SNES (Super Famicom?) is the one I think of when I think “console”.

N64 gave me the best Xmas ever playing Goldeneye with my 2 brothers. 4 controller ports! No more fighting eachother with “winner stops on” rules.

Xbox 360 takes it overall i think. Shipped with a headset and Xbox Live started mass adoption with internet speeds actually making it playable and not a complete laggy mess. There was a sense of, not community, but shared wonder and optimism that I’ve not encountered since.

PS Vita or PS2.

PS2 mainly for the games, so many fantastic ones I still play and replay decades later. Keeping track per platform the owned-played ratio and how many liked games in absolute numbers each has for me, the PS2 is still king in both. Even lesser known games I generally have a blast with.

On the Vita, its library isn’t as strong as the PS2’s, even if many of my favorite games were found through the Vita. But it compensates at being a fantastic console to mod. While I know people modding consoles do it for playing ilegitimate copies of games, if you ignore that, its mods still give you a lot to use the console for, possibly risking seeing the console dying in your hands while you read an ebook on it, try some homebrew ROM from Itchio, play with PSP homebrews, etc. Also it’s a bit of a learning curve and technical information on it is sparse, but learning how it ticks makes tinkering second nature (…unlike the PS3 =.=").

I would have to go with either the Steam Deck or the Oculus Quest. But realistically I’ve spent orders of magnitude more time on the Steam Deck so I’ll go with that. But both were revolutionary in a way that no other console approached. Sure, the PS2 was great, but it was just a PlayStation with better graphics, and the PlayStation was AMAZING, but in my mind it was a Nintendo with better graphics.

Looking at it just purely because of the console capabilities itself, the Wii was the best console.

Most of what the Wii did, no other system console or PC replicates well even to this day. They did this while undercutting other consoles on price, still putting out solid entries to their core IPs, and broadening gaming to new gamers.

All of the other consoles I would want to put at number 1 really are only great because of the library of games they had. Most of those libraries would have been better off if they were not forced to be on proprietary hardware.

N64. Such a solid lineup of games.

I have to give it to the Nintendo DS. Absolutely incredible library, much of it too unique to play anywhere else.

PC

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!

Poor N64 and its fucked up joystick get no love

Steam deck. Does it count? Plays everything you see here and more.

Consoles are kinda meh. Can’t do much with them.

That said I think the ps2 with network and hardrive, then the ps3, then the wii. I like them all for what they could be made to do and have one of each.

But really: all superceded by the steam deck. (Ended up selling my PSP, no need for it anymore).

Real hard to beat the Sega in my book. Not only was it an amazing console on its own, but you could attach other consoles to it. Slap that 32x on top. Slide the Sega CD on the side. Who could beat that? Plus the Sega Channel? I mean come on.

Sega Saturn and PlayStation Vita are honestly my favorites

The SNES. Hands down.

Not a console but the psp, it was so hackable and customizable and one of the first handhelds that did 3d and emulation well.

As a console, probably the n64, mostly cause the game changing factor compared to its predecessors and sick ass titles. Nintendo sucks balls now and I dont buy any of their shit but it was cool back then.

In no particular order: and NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, PS3.