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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?
I grew up with the NES. My parents refused to buy me a SNES when they came out, but I'm not at all bitter (bastards! *cries*). Aside from playing SNES games at friend's houses, I lost interest fairly quickly. I'd occasionally play a brief game at a friend's house on their playstation and i don't think I ever even touched a PS2 beyond using it to play DVDs back when it was the cheapest DVD player on the market. So I basically skipped the past two console generations alltogether.
The NES was the "greatest" system for me, simply because that was the one I interacted with the most, however I can definitely agree with this guy's argument that Sony's embrace of third party developers with the PlayStations made the game industry what it is today.
One minor nitpick, from the article:
I've always heard that was his inspiration for Zelda, not Mario.
What disappoints me massively here is that there is no establishment of values. Have you ever done a trade study? Why weren't the performance parameters isolated and discussed between consoles? Instead, all I saw was opinionated statements often tied to nostalgia with little or no scientific basis.
It's not even discussed about what the delivery method is (cartridge or disc) or even whether doing something well in 8-bit is more desired than something bad in 32-bit. Hardware maintenance, sound capabilities, exclusive franchise titles, I could probably come up with 10 or so factors in deciding how to rank my consoles. Then I would define the scales and think of a novel way to weight them (probably by year and technological limitations).
Last but not least, I would need someone with enough time to play through all of them. Most importantly, this subject(s) would need to be non-interested meaning they have no previous gaming experience. And yet, I don't even see an attempt for this article to do the above while trying to forget that Donky Kong Country entertained them for months in their past.
Why will pong always be better than NES Contra for my dad? Because it was his generation's game. Why is NES Contra always better for me than Souped Up Console Gears of War? Because that was my generation's game. Why will Gears of War always beat Super Lucid Brain Implants Choco Serial Murder Hospital Mystery for my
If you want me to be impressed with a comprehensive study, I expect a cold hard naive matrix and not some subjective highly tailored prose laden essay written by an avid gamer.
My work here is dung.
I have yet to play a game on the Phantom that I hated. No other console can boast that claim.
FTA: "The 8-bit console found dozens of great games, from franchise firsts like Super Mario Brothers,..."
What exactly is Super Mario Brothers the first of? It's not the first Mario game. In fact, it's a direct sequel to Mario Brothers and arguably it's the 5th Donkey Kong game. It's not even the first 2D platformer as Pac-Land has that locked up. Super Mario Brothers was a great game but it's not the first anything.
I'd have to say it's pretty much a tie between the NES and the PSX. Why? Because both essentially saved console gaming in their times. The NES pulled gaming out of a hell of utter lack of game production standards, and it introduced one of the greatest controller innovations ever: the D-Pad. The PSX was moderately priced and used CD-ROM media, which let its games be inexpensive and contain more content than cartridge-based games. This combined what would grow to be possibly the largest library of games ever, with many truly wonderful games (Final Fantasy 7, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, etc.) that brought console gaming into the mainstream. And after the N64 introduced analog sticks on controllers, Sony trumped it with the best-designed controller ever, the Dual Shock. Ever since then, with the exception of the Wii, controllers have primarily tended to be some variation of the Dual Shock, and that's a good thing.
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People prolly won't like me saying this. Seems the obvious choice to me, though... Plays Wii and Gamecube games out of the box, and the virtual console plays games from the NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis, Neo Geo, etc.... It doesn't play games for XBox or Playstation, but the library it brings to the table is much bigger, and covers a much wider array of playstyles. There's simply more variety with the Wii.
The Wiimote is also the only *fun* controller that I've run across in years. Actually changes the gameplay significantly. Some people hate it, some people love it. I love it.
So that'd be my vote. *shrugs*
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
The Playstation was definitely not the greatest console of all time. Its philosophy was, "Let's throw a bunch of crud against the wall and see what sticks." As a standardized platform for home entertainment it was highly successful. (In part, due to the low cost of its CD media.) However, if you want to actually look at a system that captured the hearts and minds of the market, the NES is probably IT.
The NES drug the console market out of a complete collapse into a thriving and expansive market. The quality was kept reasonably high through careful controls on the number of games that could be produced by each licensee. (To prevent the "game dumping" problem that occurred in the Atari generation.) It set the stage for the modern video game market, brought the arcade home in ways that even the Colecovision couldn't, introduced the idea of story-driven action games rather than arcade console games, reorganized the market around a control scheme that lives on even today (i.e. the venerable gamepad), and is fondly remembered by nearly every generation of gamer.
There simply has never been a console that has had the impact on the market that the original NES had. In its time it was without equal. I love the SNES as well, but the title for the "greatest" always has been and always will be on the NES.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Rumor has it that's the launch title of the Phantom
A black hole is where God divided by 0
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.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I was originally going to say it would be the GameBoy Advance SP, but then I remembered that the DS can play GameBoy Advance games too.
It's a nicely-sized portable, which I've found means that I can actually play the game instead of requiring a TV. Many of the great SNES games were re-released for the GBA (like The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, basically all the Final Fantasy games before VII, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Donkey Kong Country 2).
Unfortunately Nintendo took the time to screw with some of them (Link shouldn't be yelling "Ha!" all the time in Link to the Past!), and not all of them translated quite as well as I might like (the music in Final Fantasy VI Advance was screwed up in some places, but on the plus side the bugs were fixed).
Add in original DS games and other original GBA games, and you've got a very nice portable handheld console, which in my mind at least makes it the Best Game Console of All Time, So Far.
Of course, that's probably because I'm getting older and have less free time to play games. It's easier to sneak some game time when you can just drop the console in your pocket or man-purs-- I mean, laptop bag. It's a laptop bag.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
That piece of junk's only innovation was the introduction of ridiculous load times and boring cutscenes to gaming, and we've been cursed with them even since.
I was the odd-ball without an NES, but oh the love I had for my Sega Master System -- Phantasy Star, Ys, Miracle Warriors, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Zillion, Walter Payton Football, Quartet, Space Harrier -- oh the hours of my mis-spent youth
Even though it isn't really covered in the article, I'd have to pick the original Xbox as the greatest system. Wait! Before you mod me into oblivion let me explain: I claim that a lot of interest in a particular console seems to be how well you can modify it for other purposes. In other words, versatility can be of great importance.
Xbox (original): Once you easily softmod the machine, and possible install a larger internal hardrive, the Xbox is a self-sufficient machine with excellent graphics capabilities and emulation ability. Even by today's console standards, on any 'regular' standard-definition TV, the Xbox games are surprising good looking and perform well. Yeah, a lot of Xbox titles are cross-platform. But even so, usually the Xbox edition of any title was as good or superior to the others. Plus, with UnleashX or other dashboard replacement, you have customizable menus from which to launch programs or games stored on the hard drive. It's also reliable as hell, almost impossible to kill.
Emulation. The Xbox can run those precious SNES games listed in the article. It can also run NES, Genesis, Atari, and even some PSone games. There's even a working Daphne emulator for those old laserdisc titles such as Space Ace and Dragon's Lair. You can also run a number of select N64 titles, although not a complete list.
Multi-Media. Xbox has the famous XBMC, XBoxMediaCenter from which you can play movies, music, photos and the like from local or network storage. XBMC can also be used as a game launcher instead of other dashboards if you prefer. The only caveat is that newer H264 and other Hi-Def high-bandwidth material is a bit too much for the 700MHx intel CPU on the aging beast.
Computing. That's right, the Xbox is a 700MHz intel PC in a console case. You can use it to run Linux as a basic computing platform if you like. This is Slashdot, is it not? Nothing can be taken seriously here until it runs linux. :)
Don't get me wrong... I loved the SNES as well in its day. You could even use pliers to break away the little plastic tabs in the cartridge slot to play those Ranma 1/2 import games. But any other utility was pretty much non-existant. Ans let's face it, there were a ton of crappy platformer clones (maybe not as many as the infamous NES).
P.S.What I find most amusing is how much I *hated* the big and heavy XBox when it first came out, and conversely how much I love it today.
{ - Generic Guy - }
My vote has to go to the Nintendo 64. Watching Super Mario 64, and later Zelda Ocarina of Time, run around in 3 dimensions was just such a quantum leap from Pong and Tank (yes I go back to the very beginning) that there is no way to say anyone else ever brought such a leap to gaming.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
At any given time, individual consoles have had particular examples that were superior to the wealth of options on the PC, but over time the PC has established itself as king.
The graphics options are superior to the speciality boxes. The keyboard/mouse reigns in fps, and the rumble controllers are now common on the PC. The noob wii controller I would say now owns the PC, but time will tell.
And online play is still far ahead on the PC, though that may change.
If the whole premise of this is the best "game machine" of all time, I have to argue that the Commodore 64 was the best game console of all time.
Yes, yes, I know. It's not a dedicated gaming system like a true "console" is, but you will be hard-pressed to find people who used it for more than a gaming system. Even when the NES came out, the C64 was the king of the gaming machines with a ton of top-notch games out for it. When C64 users got together, very few cared about GEOS or MultiCALC. It was all about the games, from Mail Order Monsters to Space Taxi to the original Castle Wolfenstein to the Ultima series to The Last Ninja. Gaming was what made the C64 as popular as it was.
So, you can debate about the best "console" of all time, but as far as I'm concerned the best gaming platform was the C64.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
"The [console name] is the best one, because I played it when I was 12."
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
512x512 monochrome amber plasma display. Programmable keyboard. Online chat during multiplayer dungeon games, chess, etc., with users from across town or across the ocean.
In 1978.
sigs, as if you care.
It's sorta like debating which movie studio makes the best movies. Does total count? High signal to noise ratio? Do we adjust for overall popularity? Our feelings as they've changed with time?
I had a TV with a pong-like game built into it in the 70's. Then a 2600. Odyssey. Intellivison. Coleco (really an Adam). Sega Master System. TurboGrafx 16. SNES. PS. N64. PS2. Xbox. Gamecube. 360. Wii.
I bet that's more hands on then most people who comment on such things. But even still it's worthless to me. The 2600 came when I was so young that I just longed to do things grown ups could. It was the first to make major headway into homes. The SMS was those 7th-8th grade type years. The SMS probably wins in signal to noise. Alex Kidd, Phantasy Star, Miracle Warriors, Zillion, Shinobi, After Burner, Califnornia games, MK, Ninja Gaiden, Space Harrier. And I'm sure I'm missing a bunch. But compared to the low number of total games for the system, that's a huge amount of A list games.
Then agian, The TurboGrafx 16 and Bonks and Slaughterhouse. 2 great games for a system that only had like 10 games total.
The NES to me was the clear winner as far as the system that brought home gaming back after fading away after the 2600. Probably had the most "great" games of any system. Even more then the followup SNES had IMO.
I don't know. I like being nostalgic here. But the arguement as to which was the best really can't be won.
Sorry, but Dreamcast has to win. If for no other reason than the (sad) realization that more alcohol was consumed in college in front of Virtua Tennis than in front of tits. :(
I'm probably the real odd-man out here, but I think of all the different systems I've owned, the Sega Dreamcast was my favorite. I've owned several different consoles & handhelds. We currently have a PS, PS2 & XBox in my home, and none of them get the same use for gaming as my Dreamcast did. We use the PS2 mainly as a DVD player, the PS isn't even plugged in, and the XBox sits idle. My favorite controller of all time though is the Dual Shock 2.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
C'mon - all these console's are flashes in the pan compared to the Intellivision - it lasted in the market for over a decade, had lots of industry firsts (1st person dungeon crawl, RTS, speech in game, etc) plus a ton of fantastic and innovative games. The keypad, while a bit awkward, also meant that more complex games could be played properly on it as well. Mine's lasted over 25 years, and it still plays just great.
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.
paintball
TG-16 CD for the win...I'm pretty sure it was the first, even if it was ridiculously expensive. I still have one, and it still works. Ys 1 & 2 were/are fantastic games.
The first 32bit CD console. Truly "multimedia" by the contemporary definition - It played audio CDs, using the controller as a remote. With a plug-in cartridge it could play full-motion mpeg video, a la the CD-i. Since it was basically an Amiga 1200 without a keyboard, it could easily be expanded into a full-fledged home computer, with the addition of a keyboard, mouse, RAM, HDD etc... very similar to what Sony seem to be pushing with the ps3.
Shame that Commodore went bust soon after the machine was released. Stupid Commodore.
sustainable living
1) Dreamcast was legitimately ahead of its time - you can compare Tony Hawk/Dead or Alive on Dreamcast vs Playstation and see a world of difference. 2) The games were ahead of its time - many of the XBOX-generation games were largely ports of Dreamcast original games, including Metropolis Street Racer, among others. 3) No mod chip required for home brew - probably one of the easiest ways to enjoy console emulation on the home tv. The only downside is learning how to burn the roms to the CD. I'm not sure though, but it seemed like the CDs caused the drive to fail early though. 4) Features - built-in networking for online gaming, with some degree success in Phantasy Star. VMU minigames/screen and Rumble controller (which is just starting to arrive in next gen platforms as in the PSP->PS3 plugin). The VMU could communicate to users when there was player-private information without having to broadcast it on the screen and show other players, plus it could also do standalone play. 5) Games - Skies of Arcadia is still probably my favorite RPG ever - more fun in tone and atmosphere than many of the Final Fantasy's. Soul Caliber - extremely deep game play but deceptively simple to get started. It is unfortunate though that there weren't more games, which is a major downside 6) No Region lock - unlike most consoles, Dreamcast didn't burp when you played games from Japan.
Come on! The headaches weren't THAT bad.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Chrono Trigger, hands down the best console RPG of all time, with only FF7 and Earthbound coming anywhere close. I've spent more hours playing and replaying Chrono Trigger than any other video game, including the modern FPSes that I tend to prefer these days. Chrono Trigger's blend of humor, flirtatious characters, intense drama, fantastic graphics for a 16-bit system, but most of all: the most compelling, appropriate music ever in a game. I can listen to the music from the game and feel like I'm playing it.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Well, clearly the best game console of all time is the Playstation 7. Since we'll reach the limit of Moore's Law right around then, all subsequent consoles will just be cheap imitations.
...but perhaps I've said too much.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I think it's still a little too early to judge the Wii as "best console". The Wii has sold about 20 million unit worldwide, which is quite a sum. However, the NES sold 60 million and the Playstation over 100 million (if you believe Wikipedia and the companies own stats). The best console is very subjective, of course, but trying to come up with an objective measure one might include aspects like:
1.) Immensely popular in its own time, with a large selection of good games. The NES and Playstation had a number of duds, but the selection of truly great games for each was remarkable. The Wii is no where near this point, not yet.
2.) Had a huge impact on the video game market at the time; in the NES's case, it brought back the video game console from a rough patch where the future of console gaming was uncertain. The Playstation really helped move 3D gaming from the realm of the PC to popular console games.
3.) Had a huge impact on video game consoles which came after. This could take the form of the style of game, the technologies used, etc. The NES brought out games like RPGs and games with a bit of a storyline. The Playstation sealed the game cartridge's fate by proving how superior CD storage could benefit games through pre-rendered video and good sound.
The Wii might have a dramatic effect on the way we control games. I own a Wii, and I think the controller is pretty great for a lot of things. Still, the Wii gets played largely with groups, and the selection of games is still somewhat limited. I only own Nintendo-branded games at this point, since it seems to be taking some time for the other game companies to devote time and money into making games well-built for the Wii.
Wii Sports and a few other games (though I find the new Mario Party game a bit grating) make excellent party games for people of hugely varied age. That's cool for getting a new audience to play video games, but it's not clear that it will be a huge market.
We'll know whether the Wii has had a big impact on gaming in large part by whether the next generation of Playstation and xbox feature a similarly-new controller.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
For the greatest console of all time, I have two words:
GAME BOY.
Every other console has had credible rivals that did much the same thing. The NES competed with home computers, early on with Spectrums and C64s and later with Acorns and Amigas. SNES faced the Mega Drive. And so on, and so on. Often there's been a clear leader, but there's never been anything else remotely like the Game Boy's dominance. And as pack-in games go, Tetris was an absolute killer.
The Game Boy lasted a decade and saw off every rival that ever dared try it on. Sega had a good go, they had a colour screen and everything, but the Game Gear sank while Nintendo marched on, and on, and on... I thought it was finally dying off, then Pokemon happened - and suddenly every one of the countless millions of old Game Boys came out of the attic and lit up again, played with by the original owners' younger brothers! And hence a miniaturised Gameboy Pocket made with modern technology, and then colour...
Its contemporary successor is nearly as crazy. Everyone thought the DS was a stopgap. A cheap gimmick produced to slow down the PSP while Nintendo worked on the real next-gen Game Boy. How very, very wrong we were.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.