Let’s do our own console ranking!

NoJoTo

i’m judging in terms of both how many interesting games i’ve seen for the console and the look/feel of it’s library (or what i’ve experienced of it)

playstation: a combination of the era (both in game design, concepts even tried in the first place, and how those concepts were realized) and aesthetics (low poly, low resolution textures, dither galore) make almost every game somewhat interesting, be it conceptually or visually.
super family entertainment: the snes’s numerous hardware tricks led to many interesting visual effects, and it’s larger color palette led to it having some of the generations best pixel art. if the mega drive gets the 32x and the mega cd, i get the satellaview, which is a fascinating and cohesive combination of ideas that seems like it would’ve been a good time. the sound chip, when used well, led to a certain sound that i just adore.
ds: as a person who ‘grew up with’ a 3ds (yes, i’m a literal baby), the ds’s library is just much more interesting (maybe it’s that my 3ds experience consisted almost entirely of mario kart 7 and downloading free demos from the eshop (and so treating it like how you might download a rom to sample a game)).
mega drive: the mega drive just seems to me to have more standard games, but it still has enough stand outs for me to be satisfied. while it has interesting visual effects comparative to the snes, they’re less the result of the hardware and more the result of developer trickery (interesting, but a phenomenon found on all consoles).
nes: a lot of popular nes games came out earlier in it’s lifetime, which led me to have certain expectations for what could be done on it, but it’s support for expansion chips let later games blow those expectations away (more than what’s ever happened on other consoles, i think). the occasional instance of game design brilliance (sweet home, gimmick!) also leads to more ‘huh, they were thinking that way even back then’ moments than i’ve experienced with other console’s libraries.
shoot, i wrote a lot and a lot of it was stupid. oh well

whatsarobot

NoJoTo I don’t think any of it was stupid!

sabertoothalex

Gaagaagiins PS5 gotta be the console that I’ve played the least within a year of getting. Like you said thank god for Elden Ring or I might not touch this thing for many more months.

fridgeboy

sabertoothalex now that’s not fair! I use mine all the time to play ps4 games

goonbag

tanuki The C64 was more console than PC, I can’t think of a single person that used productivity software on it. It connected directly to your TV. It had a cartridge slot and joystick ports, man. It also had a humongous library of weird and sometimes deep games.

I agree and I think this argument can be made about many computers of that era, whereas the modern PC is absolutely not a console to me, regardless of whether some people make dedicated gaming PCs to sit under their TV or whatever. Sorry I know that point has already been litigated but COME ON. If the Windows PC is a console then the iPhone is a console and that’s not a world I particularly want to live in

Having said that my very personal list is as follows:

Super Nintendo
PlayStation
Switch
Wii
Commodore 64

RubySunrise

Unnecessary disclaimer: this is a purely personal list. I did not heavily consider or prioritize wider historical importance, just my own limited experience with the stuff I’ve played.

GameCube
All the first party games for the GCN rule, and are up there in terms of best in their respective series’. A particular shout out to Mario Kart: Double Dash!! which I feel is overlooked. It’s the only GCN game I know that supports LAN play. Up to four Cubes for 16 player races, which is nuts. The courses rule, and item management is made slightly more interesting with two characters per kart. Metroid Prime is one of my favorite games of all time (turn hints off). Link is in Soul Calibur II, even if my girl Cass kicks his ass. At the end of the GCN version of Harvest Moon: It’s a Wonderful Life, your character dies of old age. In the ps2 release, the special edition, the game just goes on indefinitely. That doesn’t have much to do with the system itself, but it is bonkers and I love it.
Gameboy Advance
My friends and I would play weeks long matches in Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2 by passing off the handheld between classes. We traded carts too, which is how I discovered Golden Sun. There just always seemed to be a gem waiting to be found on GBA. That F-Zero game that came out on launch day isn’t bad. There’s that game where you use the sun to charge your gun. Mega Man Battle Network. And that’s not even getting into the tactics RPGs which were my introduction to the genre.
PS2
I didn’t grow up with this one, and adult life demands a lot of my time, so it’s been slow getting to know this console. But FFX is one of the best games I’ve ever played. I love the controller. I love the form factor of the original ps2. I love there’s at-home versions of arcade light gun shooters on it. I love the encyclopedic game guides for all the JRPGs. I play 007 Nightfire against bots on it when I don’t know what else to play. I know that’s on GCN, too, but it feels better on ps2. One time in high school my friend brought over his PS2 and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. We played all night, then I accidentally erased the save file. We happily started over right then and there. The system is magic.
Nintendo Switch
I play my Switch a lot, probably second to PS2. It’s become my biggest gaming library outside of PC, mainly due to my purchase of smaller/indie games I want to play on the go, like Lucah: Born of a Dream, One Step From Eden, Paradise Killer, Super Crush K,O. Lots of great RPGs, of course. I love that it’s a little indie game machine, and that a lot of indies find a much wider audience on Switch. Mario Odyssey is a joy to play. Breath of the Wild is a special video game experience. All on the go, with a reasonable battery life. Even the screen on the original is pretty good.
PlayStation
This console didn’t come into my life until later, but dang, it’s good. The specific look of PSX games is unique and charming even years later (unlike much of what’s on N64 outside of LoZ/Mario). SotN. Final Fantasy. Dino Crisis. Resident Evil. I got into it because of the RPGs, but I’m finding there are so many other, weirder games on there. Part of it’s place here is my current excitement level to dive in, and I’ve already experienced a lot of good stuff on it.

Yup, I’ve hardly played anything on Xbox. I hope to correct that some day.

dylanfills

I really wanted to be a little bit more succinct with my list but oh well

RubySunrise Super Crush K,O.

This is a top ten action game for me and I always shocked that I don’t hear more people talk about it. Their shooter, Graceful Explosion Machine, is really good, and they’re also making a Playdate game, which has all but necessitated I get one

Gaagaagiins

◉◉maru incredible!!!

fridgeboy

Chris_v this is contrarian even by insert credit standards and that’s saying something!

Chris_v

fridgeboy I also considered iOS lol

exodus

fridgeboy yeah, I was gonna say, are all these ps5-havers not playing ps4 games either!?

fridgeboy

Chris_v somebody should just so it’s on the list

andrewelmore

oh man, only 5? okay let me think . . .

Original Xbox
PSP
PS1
PS2
Saturn

KingTubb

fridgeboy
I’ll do it, but with the caveat that you either pair a controller to your phone or use a backbone. I play so many games on my phone. Albeit, a lot of them are ports, but I’ve used my phone for gaming almost as much as any system in the last 6 months.

Top 5:
1.) PS2
2.) N64
3.) Switch
4.) iOS
5.) PS4/5

I lump the 4 and 5 together cause I essentially use my PS5 as a Super turbo edition version of a PS4 while streaming it to my phone

fridgeboy

KingTubb I actually completely agree with this. I use iOS for games a lot - mostly on an ipad rather than my phone, but still. Not enough to make my top 5, but maybe my top like…15?

Kez

Nintendo 3DS
Playstation
Mega Drive
PC Engine
Playstation 2

My 3DS is like a trusted companion, any time I go away for any length of time I will take my 3DS along. I hate the Switch as a portable.
PS1 and Mega Drive were what I grew up with, and what made me love video games. PS2 is an extension of that. PC engine I only discovered in recent years but man what an awesome system.

billy

PlayStation
Nintendo DS
PSP
Mega Drive
Wii U

Dreamcast and PS2 just missed out :(

jaws

I don’t love that my list is only centered in 3 adjacent generations but here’s mine.

1) PS2 (perfect medium of weird fringe shit and mass appeal)
2) Nintendo DS (the last and best “fun” device)
3) Super Nintendo (my chosen “retro” representation)
4) Dreamcast (it’s the Dreamcast)
5) Xbox 360 (a cultural moment of mass appeal and software advancement)

gunk_rider

This is BAD HARD.

SNES
DS
PS2
N64
PS1

I feel bad about it but I’m just out here gut-followin

tokucowboy

I haven’t yet listened to the podcast episode on this, so here are my virginal opinions:

Nintendo Switch
Typically, I’m really suspicious of recency bias when people do superlatives like this. If we’re doing the “of all time” thing (ugh), give it some time, I say. But consoles are, in a big way, an iterative thing and the Switch – for me – just iterated itself to the top. In over 30 years as a console owner, I have never owned more video games on a single device during its lifespan or after. The combo of the ultra-appealing hybrid form factor (I use both modes frequently), the post-HD graphics being “good enough,” and the absolutely ridiculous digital library cinches it for me in a way that isn’t even close (I realize as I write this). I got over 300 games on this thing and nearly that many on my wish list because the breadth of the Switch library includes so much legacy content – from Arcade Archives vintage to collections as niche as Kunio Kun and Darius to PC stuff to consoles from just a generation or so ago – in addition to reams of Japanese stuff, countless indie games, some current big-budget mainstream stuff and your Nintendo stuff. For me, the unreliable Joy-Con quality is just about the only wart on this lil guy. I love how you can personalize it, I love how tactile it is, I love having such a diverse library on a six-inch machine.
Nintendo DS
A theme here – two for two so far – is that I like consoles with an identity. I think most Big Boy Gamers would call that a “gimmick”; on the DS, those “gimmicks” worked. Even unimaginative stuff like having a second screen for an inventory or map or just using the touch screen to navigate non-action-oriented games worked really well in addition to opening the library up to wildly experimental stuff. At the time, the features of the DS felt like the future: a touchscreen, wi-fi, wireless multiplayer and chat, a dang UI on a console (Nintendo’s whole “lateral application of withered technology” thing; those elements existed, but you didn’t have them on a personal device too much back then). The dual-screen setup and focus on touch control also meant that the DS library really catered to my interests, with tons and tons of RPGs, text-heavy stuff, slower-paced stuff, games where you just manage spreadsheets worth of info. To this day, I enjoy opening and closing my (absolutely beautiful) DSi like a little bedside book.
PC Engine
Speaking more shortly and more woo-woo like, there’s just something about the PC Engine. When I introduce it to my friends here in America who aren’t familiar with it, I always say this and they get it after just bouncing around a few games: even bad PC Engine games are cool or interesting. There’s just some sort of PC Engine formula that makes the pixel art look extra appealing, and for some unknowable reason, it seems like the vast majority of PCE games have fantastic soundtracks. They just do. I don’t know a console that has a stronger house style than the PC Engine. It’s my favorite library to just put into a folder of ROMs and hit the “random” button to discover new stuff. You’re gonna have a good time.
Sega Dreamcast
I know lots of folks around here will agree when I say that the Dreamcast was special. It took all of that Sega weirdness and spunk and creativity and, finally, polished it into a diamond. In retrospect, its combination of unique identity coupled with pushing the technological aspects of home console graphics and online play is one that we’d never see again. Now we get homogenized black boxes that are powerful, or unique Nintendo consoles that are not, but never both. The Dreamcast was both. And like the PC Engine, it has a strong house style; you say, “this feels like a Dreamcast game,” and people know what you mean (if they’re cool). The tragedy of the Dreamcast makes me love it more.
Nintendo Wii
In contrast to the Dreamcast, the Wii’s popularity was its worst enemy. The first thing you saw at GameStop in 2007 was shelves of Sparkle Baby’s Pony Party Family Game Night Big Elk Hunting riding the shovelwave, the same wave that made the phrase “motion controls” a gross Pavlovian bell to most gamers (I mean, if a console’s library is largely shovelware looking to exploit its popularity, most of those games will have shitty controls, motion or otherwise). But that’s not what the Wii was for me. For me, it was weird. It was the last place where mid-budget Japanese games really thrived for the duration – yeah, the Nintendo stuff was good, but my Wii collection started with No More Heroes and ended with Pandora’s Tower, and there was never a gap in that sort of stuff, from Muramasa to Sin and Punishment: Star Successor. What pushes it over the edge for me is the Virtual Console, which not only felt like Shangri-La at the time (“you’re tellin me I can play all those consoles on this one console?”), but it’ll never happen again. This is one place, like the early days of Netflix, where a lack of competition benefitted the consumer. I’m not making a weird Republican talking point or anything here, it’s just a specific and ultimately trivial thing, but the Virtual Console existing as the one place for rights holders to keep their vintage libraries alive and profitable was a boon for old game likers, for preservation and for access. It was formative for me, and like streaming, those rights segmenting across a million different platforms means it’ll never be that way again. If it didn’t look like butt on a modern TV, I’d still have a Wii hooked up in my living room.

The original PlayStation would probably be on here if I owned one at the time because it’s an RPG monster, but I’m still catching up on it as a latter-day PlayStation boy. Anyway, I did not mean to write that much.

whatsarobot

tokucowboy I’m glad you wrote as much as you did. I enjoyed reading all of those words, and agree with just about all of them.

Only quasi-related, but I should share this here, just in case anyone hasn’t seen it before:

Tradeghouls 'n ghosts

Switch (OLED Version) - Switch is just an outstanding concept, and outstanding library, with a decent execution. Sure most games are just ports that had to make sacrifices, but its almost always worth the ability to play portable or docked. I also love the weird games that shouldn’t work at all, like Ring Fit Adventure, Arms, and Skyward Sword, which are actually well implemented.
SNES - This probably desreves number 1, but I’m feeling a little irreverent today.
PS2 Slim - This felt like a huge leap forward, and the library of games is just great. I also never owned a PS1, so this is where I played PS1 games.
PS5 (Disc Version) - I didn’t own a PS4, so same deal as PS2. Plus love the controller and I can play FF7R and Yakuza: Like a Dragon with a slightly higher resolution and faster load times.
New 2DS XL - Once again, I didn’t own a DS, so the library for this was just huge. PS2 quality games handheld in stunning 360p

tokucowboy

whatsarobot Thank you for both of these, that video is one of my all-time favorite things & I watch it every single time it’s posted (like I just now did)

« Previous Page Next Page »