Which consoles have you owned?

[Storm Eagle]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

In the 80's and 90's videogames were considered strictly for kids and when you became a teen you were expected to outgrow it and never play games again.

It wasn't until the early 2000's when GTA III came out and Halo and then Call of Duty that it became more socially acceptable for teens and adults in their 20's to still play games. And of course that continued through the whole early 2000's to this very day.

I still remember the days when owning an N64 made you "kiddie" and you had people wondering why you were still playing games. Only my fellow 30+ year olds will remember this, but games were viewed very differently in the 80's and 90's than now.

I think the PlayStation might have changed the game. (No pun intended.) It was definitely the console for the "mature" games. I remember when I started seeing PlayStation ads at bus stops of all places, and that seemed to be one of the things that made it clear that video games shouldn't be considered just toys.

Originally Posted by IMJ

This is some cool perspective on these numbers. I would've said that there was a Nintendo/Sega rivalry too, but that's the U.S. consumer perspective. Here there was a rivalry. Hell, Genesis did their "blast processing" thing so the SNES released the Road Runner game to show it could do the same thing, lol! Ridiculous....

I remember that commercial coming on when I was on the phone with the aforementioned Genesis fanboy friend. He cracked up at the part of the commercial that showed how dull the SNES was for lacking the so-called "blast processing". That was revealed to have been nothing but a marketing buzz word in this article that Nintendo had put out in video game magazines. It said that their game Uniracers was capable of doing the same thing too.

[Shark_Blade]

Where’s PS5 and current Xbox whatsitsname?

[oldmanwinters]

Systems I'd like to own but never have:

PC-Engine CD: not sure how reliable the "CD" based tech would hold up, but I've always wanted to play that system's exclusive version of Double Dragon II on authentic hardware.

I kick myself for passing on a basic US model TurboGrafx-16 system years ago priced at under $60. I've always thought the name was so delightfully weird.

Neo-Geo: most of the SNK classics are readily available for legal purchase at cheap prices on compilations and such, but Neo-Geo just has a great mystique about it.

Atari Jaguar: Again, I'd be skeptical of CD-based hardware's reliability, but when I was a kid I always assumed the Jaguar was the most powerful system available that nobody wanted to buy (price, games, limited availability, etc.)

Atari Lynx: another thing I passed on years ago at price of $99. With old portables, sometimes you just don't have confidence in the screen or speakers to drop the money on them.

Sega Nomad: I own tons of Genesis units and Sega ports their old ROMS to everything imaginable, so it would be something of a waste, but I'd still love to have one.

Speaking of a rare hardware unit I'm very proud to own: a Sega CDX. I picked up a great condition unit from my LCS years ago with a lot of games for about $70, which is crazy to think about these days, considering how many money even broken CDX units go for. I don't have a working Model 1 or 2 Sega CD, so the CDX is my only option for playing the Sega CD games, even though it seems like a variety of games freeze up during cutscenes. I don't know if that's probably the fault of the discs (scratches I can't see?) or the system. I suspect the discs as the crashes/freezes usually occur consistently at precise moments in cutscenes/load screens.

Speaking of Sega all-in-one units that never saw production, I would love to own the "Neptune" Genesis-32X combo unit just to simplify the pain of hooking up a 32X mushroom to play one of 20 games. The prototype photos of that combo unit looked all kinds of sleek plastic goodness. Also, the idea of pairing the "Neptune" with the "Saturn" would have been hilarious if both systems hadn't cooperated to bankrupt the company.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

Systems I'd like to own but never have:

PC-Engine CD: not sure how reliable the "CD" based tech would hold up, but I've always wanted to play that system's exclusive version of Double Dragon II on authentic hardware.

I kick myself for passing on a basic US model TurboGrafx-16 system years ago priced at under $60. I've always thought the name was so delightfully weird.

Neo-Geo: most of the SNK classics are readily available for legal purchase at cheap prices on compilations and such, but Neo-Geo just has a great mystique about it.

Atari Jaguar: Again, I'd be skeptical of CD-based hardware's reliability, but when I was a kid I always assumed the Jaguar was the most powerful system available that nobody wanted to buy (price, games, limited availability, etc.)

Atari Lynx: another thing I passed on years ago at price of $99. With old portables, sometimes you just don't have confidence in the screen or speakers to drop the money on them.

Sega Nomad: I own tons of Genesis units and Sega ports their old ROMS to everything imaginable, so it would be something of a waste, but I'd still love to have one.

Speaking of a rare hardware unit I'm very proud to own: a Sega CDX. I picked up a great condition unit from my LCS years ago with a lot of games for about $70, which is crazy to think about these days, considering how many money even broken CDX units go for. I don't have a working Model 1 or 2 Sega CD, so the CDX is my only option for playing the Sega CD games, even though it seems like a variety of games freeze up during cutscenes. I don't know if that's probably the fault of the discs (scratches I can't see?) or the system. I suspect the discs as the crashes/freezes usually occur consistently at precise moments in cutscenes/load screens.

Speaking of Sega all-in-one units that never saw production, I would love to own the "Neptune" Genesis-32X combo unit just to simplify the pain of hooking up a 32X mushroom to play one of 20 games. The prototype photos of that combo unit looked all kinds of sleek plastic goodness. Also, the idea of pairing the "Neptune" with the "Saturn" would have been hilarious if both systems hadn't cooperated to bankrupt the company.

That handheld system I posted on the last page has built in emulators for all of the systems you listed!

I've go a bunch of Sega CD games left for the next game sale - I run one annually. Do you have original copies of Lunar? Those are gems....

[Leo656]

I always wanted a TurboGrafx-16. They had ads in EVERY comic book back in the day, including lots of two-page ads and mini-comics for things like Bonk's Adventure. Really intriguing for any kid at that time in the pre-SNES and Genesis days, when the NES was becoming stale but the "next gen" hadn't kicked into full gear yet. Problem was, as usual, nobody around here sold it. Such was Nintendo's stranglehold on the industry back then. I don't mean to come off like I'm knocking them, I've always been a big Nintendo fan, but as a fan of the free-market I can't help but sigh looking back on all the really cool consoles that never really had a chance to catch on in this country. Like Nintendo probably still would have "won" but it could have been more of a fair fight.

My one friend did somehow get a TurboGrafx-16, briefly. Seemed pretty cool, I don't even know where he got it because they were like unicorns around here. I barely got to mess with it, though, as like many others he got rid of it for a Genesis. He was one of those kids whose Mom only let him get a console if he got rid of the one he already had, so over the next couple years he went from TurboGrafx to Genesis to Saturn to Playstation in pretty rapid succession. Probably wishes he'd hung onto the TurboGrafx in hindsight, though. I poke around once in a while and games for that one seem pretty expensive nowadays.

Stuff like the Neo-Geo and 3DO only existed in magazines, for guys like me. They seem really awesome, though, but I'm not surprised they didn't catch on. As distasteful as it can be to say, it really was the "Video games are for kids" era, still, and high-end consoles like that were just not going to find an audience due to the cost and lack of big-name titles, outside of arcade ports obviously. But I remember flipping through EGM and just marveling at how advanced they seemed compared to the rest of what was on the market in 1993.

I remember being intrigued by the Atari Jaguar, since I was an Atari fan from way back. But it just didn't seem like it had any really great games for it, so I never really felt compelled to get one. Even now, sometimes I almost want to but the library seems pretty anemic. Most people cite "Tempest 2000" as its best game and that just doesn't really appeal to me.

Never really been a big handheld guy, for whatever reason. The lack of backlighting really diluted my interest in the various Game Boy machines, and Sega's handhelds ate batteries so fast that they seemed pointless to me. A few of my friends had a Game Gear, and they only ever played it with the wall charger, and at that point you might as well just be playing Genesis, y'know? Same with the Nomad. The only kids I knew who got any major use out of the Game Gear or the Nomad, were the kinda-poor kids who only had one TV in their house. So they could plug into the wall and play games without fighting with their parents over the TV, but otherwise the lack of portability in a "portable" system made it all seem a bit pointless.

It's really only been the last 15 years or so that I've gotten into playing more Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games, on the Gamecube's Game Boy Player. I just prefer playing games on the TV, I'unno.

One thing I'm glad I was never foolish enough to bite on was the Philips CDi. I used to always stay up way too late as a kid and Nick At Night used to play the CDi infomercial several times a week. They were really hoping that showcasing "the new Zelda game" you couldn't play anywhere else would move some units, but it didn't even look that good in the dang infomercial.

[Andrew NDB]

I remember the Atari Jaguar being very interesting. It did claim to be 64 bit, too (which was false, if I recall... it just used two 32 bit processors) but I think it was way too expensive? Neo Geo too.

Turbo Graphics 16 was interesting. It's surprising that Bonk isn't still a thing today.

[Wildcat]

I miss referring to hardware with bits. It stopped with the PS2/Cube/Xbox era. I seem to remember the Dreamcast was said to be 128 bit. Plus there was that Mario 128 demo. So it’s safe to assume those were all basically the same. DC was actually part of that era. It just launched the earliest.

I know it’s no longer measured that way but for the fun of it I’m really curious what today’s consoles would be. Is the PS5 like 3,150 bits?

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Game & Watch

Nintendo Entertainment System

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Commodore 64

Personal Computer

Nintendo Switch

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I remember the Atari Jaguar being very interesting. It did claim to be 64 bit, too (which was false, if I recall... it just used two 32 bit processors) but I think it was way too expensive? Neo Geo too.

Turbo Graphics 16 was interesting. It's surprising that Bonk isn't still a thing today.

Nah, the Jaguar launched at $250 in 1993, not far out of line with the launch prices of the SNES and Genesis, and dropped to $150 in 1995 to try and get ahead of the Saturn launch.

It was just a mix of bad timing and no "killer app". They had practically NO third-party support whatsoever, at a time when those third-party games were more important than ever. The SNES and Genesis were fighting a two-horse race in America, trading "wins" back-and-forth year by year, but which one you owned had a lot to do with console-exclusive games and third-party support. Want Mario and Zelda? You had to have an SNES. But meanwhile, Sonic was becoming a juggernaut and you could only play his games on Genesis. Want officially-licensed sports games? Then you needed a Genesis. RPGs from Square and Capcom fighting games like Street Fighter II in all its forms? SNES. If you somehow were lucky enough to have both an SNES and Genesis, you had hundreds and hundreds of games to choose from, but even if you were "stuck" with one over the other, your gaming preferences were well-covered by what was available.

By contrast, the Jaguar ended up seeing only 50(!!!) games released in its entire lifespan, and its "best" games were also generally available on other systems. There simply were no exclusive "must-have" games to give it an identity in a marketplace that was already becoming crowded - despite Sega and Nintendo's dominance, the 3DO and Neo-Geo were also fighting for shelf space at this exact time, and the Saturn, N64 and PS1 were right around the corner.

Price definitely wasn't the inhibiting factor; if anything, "Hey, it's cheap!" became Atari's sole rallying cry as the Saturn prepared to come out. In response, people replied, "There's nothing to play on it, so who cares if it's cheap?" If you look at the list of games released for the Jaguar, 99% of them are games nobody's ever heard of, and the handful otherwise are things like "Double Dragon V", which were released on other consoles and frankly not that great to begin with. No exclusive "killer app", no brand mascot platformer like Sonic or Mario, no RPGs, no big-name fighting games, no Capcom, no Konami, no Square, no Midway, no Final Fantasy or Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat... people simply said, "No Thanks".

I think if they'd managed to get better third-party support, that at least would have given them a foothold. Without Capcom, especially, at that point in time any new console wasn't going to have much success. And with Capcom and Konami pretty much locked-in with Nintendo (albeit with some allowances to work with Sega), that just wasn't gonna happen. ALL the "new" systems coming out during that time suffered from this to some degree.

As is, many experts look back and point out that the only reason Sony didn't have the same uphill battle with the PS1, is because Nintendo alienated all the third-party developers by sticking with the cartridge format for the upcoming N64 and their restrictive licensing agreements. Nintendo basically screwed themselves; before that, a lot of people predicted that the PS1 would fight the same losing battle as the Jaguar, for the exact same reasons. Instead, ALL the third-party developers immediately jumped in bed with Sony and we know what happened from there. Nintendo learned the hard way, as Atari already had, that you gotta have those third parties on your platform if you want to stay in the race. Those mascot platformers and timed exclusives only carry you so far.

But yeah, the Jaguar's failure definitely wasn't down to dollars-and-cents. But a relatively "cheap" console still becomes a very expensive paperweight if there's simply nothing worth playing on it.

The Neo-Geo, by contrast, had some great games and the console actually sold WAY better than the Jaguar, which shocked me (over a million consoles vs. the Jaguar's rather pitiful sub-250,000!), and with over 150 games released compared to the Jaguar's 50. But again, almost no third-party support and 99% of those games being either fighters or shooters really limited their mainstream appeal. That plus the cost (Almost $700 for the console and games themselves costing about $200 each!) meant that the Neo-Geo was always going to be a niche system. It was definitely the best way to play arcade games at home at that specific time, but if your interests lay outside of those specific games - almost all of which were developed by SNK themselves - you were kinda beat. Like "Merry Christmas, kid; hope you REALLY like Samurai Shodown!"

I'd definitely pick up a Neo-Geo if I were rich, though, no question. If only to play arcade-perfect versions of those Samurai Shodown, Fatal Fury and King of Fighters games. The only real problem was if you cared about playing anything ELSE. But holy sh*t, those games are too expensive to try and get the "authentic" versions of now, I'm fine with all the numerous compilations that exist. At least the games are out there, y'know? If I had a million dollars, though, yeah, I'd probably get some Neo-Geo stuff.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Leo656

At least the games are out there, y'know? If I had a million dollars, though, yeah, I'd probably get some Neo-Geo stuff.

So at this point it probably looks like I have stake in that handheld system that I posted above, but the RG-350 also has TG16 and NeoGeo emulators in it. So here's a story about why I bought this thing that might help some people out regarding two options with all of this system talk....

A few months back I read something about an upcoming system that looks pretty amazing. It was called the Analog Pocket. That system is terrific and it plays a huge range of actual game cartridges from the Gameboy to the TG16 chips, to the Jaguar. Apparently it does this on pure hardware - no emulation which is also amazing. So that's a huge solution for those of you that want the actual 80's and 90's cartridges physically in your collection.

Now I have a lot of TG16 stuff left over from my last game sale and I thought that the Pocket would be a cool way to dive into it. But then you start looking at Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, etc and you realize that you are building another game collection of "stuff". Don't want any part of that. So I found the RG-350. A fraction of the price, tons of emulators, no need for physical games, plays all of the systems the pocket does and more.

So basically for anyone that wants to deep dive into retro game systems you can try to find an Analog Pocket to order and it will use your physical games. Or you can find an RG350 to get your fix and then put it down in twenty minutes when you get bored. My recommendation is the RG-350 because the truth about retro gaming is that the pull to play is hard but once you start playing the nostalgia only tends to last until the first death or the end of the first level before you got your fix and don't care anymore.

Also, both the Pocket and the RG-350 can hook up to your TV via HDMI and play any of those games on your flatscreen. So with each you get a handheld and a T.V. system.

[sdp]

I'm surprised so many people who owned Xbox also owned the Playstation for that same generation when you count that 95% of the games released are the same. Even during my "hardcore" game phase I thought it was a waste of money to own a Gamecube and PS2 and you can argue the differences in exclusives was bigger then, especially because of Nintendo.

[IMJ]

I think people who bought a Gamecube did it because the legacy games on that system were supposed to be pretty good. Metroid, stuff like that. I don't know why you'd think a PS2 was a waste of money. It was the best selling game console of all-time.....

[Leo656]

I had all three as soon as they came out. There was never any question as to that. For me, there were a variety of factors.

- For one thing, I'd started working after high school and had my own money for the first time. Therefore, I was determined to "live it up", as they say.

- We didn't have a DVD player yet, so the PS2 was mandatory.

- Metal Gear Solid 2 was going to be exclusive for the PS2 for a while, and there was no game I was more excited about at that time.

- Each console was getting its own series of WWF games, and they were each totally different from each other, so that alone pretty much mandated getting each of the three consoles (even though the ones on XBox turned out to be less than stellar).

- Graphically, most of the multiplatform games looked better on the XBox. As I've said, I'm no graphics snob by any means, but it's nice to have the "best" version of any multiplatform game. The difference was usually negligible, but nicer graphics and shorter load times were big check marks in favor of the XBox.

- The XBox had an absolutely cavernous hard drive, which is a huge deal when you play as many games as I do. Whenever things were tight, if I had to choose whether to buy a version of a game on XBox or PS2, it mostly came down to whether or not I recently purchased any memory cards. If they were all maxed out, I'd get the XBox version of the game.

- The Gamecube absolutely had the Mario and Zelda games I couldn't live without. But furthermore, I much preferred the "Day Of Reckoning"-style WWF games over the "SmackDown" series. So even leaving Mario and Zelda out of the equation, my Gamecube got more hours of play than the other two quite often just because of the wrestling games.

- The Game Boy Player was just impossible to resist. As I've said, playing games on a handheld doesn't appeal to me much, BUT that doesn't mean the games themselves don't, and there have always been a ton of Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games I was very interested in. The opportunity to play hundreds of handheld games on my TV - and further, my wife being able to actually watch me play them, something she loves to do - was a huge boon.

So, as you can see, there really was no sane choice except to go all-in on all three, and all three got a ton of playtime in our household. In looking at the lists of what I actually own for each system, it appears that I have about 58 Gamecube games, 56 PS2 games, and 43 XBox games (give or take, I counted fast). This doesn't tell the entire story, however, as there's a few mitigating factors. Firstly, I owned a PS2 before an XBox, so a few multiplatform games I might have otherwise bought for XBox I ended up owning for PS2 instead. Furthermore, both my PS2 and XBox broke quite a while ago, so a chunk of my Gamecube games were ones I bought to replace the ones I couldn't play on the other two consoles anymore (or at least in the meantime while waiting to replace those consoles, which I haven't bothered to yet).

I wouldn't say either the PS2 or the XBox were a "waste of money", as there were definitely advantages to having either. I will say, though, that if you didn't care about Halo, there wasn't much that you could only play on XBox. If I had a gun to my head and I HAD to choose only one, though, it would be the XBox, simply because of that massive hard drive. I mean memory cards were like $20 each back then and you could easily buy most used games for that price, and when you have like 50 games for a system it's nice to never have to worry about storage space. But I mean, you couldn't go wrong with either, really. Although I will say, my XBox broke way before my PS2 did, so there's that.

It's gotten tougher in the more recent generations to choose between the XBox and PS consoles (Nintendo is always in their own world so there really is no direct comparison between them and the others). We initially got an XBox 360 over a PS3 simply because it was cheaper AND the multiplatform games run better, for the most part, on the 360. We did end up getting a PS3 later on as well, but since I'd already bought almost everything I'd need on 360, my library of PS3 games is rather small, the smallest of any console I own I think. Same thing with XBox One over the PS4, it really just came down to cost. Nowadays the libraries between the two platforms are virtually identical and there's fewer exclusives than ever, and they both seem to run the games just as well, so I don't see any distinct advantages to owning one or the other. But that's just the way I look at it. We do plan to get both the PS5 and whatever the new XBox is called, but not for at least a year. By that point it will most likely come down to cost, but if the PS5 really is backwards-compatible with all the other PS consoles' games, that would be a HUGE mark in its favor, for sure.
----------

I can't say I'm shocked to see the Wii and PS2 dominate the poll, but I'm a little surprised to see how little Sega love there was. I figured there might be more XBox fans, as well. Very interesting.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Historically, NES, SNES, Gameboy/Color/Advance

Sold all of them, but got a SNES again as an adult (kids love it). I get everything on PC these days.

[Leo656]

Ah, yeah, I meant to ask how that was going. Can't go wrong with the good ol' SNES!

Reminds me of another YouTuber I enjoy, Generation Gap Gaming. Although I generally ain't got f*cking time for someone who hates RPGs and Tetris. But he's a good egg, though. Always warms my heart to see someone getting their kids into the really older stuff and the kids not immediately dismiss it.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

I may plunk down some cash to add another SNES cartridge to the family library this Christmas; depends on far I want to drive to do a Craigslist exchange.

I imagine the kids will want to try newer Mario and Donkey Kong games at some point, so when they're old enough to help purchase the systems, then I reckon we can upgrade.

Although my kids both love watching me play Mass Effect, so they may jump off cartoon side-scrollers sooner than I expect.

[sdp]

Originally Posted by IMJ

I think people who bought a Gamecube did it because the legacy games on that system were supposed to be pretty good. Metroid, stuff like that. I don't know why you'd think a PS2 was a waste of money. It was the best selling game console of all-time.....

I bought a PS2 AND a Gamecube and thought it was a waste of money buying both systems, the few exclusives for either weren't worth double dipping on a console for me.
I see in the poll many people who owned PS3s owned 360s or PS4s & Xbox One, and those have even smaller libraries of exclusive stuff.

[CyberCubed]

Any kid who hasn't grown up playing Mario games or Nintendo games in general must have had a rough childhood.

It's basically videogame etiquette that all kids should be started off with Nintendo games and exposed to Mario at an early age. It's almost heresy or blasphemy that there are a kids/teens out there who never touched a Nintendo game in their life and just grew up with Playstation/Xbox.

If I ever have kids, my future kids won't leave the house until they've played every Mario game from start to finish from the original all the way up to the current date.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Any kid who hasn't grown up playing Mario games or Nintendo games in general must have had a rough childhood.

It's basically videogame etiquette that all kids should be started off with Nintendo games and exposed to Mario at an early age. It's almost heresy or blasphemy that there are a kids/teens out there who never touched a Nintendo game in their life and just grew up with Playstation/Xbox.

If I ever have kids, my future kids won't leave the house until they've played every Mario game from start to finish from the original all the way up to the current date.

How are you gonna have kids, man? No self-respecting woman is gonna get with a man who pirates his entertainment, and no un-self-respecting woman is gonna get with a man who can't keep her supplied in Vicodin or cocaine.

[Leo656]

HAH! When you're right, you're right.

My wife's never actually finished a Mario game, either. She just doesn't give a sh*t about platformers. She only really plays fighting games, racing games, wrestling games, and open world stuff like GTA or Red Dead. When she was a kid she played a little Sonic like everybody but even that was forever ago. She's fine watching me play them but she just doesn't care about playing platformers at all.

I've tried to correct the situation but it is what it is.