Who made the best console for its time?

[hendo]

Just thought I would throw this one out as well. Who made the best consoles for their time?

[semillama]

1. I love the XBOX but you have to give props to Nintendo.

They basically invented console gaming as we know it.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

2. I disagree. They re-invented it.

Atari did it first. But Nintendo did something nobody thought was possible; re-ignite the home console spark after the great video game shakeout.

[Occulus]

3. I recently saw a documentary about that period

E.T. apparently spelled the near-end of the entire industry. It was that bad.

I'm giving the vote in the poll to the NES. It definitely saved home gaming. IMO, it also killed arcades in the US at least. Not that I mind... can you imagine plunking in quarters for any "Final Fantasy"?

[hendo]

4. I wouldnt want to be forced to play any Final Fantasy straight through

much less have to pop in quarters for it. That would run into the $100s easy.

[Systematic Chaos]

5. I'm going with Atari over Nintendo.

The NES game library was complete crap for a time after the system debuted. I wasn't interested enough in buying an NES until about 1990, and the game that did it for me was PinBot of all things. Then I found out how good some of the RPGs were and that sealed it. I have never forgiven them for their horrible rendition of Tetris (as opposed to the great one by Atari Tengen which Nintendo forced off the market), or for their staunch avoidance of more mature content for so many years.

The Atari company, OTOH, had great stuff coming out for all of their systems from day one, it's just that their management got very bad in the early 80s. True, Pac Man and ET for the 2600 were utterly horrible, but shortly thereafter they began to release some incredible arcade conversions and original games. Additionally, the Atari 800XL computer was a wonderful system which had some terrific games developed for it and same with Atari's other systems.

[nickgutierrez]

6. I'll go with the PS1.

Proper 3D, great RPGs, Metal Gear Solid, so on and so on. I think it was the first system that brought gaming to the wider public.

[Ohio Joe]

7. Other - TurboGrafx

It did not have a very big game library but had some awesome games available, including some great co-op two player games.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

8. In truth, ten entries is nowhere near enough for this kind of poll.

You should have grouped them by era. The Atari/Intellivision/Coleco Vision era. The NES/SNES/Sega era...etc.

It's really hard to determine which console was the best.
Atari brought gaming home. (And really introduced the gamer to the "extra peripheral" concept as well.)
Nintendo resurrected gaming when people were convinced it was dead.
Microsoft introduced online gaming to the masses in an easily accessible way.
etc...

I voted Atari, but then again, that was my first console.

[Bjorn Against]

9. I had to go with Sony.

All three Playstation consoles have had very capable hardware and a great library of games, so they haven't disappointed me yet (I suppose the PSP is a disappointment, but I don't play handhelds anyways so I don't even think about it). I would have went with Nintendo if we were only looking at the NES and Super NES years, but Nintendo really blew it when they stuck with the cartridge format for the N64 and the lack of storage space on the cartridges and the poor controller design killed the system. The GameCube got them back on track to a certain extent, but then the Wii offered little improvement aside from the controller (and the controller is often poorly implemented in games which makes it more of a chore than an advantage, and let's not even get into the crappy library of games which consists mostly of shovelware with only a few gems mixed in).

[Seldona]

10. Overall I would have to say Sony. nt

[Geek_Girl]

11. I'm going with Commodore

I miss my Amiga :(

[Forkboy]

12. It's never too late. Run an emulator and you can play those games again.

http://www.lemonamiga.com/ (click on the "Lemonade" tab up top)

I haven't tried an Amiga emulator yet, so if you try it and have problems let me know. I'll install it and try to figure it out.

Right now I have an Atari ST emulator I use (just to play the game Sundog, basically). I also have an SNES emulator called ZSNES that's pretty cool.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

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[mtf80123]

14. I Voted PS3....

However, prior to that my favorite was 3DO. I still have it too.

[TroubleMan]

15. The SNES is still my favorite system of all time.

So many great games.