iterations. And if the VMUs came with it, they possibly could have figured out a console/handheld hybrid like the WiiU and Switch before Nintendo.
The Wii is really just for its gimmick and Miis and the music. The motion controls were super well done, especially after Wii Motion Plus. Even tho the only games these days I would go back and play are all the Wii Sports games and maybe uh… Forgot the name, but the samurai FPS game. Just the first one tho. The second one kinda sucked.
Loved my Dreamcast. The multiplayer games were fantastic, and you could pirate games pretty easily. So many good memories of Soul Calibur parties
Crazy Taxi on the DC was just so much fun. Seemed the DC was doomed from the beginning but it definitely had its strengths.
Oh yea, the Wii was bae when it came out. I played Wii bowling so much.
I regret not bringing mine when I moved just because the motion bar got busted. I could have replaced it hella easy and be playing Wii Tennis rn. 😩
It’s on the Switch, now, too but it’s pricey.
What’s funny is you don’t even really need the bar. It was officially called the sensor bar, but it’s a misnomer because the sensors are in the Wiimotes. The bar is just a pair of IR emitters.
Anything that emits light on the infrared spectrum can be used instead. One “hack” is to use two lit candles spaced a bit apart. Around the holidays, you can just use a Christmas tree. Or on a good day, you can even sometimes use this magical thing called the sun (though its position won’t be static).
You could also buy two IR LEDs and stick them in a 3D printed frame for a DIY solution (or just tape them to a stick). It’s definitely the least critical component of a Wii to have to replace.
Good thing now, I think they are cheap and easily moddable.
By the time the Dreamcast came out the writing was already on the wall. The Sega CD and 32x were both expensive and had little support while still looking barely as good as what the SNES could do with the Super FX chip and similar. Then the Saturn was basically forgotten despite being stupid powerful for its day and given the Osborne effect by the CEO of Sega of America. When the Dreamcast came out mid-cycle in 1998 nobody who had bought a PlayStation or N64 in the previous couple of years was in the market for a new machine and a lot of Sega fans weren’t willing to jump in before seeing how serious Sega was. Sega on the other hand was on the heels of low sales and relative failure and so keen to wait for the Dreamcast to be a hit. That chicken and egg paradox was the death knell. They also weren’t helped by Microsoft who had been their partner on the Dreamcast and who basically threw them under the bus to develop the Xbox based on what they learned (not for the first time, MS also did the same thing to IBM by developing Windows while working on OS/2 with IBM). This is why ‘The Duke’ controller looked so much like a Dreamcast controller and why, according to some reports, the Xbox could play Dreamcast games earlier in its development.
TL;DR Sega killed the Dreamcast before it even came out and Microsoft happily looted the corpse.
Probably either the NES or the SNES. The NES felt the most “magical” at the time. Before the NES, consoles had games that were general clunky and not particularly fun and controllers that were all over the place. There was a good reason that the NES revived the console industry. The SNES just happens to be the home of many of my favorite games of all time. If we’re going newer, then I suppose the PS1 or PS3 (before Sony ruined it) would be my choices.
The ones that don’t connect to the goddamn internet. I also still use my ipod. Tracking sucks.
It would be Nintendo 64 for me, but, that’s also like the last gaming console I ever bought. Played with the Wii for a bit since I lived with a friend who had one but… nothing since then. So maybe I should say my PC instead? ah, but that’s not an exclusive gaming console.
OK, yeah, N64 it is. I just beat Snowboard Kids 2 for the first time, unlocking all the boards. t’was dope.
Gamecube probably holds the most special place in my heart. More for the games that released for it than for the console itself.
I love the design of the console. It’s fun, which was miles away from the testosterone teenage boy styling of the ps2 ( no shade still a good design)
But. The controllers weren’t the most comfortable.
It was definitely the most portable console. Made it very easy to just throw it in a backpack and bring to friends’ places for Smash Bros nights.
Came here to say this. N64’s a close second, but the re-releases of N64 games on the Gamecube helped a lot with that too.
Yeah, I think Gamecube would win for me if just for all the time spent playing Smash Bros in college.
Honestly, taking off my nostalgia goggles here, I’m gonna say the Switch. Handheld and TV usage in one device was amazing. It’s got its problems, yeah, and Nintendo is not really an admirable company, but it was nice.
With my nostalgia goggles on, PS2, no question. Because it was a PS2 AND a PS1. Never played PS3, barely played 360. By that time I was basically a full PC gamer. My original one broke (don’t remember how), so I got the slim one. it’s crazy durable, I think because it has a lot less moving parts. I tried to do some hot swap disk stuff with it, so I had to use clamps to hold it shut lol, but it still worked. Never could get the disk swap to work.
If we include handhelds, then I think it’s the Gameboy Advance SP. Rechargeable and backlit was a crazy innovation. (Yes yes, I know in Japan there was a version of a Gameboy that was backlit.)
The OG Gameboy pocket I had was shit. It was my first gaming thing ever though. So hard to see. Gameboy color was fine. Just not really as amazing as Advance. GBA loses to SP though. As for DS, I don’t know, I never had a beef with it, but I feel like the jump from color to advance wasn’t quite as big to me as advance to DS. Plus, the DS was sort of the beginning of Nintendo’s weird gimmick era. I’d call the Wii U the end. So many motion controls…
I had a PS4, but didn’t play too much on it. Basically just Ratchet, God of War 2018 and Ragnarok, and Death Stranding. It didn’t feel any better than a computer to me. At least the Switch is unique in that it can be portable.
Yeah, nostalgia is a big thing here. Past experiences that were amazing just don’t hold up compared to modern tech. In most cases anyway, some stuff is fairly timeless.
Playstation 1
Over 4000 games, many of which are weirdly experimental because “how to make 3D games” wasn’t codified yet, and CDs gave developers about 200 times more space than they had on the biggest cartridges from the previous gen - not to mention the lower cost of production.
Also, most of the soundtracks are absolute bangers.
Edit: another point - growing up poor, I still got to experience a lot of the PS1’s library because of the abundance of demo discs.
PS1 was truly an amazing console
