What's the Best Game Console of All Time?

The C|Net Crave blog has up an article exploring the history of console gaming, and wonders aloud about the pecking order of the various systems. "Gaming is so subjective that there is no single "greatest" system ever. It might sound like a cop-out, but it really depends on what standards you're using and what generation you grew up in. I loved the SNES, and would personally call it the greatest system of all time. However, the NES and PlayStation could both easily be called the best, based on the standards they set and the advances they presented to gaming." The Guardian follows up this piece, noting that the article's rose-colored recollections of the SNES days may not be entirely accurate. Subjective or not, it's a good question: which consoles have a valid place in history and which ones should be forgotten?

Comments

Coolest

[Reality Master 101]

All platforms had good and bad games, it's useless to compare them. BUT -- in terms of technical coolness and uniqueness, I have to give it to my good ol' Vectrex. Clearly vector graphics don't work for every type of game, but for the games it did work with, it was awesome.

Right manufacturer, wrong time.

[raehl]

The greatest video games system of all time is the Wii - it has revolutionized the way people interact with the console.

The only difference between all the other game systems is graphics and buttons. Difference between an Atari 2600 and NES/Genesis? More graphics and buttons. NES and SNES/Dreamcast/Playstation? Graphics and buttons. SNES/Playstation/Dreamcast and N64/PS2/XBox? Graphics and buttons. N64/PS2/XBox and PS3/XBox360? Graphics and buttons.

But the Wii is fundamentally different. It's the realization of what the power glove was meant to be. There hasn't been that kind of revolution in gaming since Pong. Maybe the advent of games where you could save your game (with code or battery) from one session to the next. But other than that, it's all graphics and buttons.

Re:Hmmmmm

[aplusjimages]

Shouldn't the greatest console of all times be separate from the games? Shouldn't it be a console that offered the gamer innovation as well as fun? If you took away Halo from Xbox would it still be a great console or Mario from any Nintendo generation? Everyone is naming games and what the console offered the gamer.

I would vote for the dreamcast. I never owned one, but it was a hell of a system. If I'm not mistaken it was the first with internet access. Also it had the controllers that would allow these little devices to be added to them that served several functions. One function allowed sports games to show different plays without showing your pick on the TV, others allowed the user to detach it and play it as a mini game.