The only one I ever actually owned myself as a child was a Game Boy (the original grey brick model). Some of my favourite games for it were Wario Land and Zelda: Link's Awakening.
I had friends with sega master systems and super nintendo.
My brother did get a nintendo 64 which I played a fair bit of. I mainly played Zelda: Ocarina of Time on that. He later traded it for an xbox.

In the last few years I've collected a SNES, master system, sega mega drive, N64 and Playstation.

I personally think the SNES is my favourite; certainly its the one I spend the most time playing. It's just got such a huge variety of quality games - final fantasy, secret of mana, secret of evermore, Earthbound, Terranigma, the Mario games, Donkey Kong Country, Super Metroid, Zelda: link to the Past, Megaman X, Super Castlevania 4, the list goes on...

The only thing I seem to play on my Sega systems is the Sonic series and Wonder Boy. (I personally think Sonic games are a bit better than the Mario games).

I think the playstation is pretty overrated. The early 3d graphics are fugly, 2D games around the same time are much better. CD load times can get annoying. Final Fantasy 7 isn't really that good, I'd rather play one of the SNES FF titles.

I own or owned all consoles made by SEGA, nintendo, MS, NEC, sony and ATARI.
But deep inside, i'm a sega boy.
I still have several megadrives, saturns and dreamcasts.
My favourite would be the megadrive since I grew with it, then the saturn (japanses version) for all the shoot em ups and 2D fighters.

DonutKing wrote:

I think the playstation is pretty overrated. The early 3d graphics are fugly, 2D games around the same time are much better. CD load times can get annoying. Final Fantasy 7 isn't really that good, I'd rather play one of the SNES FF titles.

That's why I made this thread! 🤣 I disagree, the PS is my favorite console, although I'm of course biased since I got it at age 6.

For me, it bridges the 16-bit and the 32-bit eras really nicely. The 2D games seem to have flown past everyone's radar back then, but just to name a very few, stuff like CV: SotN, Saga Frontier 2 and Suikoden is pure art IMO. Generally it is more than just competitive with SNES in terms of RPGs.

As for 3D games, I agree that some early ones aren't exactly the most aesthetically pleasing, but still blow anything contemporary out of the water for 1994 hardware. Even some early Voodoo1 games. They managed to improve them pretty well over time too, if you look at something like Wipeout 3 for example. There is also a Quake II port which they somehow managed to cram into the system's 2 megs of RAM. And it looks great.

A very close second for me is the Gamecube, and for me the most underrated console ever. Its biggest problem was of course the kiddy image, which had a lot to do with its looks too, but the hardware was capable of far more than the PS2. Easily seen by comparing RE4 on both consoles.

The Sega Mega Drive (Genesis), Sega Saturn and Neo Geo are at the top of my list 😀. I pretty much grew up with the NES, Game Boy, Master System, Game Gear, Atari Lynx, Snes and Mega Drive (these are consoles that me and friends at school had between us).

PowerPie5000 wrote:

The Sega Mega Drive (Genesis), Sega Saturn and Neo Geo are at the top of my list 😀.

Saturn seems to get named pretty often in terms of underrated consoles. I think the 3D graphics are most of the time inferior to the PS, it also couldn't do transparency very well. The biggest problem with it perhaps is the fact that a lot of good games for it were only released in Japan since the system had its longest shelf life there.

I definitely want to play Panzer Dragoon though 😁

I really like them all (except some horrible ones like the 3DO, jaguar, virtua boy...) started with a classic grey gameboy too 🤣
My newly found love for the past 5 months is the Famicom... 8bit awesomeness ! have spent much time playing old classics and building repros 😁

keropi wrote:

I really like them all (except some horrible ones like the 3DO, jaguar, virtua boy...) started with a classic grey gameboy too 🤣
My newly found love for the past 5 months is the Famicom... 8bit awesomeness ! have spent much time playing old classics and building repros 😁

Yeah, I also like pretty much all of them. There's some great games on every platform 😀 I also started with the Gameboy, got it when I was 5 with Zelda: Link's Awakening and Super Mario Land 2, good times...

d1stortion wrote:

PowerPie5000 wrote:

The Sega Mega Drive (Genesis), Sega Saturn and Neo Geo are at the top of my list 😀.

Saturn seems to get named pretty often in terms of underrated consoles. I think the 3D graphics are most of the time inferior to the PS, it also couldn't do transparency very well. The biggest problem with it perhaps is the fact that a lot of good games for it were only released in Japan since the system had its longest shelf life there.

The Saturn was technically superior, but it was also difficult to develop for. It definitely had the advantage over the PS1 when it came to games using 2D animation 😀.

The 3DO, Jaguar and Philips CD-i were pretty crap imo.

Yeah a technically superior console doesn't help much if no one is going to understand it properly. 😀 It was also decidedly more expensive than the PS. But things like its Netlink capabilities and dual cartridge/CD design are definitely noteworthy...

d1stortion wrote:

Yeah a technically superior console doesn't help much if no one is going to understand it properly. 😀 It was also decidedly more expensive than the PS. But things like its Netlink capabilities and dual cartridge/CD design are definitely noteworthy...

The cartridge slot was only used for memory cards, RAM expansions, multi region carts and Action Replay carts.... All games used the CD drive (i remember people thinking it would work with Mega Drive games 🤣) .

I know, but the RAM expansions made some arcade-perfect beat 'em up ports possible.

I have very fond memories of our Sega Master System; Double Dragon, Sonic, Wonderboy, etc. But once our 486 arrived it just gathered dust. I have a SMS stored away in the shed with a Sony CRT telly for a rainy day.

I owned a Playstation 1 but never really got into any of the games I owned, and the games were so expensive that I didn't buy many.

d1stortion wrote:

Yeah a technically superior console doesn't help much if no one is going to understand it properly.

<cough> PS3 <cough>

😉

I've had a few consoles since i was a kid. My parents gave me my first one, an Atari 2600 clone. After that i saved and bought what i could.

My favorite is the Dreamcast. It was really something when it came out. I still play it sometimes. And when i have guests i use my 2 arcade sticks and we play CAPCOM VS SNK Millennium Fight! 😁 I still have around 80/90 original games for it... Plus a bunch of other related stuff, like VGA box, light gun, VMUs, third party gamepads, fishing rod, etc..

For nostalgia, the original Gameboy and Game Gear (i loved Shinobi) bring very sweet memories.

We didn't have any consoles in our house until I was around 13, and then it was just a GBA. So my perspective on a lot of this comes more recently than most. But my favorite console of all time would have to be the SNES. To me, it strikes the perfect balance of classic-style gaming and still holding up today....ness? Graphically it was just about the epitome of 2D sprite-based systems (we got better effects with 2D games on the following generations of course, but in general SNES graphics still look gorgeous today), and I personally feel that the SNES produced some of the most beautiful game music of all time. The games on it still had that classic feel, but often without that unforgiving NES hardness that makes some NES games a chore to play today. Many of the series that made appearances on the SNES truly began to reach their potential on the system (Super Metroid and ALTTP being good examples). I won't bother listing the massive library of great games on the system, but I will say that A Link to the Past and Super Mario World are in my top 5 favorite console games of all time (ALTTP is my favorite game, period, of all time).

I'll add that for 3D systems, the N64 would probably be my favorite. I never had one myself growing up, but my cousins did, and the memories of playing Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart 64, Star Wars Ep. 1 Racer, Mario Party, and 1080 Snowboarding with them are some of my best gaming memories. Now that I have one, Ocarina is of course added to those memories. Still a pretty ugly system graphically by today's standards, but I feel that the antialiased, smooth textures hold up a bit better than the jagged textures on the PS1.

I remember drooling over N64's Zelda and Turok 2 back in the day, but in retrospect I'm glad that I had a PS instead. Way bigger library of games, the N64 is far more limited in that respect... and the memory cards are flash based, so they don't simply die over time like N64 SRAM batteries do, very important 😀 and finally, Crash Team Racing wins over Mario Kart 64 in every respect hands down 😁

d1stortion wrote:

Crash Team Racing wins over Mario Kart 64 in every respect hands down 😁

*slap* 🤣

the memory cards are flash based, so they don't simply die over time like N64 SRAM batteries do, very important

Most of the N64 carts that allow saving without a memory card/controller pack have flash based memory, not battery-backed SRAM.
source: http://n64.icequake.net/mirror/www.elitendo.c … _save_list.html

I know that list. There are AAA titles such as OOT, SSB and F-Zero X with SRAM, and most games use the dreaded Controller Pak unfortunately 🙁