Personally, the PS3 is my favourite. The OG backwards compatible one. And the emulation capabilities are still awesome to me.
The Nintendo wii
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.
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 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.
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
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.
Crazy Taxi on the DC was just so much fun. Seemed the DC was doomed from the beginning but it definitely had its strengths.
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.
Yeah, I think Gamecube would win for me if just for all the time spent playing Smash Bros in college.
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.
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
Playstation 2
PS2. Due to it’s game library.
N64 for me partially nostalgia but I still love the cartridges even though i know they are sub optimal and the controller and the games in general are still top tier to me.
My first console was a sega mega drive. My favourite was the PlayStation 2
I have to give it to the Nintendo DS. Absolutely incredible library, much of it too unique to play anywhere else.
A third of my vote for 3DS is just because of DS games, really. Almost cheating, but my favourites are the 3DS ones anyway.
My 3DS is easily the best console I have ever used. I do not even care about the 3D part, but it has all the DS games, and bigger screens, yet it is still small enough to be held easily. 10/10, I can also play ocarina of time, and original pokemons with it.
I was going to say this. Still way underestimated because of a lot of shovelware kids stuff in stores (depending on location). It’s not close to being my first or early device either (that was TI 99/4A).
The OG Xbox was so good.
Modding it was surprisingly easy, all you needed was a memory card (or a DIY adapter for plugging in a USB drive into a controller port) and a copy of Splinter Cell.
Not only would this allow you to rip games and play them directly from your hard drive, but it also opened up the world of emulators and homebrew apps & games. Shoutout to the xbins IRC channel.
XBMC was amazing, it allowed me to watch all my legally obtained media without having to burn DVDs. Crazy to think that would eventually lead to Plex, which I still use to this day.
I also played around with Damn Small Linux on the Xbox, which is what got me interested in Linux in the first place.
Now that I think about it, tinkering around with that console ultimately led to my love of homelabbing and Linux - I now run 9 servers in my utility room, and only use Linux on all my machines.
Thanks Microslop!
PC
Nintendo DS
That era was so good that Nintendo didn’t even know what they had until they screwed it up and lost to modern smartphones.
Other than PC, the SNES probably had my most favorite games, but the breadth of the library on the DS was fantastic. Once I got an R4 card and was able to stop carrying a dozen carts around, I was on it all the time.
