Best consoles of the generations?

[Kryton]

Madhair's Spectrum posts has reminded me we've not had an argument about the best consoles (for a while).

On top of that, this is a great article about the differences between the C64 and the Spectrum and how both machines helped to define genres, either because the hardware was present and pioneering developers embraced it all (C64) or simply because the limitations of the Spectrum created ingenuity from necessity.

Good article - https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-face-off-zx-spectrum-vs-commodore-64

Those were simpler days.

But what about Nintendo and Sega? Microsoft and Sony? Nintendo dominated the handheld market, SEGA had better brands (at least until RARE popped up again during the N64 days). Then Sony appeared. Microsoft couldn't let that lie.

I personally loved Commodore (C64 and Amiga) back when my mates were playing Nintendos and early Sega stuff. Then I got a SNES and preferred it over my mates Megadrive. But I always thought of the Megadrive being more mysterious and for some reason the chip tunes were catchier (besides Mario and Donkey Kong country on the SNES). But the SNES graphics looked slicker.
I was truly hyped for the CD32 (and then left annoyed when my mate got a PS1). The CD32 was bizarre, it didn't know what it was.

But the PS1 (for me) was mind blowing. Back before we ever smoked a joint, or drank booze we were playing the arse end of the SNES days. Then this came along. Some of my best early teenage years were playing PS1 games with my best mates,

After that it was PS2, A fleeting Dreamcast, the XBOX and the Gamecube. By this point - They were all good, but the market began to change and video games became serious.

What were you favourites? Sorry for rambling.

[magval]

I have immensely strong defensive feelings for the Gamecube because of the look of the console, the feel of the controller, and Wind Waker and Resident Evil remake and 4, but that's not enough to decide the victory. PS2 that generation, PS3 ever. PS3 has the most games that I still think about, and whose PS4 sequels haven't been as good.

Prefer Mega Drive from the early 90s consoles for the sound.

[bgmnts]

Atari 2600 is the daddy right?

Amstrad GX4000 for me when I was a child.

Sega MegaDrive

Playstation

Playstation 2

Xbox 360

Xbox One?

[El Unicornio, mang]

I'd put NES between Atari 2600 and Megadrive

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I reckon the PS2 is probably the oldest console where 99% of the games wouldn't seem terribly disappointing now. Twenty years old it is - older now than the NES was at the time.

[Bazooka]

Of the post SNES and Megadrive era

It's too hard to say, Gamcube just felt lovely, it operated like a lovely lady, it even had a handle so you could brain a burglar with it. Wind Waker, Residents evils, Mario Sunshine, Killer 7 etc yum yum.

PS1 had a massive catalogue of variation.

N64 had some behemoth games, OOT alone gives it a trillion karma points, lovely controller for shooters and well everything. But N64 lacked RPGs.

Dreamcast, Phantasy Star Online and Quake 3 online, 2p a minute mate. Grandia 2, Skies of Aradia, Shenmues fuck, soo good.

PS2: Again a huge library of games offering such variety. Silent Hill 2,FF, MGS 2 &3, , but the thing broke down for many people, never happens with a Ninty machine.

Wii: Behind the gimmick was a plethora of really good games that the masses ignored Xenoblades and The Last Story to name a few.

Wii U: Great first party support but laughable third party, controller battery was shot.

GBA/DS I'll lump together, some fucking fantastic jrpgs, great Mario and Zelda games (yes spirit tracks), great Castlevanias.

3DS just brilliant, excellent first party and third party support,but all the best games are from the Japanese, little amazing western support.

PSP whilst it was mainly full of ps2 ports it had some brilliant exclusives such as God of War Acenssion.  It introduced me to Monster Hunter which dominated my days of slacking in Uni. Felt like it was going to collapse but I loved her. Never owned a ps vita, but I will one day.

PS3 again,variation on top of variation. No gimmicks just lots of fun games over all the genres. 

Xbox (never opened the aiblings) real leap in graphics, playing Halo for the first time was unforgettable, yes the controller was shit, but as with all shits you get used to it. Morrowind on a console, sucked my life away.

PS4: It's lovely, I have no complaints, other than next generation download storage and update sizes.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I reckon the PS2 is probably the oldest console where 99% of the games wouldn't seem terribly disappointing now. Twenty years old it is - older now than the NES was at the time.

Games on Nintendo platforms seem to age much better than their rivals. I think it's the simple design and bright colours.

[peanutbutter]

From my game playing lifetime:

Super Nintendo: hardly played either of them, and Europe got a really fucking raw deal with releases compared to other regions, but even with that in mind I _never_ understood why some kids thought mega drive was better

PS1: combo of quantity of games and the extremely limited aesthetic of the games dating in a way I find a lot neater than the N64. Especially late era stuff where they're pushing the machine an insane degree from where it was in 1995, it's just cool to see that evolution

PS2: again, a huge part of this is quantity of games available. For this generation I kinda feel like the Gamecube's aesthetics have aged better (Dreamcast too) but PS2 had so fucking much.

PS3: Wii had lotsa neat games but the gimmickery and dated-on-release aesthetics make it hard to consider, PS3 wins outta the other two just because it had exclusives I actually gave a shit about



Gameboy: obvs

GBA SP: was there even anything else? Probably the console I enjoyed most during its lifetime of any tbh, seemed like there was always a bunch of new releases I'd fucking love and the portable experience had finally gotten to a point where it didn't feel like a gigantic step down.

PSP: piracy and homebrew and feeling like it was utterly of the future. So much of the DS's catalogue, whilst pretty great, just doesn't hold up to the sheer mileage I got out of this one and how amazing the good games felt (Lumines alone probably wins out over the DS for me tbh).

3DS: over smartphones and Vita, basically the lone representative of what portable games could be in an era where smartphones seemed hell bent on killing the medium.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

N64 ... lovely controller

Madness!

[Marner and Me]

My console history is
GB Colour with Pokemon Red, that and Bomber Man were the only games to go in that

PS2 is up next, saved up all my paper round money to buy that and GTA 3 in a deal from Dixons for the Golden Jubilee, took me 3 more weeks to get a memory card for it. Played that PS2 to literal death, had to get a 2nd one. Loads of games I loved on that all three GTAs, Need for Speed Underground 2, Bully, Freedom Fighters, Black, Call of Duty, and a couple of FIFAs. I only wish I'd brought The Getaway.

PSP Didn't really use it tbh. I don't even know where it went.

PS3 GTA 4, NHL11-14 minus 13, Assassin Creeds were great at the time! Loved the first Red Dead, what a game that truly was. LA Noire I sadly didn't finish, not sure if I'd try it again. Then to cap it off, GTA 5.

PS4 Had to get GTA, my love affair for Assassins Creed wained, NHL still dominated, until I get PES 20 which I am glued too! The Witcher and Red Dead 2 aswell!

For me, it is a choice between PS2 and Gameboy Colour. As I loved that Poke Red game and the PS2 with GTA VC and SA opened up music that I still listen to this day.

[Bazooka]

Madness!

I even had a knock off one where you could change the thumb top bit of the analogue stick to square or triangle shapes, never used it.

[Huxleys Babkins]

NES - I had a Master System and whilst it had much nicer graphics and all those great Sega exclusives, the NES has much better sound and, of course, so many more third party games. Want Konami and Capcom games on your Master System? Get fucked.

SNES/Mega Drive - A draw. For everything the SNES did better, the Mega Drive was just as strong in another area. The SNES had better graphics, but the MD had better sound, etc. At this point all the third parties were on board with Sega and for every Zelda and Metroid, Sega had a Streets of Rage and Shinobi up their sleeve. A brilliant time to be had whichever one you owned.

PlayStation - I had an N64 and whilst there was nothing on the PlayStation that could touch Nintendo and Rare's output at the time, just the sheer weight of great games across multiple genres on the PSone wins out for me. You'd get more great fighters, racers, sports games and RPGs released in a six month period on the PSX than you would in the entire lifetime of the N64. These genre blind spots would become a feature of all Nintendo consoles going forward as third parties steered clear.

Xbox - OK, so the PS2 was probably the best console when purchased in stock form based on the strength of the library, but most of the big hitters came to Xbox eventually. And if you modded that Xbox? Slap a big hard drive in and install all your games. Or download them like a filthy pirate and upload the ISO's over FTP. Oh, and why not put all your movies and music on it too and play them through Xbox Media Centre? Plus emulators. It was the future, 15 years early.

Xbox 360 - Honestly not much between this and the PS3. Xbox 360 had better image quality due to better image processing and an onboard upscaler. PS3 games seemed to take forever to install and update too, so the Xbox just won out for me. The Dual Shock design was long past it's best too and the less said about the lack of rumble at launch, the better. Good exclusives on both means there wasn't really a bad choice out of these two.

PSP/DS - Can't choose between them as they compliment each other so well. Buy both.

Wii - The PS3/Xbox 360 gen outlier and definitely worth a mention. The small size meant you could pop it on your shelf next to your main console and enjoy the best of both worlds. A massive library of silly party stuff all the way up to genuine masterpieces means it has something for everyone, even if the standard def output spoils things because it wasn't 2002 any more.  The only console you can get out with your family at Christmas and have everyone genuinely enjoying themselves. And if you hack it and plug in an external hard drive, it will do pretty much everything an Xbox can do.

PS4 - Again, not much in it between this and an Xbox One but it probably has a slightly better library. Lack of backward compatibility is the only thing letting it down, really. Again, you can't go wrong with either. I fucked both of them off and played PC games with an Xbox One controller instead.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The Dual Shock design was long past it's best too and the less said about the lack of rumble at launch, the better.

I see that new DualSense controller is another small step towards Sony weaning their change-resistant fanbase off the cruddy and completely out of date controller shape and conceding it might not have been the best ergonomic solution after all.

[QDRPHNC]

3rd Gen: Sega Master System
4th Gen: Super Nintendo
5th Gen: Playstation
6th Gen: Playstation 2
7th Gen: Playstation 3
8th Gen: Xbox One X

[Sebastian Cobb]

I see that new DualSense controller is another small step towards Sony weaning their change-resistant fanbase off the cruddy and completely out of date controller shape and conceding it might not have been the best ergonomic solution after all.

Funnily enough I just saw that.

I've got long bony fingers and have double jointed thumbs and have always found playstation controllers a pain 'cos of where I have to contort my left thumb.

Gamecube controller was the vanguard.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Gamecube controller was an interesting attempt to innovate but do so entirely in the prism of someone else's concept. Which is pretty much what this new PS controller is.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yeah but it was, and this is quite important I think, really comfortable to use.

I'm not sure people can add that much claim to the design really. The original PSX controller isn't that different to a snes controller. The xbox/gamecube just put the left stick where your thumb actually is.

[Mister Six]

Spectrum over Commodore 64
I was probably too young to really measure up the pros and cons, but as ugly as colour clash was, I preferred the more detailed and bright Speccy graphics to the blocky grey and brown Lego blocks of the C64. The games also seemed more interesting and creative too (although Creatures was ace). Wasn't there some kind of Atari thing with a cartridge slot too? Or was that 16-bit?

Amiga over Atari ST
No real competition here, from a game perspective - the Amiga had more of them. Hardware-wise they seemed... the same?

NES over Master System
Both consoles looked and (mostly) played like dogshit, but Super Mario Bros is still a peak in game design, sound design and pure gameplay. The only 8-bit console game I can still bear to touch (other than Bubble Bobble, but I don't know if that counts as a console game).

SNES over Mega Drive/Genesis
MD wins in terms of emotional attachment as that's what most of my friends had, but SNES was obviously better technologically and in terms of key games.

PlayStation over N64 and Saturn and Atari Jaguar
Soz, Goldeneye and Mario 64, but the PS1 had more - and more influential - games, even if its graphics look like shit in retrospect. Saturn I never played, much like everyone else in the world. Jaguar I saw once in a computer shop, then forgot all about until now.

PlayStation 2 over Dreamcast and GameCube
Same thing, but with DVD support. Shame, because the competitors were both ace. This is probably the single greatest generation of modern gaming, even if the result was the industry veering away from imaginative and unusual designs and functionality, and towards the dull middle ground. DC and GC have my heart, but they only had a couple of absolute bangers each, and as much as I loved Eternal Darkness and Power Stone, Sony has to take this one.

Xbox 360 over PS3 and Wii
No particular passion here - 360 was just the one I ended up getting, for reasons I can't recall. Something about Sony's early launch being shit or overpriced or something? Indistinguishable from PS3 in every respect, to my eyes. Wii was a charming effort, but once you got over the gimmick there wasn't much to it.

Switch over PS4 and XBone
I've just got a lot more enjoyment out of the Switch and its plethora of really great unique games (Mario Odyssey, Smash Bros, Animal Crossing, Zelda) this past year than I have out of my PS4 in the past five years. Really, I think Prey is the only PS4 game that has felt genuinely transcendental to me. Picked PS4 over the XBone purely because the revised Xbox controllers had horrible shoulder buttons that required me to dislocate my fingers to use them properly.

[Zetetic]

Xbox 360 controllers strike me as a beautiful bit of design. Surprisingly enjoyable to take apart to clean - they're practically impossible to put back together wrong, which is very pleasing.

[nw83]

Then I got a SNES and preferred it over my mates Megadrive. But I always thought of the Megadrive being more mysterious and for some reason the chip tunes were catchier (besides Mario and Donkey Kong country on the SNES).

I think the SNES won that one, pulling away with later releases like Super Metroid and Super Mario World 2. Also any games that were available on both, like Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat, were definitely better on the SNES (apart from the censorship). I remember the Mega Drive having better games for playing with your mates (Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, etc), but it didn't seem to have as many in-depth sophisticated games (?)

There was always something cool and mysterious about the Mega Drive though, somehow associated in my mind with the Marble Zone music on Sonic The Hedgehog. 

[Abnormal Palm]

Sega defo have more arcade credentials than Nintendo, I agree, that was a big part of their appeal.

[SavageHedgehog]

I'm far from unbiased but I find it hard not to give Nintendo the edge for the last four generations just because their exclusives are always the most notable, and the most synonymous with their respective system. As much as the Wii was clearly inferior to PS3/XBox360 and blighted with tons of shovelwear I don't think the competitors had a killer ap to rival Mario Galaxy for example.

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

PC.

[Abnormal Palm]

If you're on a register defo yeah

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

Can't download noncing vids on a Dreamcast,

[Sebastian Cobb]

Can't download noncing vids on a Dreamcast,

When showing off his new Dreamcast to our group Michael Rook seemed to think using it's 28.8k modem and inbuilt browser to go to a scat website called 'shitcity.com' was a crucial part of the demonstration. I assume the cost of the phone line is the only reason Dixons didn't tend to do this.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Amiga over Atari ST
No real competition here, from a game perspective - the Amiga had more of them. Hardware-wise they seemed... the same?

Same processor, running 10% faster in the ST, but the Amiga had custom sound and video chips leading to better sound and smoother animation.

The Amiga panpipes etc have aged worse than the ST's chiptunes. And the fact that the ST had midi means that it was the workhorse in professional audio production but that didn't utilise its own sound chips.

Conversely the Amiga carved out a corner in professional video due to it unusually for a home computer could sync it's video output with another source allowing it to do overlays etc, leading to it being used with videotoaster.

[QDRPHNC]

I remember the Mega Drive having better games for playing with your mates (Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, etc), but it didn't seem to have as many in-depth sophisticated games (?)

There was always something cool and mysterious about the Mega Drive though, somehow associated in my mind with the Marble Zone music on Sonic The Hedgehog.

To your point about Golden Axe and Streets of Rage, the Megadrive felt more an attempt to recreate an arcade (not surprising, given Sega's legacy), whereas I think with SNES, Nintendo were laying the groundwork for a future where people would play games in their homes exclusively - I'm thinking of games like Pilotwings, which were focused on repetition and practice to get good, as opposed to hitting the continue button for your next life.

I owned and loved both, but yeah, they were very different.

[greenman]

Sega defo have more arcade credentials than Nintendo, I agree, that was a big part of their appeal.

Nintendo did have the advantage of a closer relationship to Capcom and Konami though which I think helped even things out at this stage.

[madhair60]

Speccy
NES
Mega Drive
PS1
PS2
360
None of the current ones are really acceptable so I abstain