Which Nintendo console is the best of all time? Analyzing the company's 130+ year history with the NES, GameCube, and more.
"That’s not how you launch a system".
I wish we lived in the Alternate Timeline where Sega was still a dominant force in the console space and it hadn't been Microsoft.
Saturn was a fantastic piece of kit... they just went a little too ambitious with its dual CPU setup. which turned a lot of developers off (at the time). The homebrew community have done some amazing work many years later, thanks to multichip experience. It is still the best platform for arcade fighters and shmups of all time. Dreamcast is a close 2nd though.
Yeah it was a interesting decision especially when looking at how dual CPU is considered a root cause of why the Jaguar was a failure.
Also the hardware rendered four sided polygons where the standard was three if they kept with triangle polygons I feel the systems development would have been easier to work with and we would have seen more third party ports in the west.
I think it was a victim of its time more than anything it saw huge success in Japan but the leadership and internal turmoil in the west meant games were not getting localised along with a focus on arcade like games were the PlayStation and later the N64 were pushing more in depth experiences over coin munching high score driven games.
I still enjoy my Saturn it was the first console I mowed lawns for and saved up for to purchase. I went so far as to purchase a used Saturn to run off an SD card. I even have a second Dreamcast modded to run off an SD card as well.
Unlike most SNL special guests from the 00s, a lot of NES games just do not age.
This is the story of how the creators of the all-time best selling console almost crippled its own successor’s early life.
They retired Ken Kutaragi, moved away from overly expensive custom hardware, and went with more traditional hardware available to the market and listened to developer needs.
It's true but also PlayStation publicly came out and stated third party wasn't important to them.
ironic that what worked for them the previous generation caused them significant pain in the subsequent one.
The PS2 was actually a significant challenge to develop for far worse than the PS1 ever was but the competition at the time was struggling so much they couldn't make up the ground Dreamcast had a stigma of being a last gen console by the time the PS2 came around and looked inferior compared to games like grab Turismo 3, the GameCube and Xbox were still a ways away and PlayStation had the reputation as being the place to play it was a perfect storm for them and the GTA games not coming to Dreamcast and Sony's embrace really helped.
Third party basically drove PlayStation yi success over more capable consoles Xbox may have looked better at the time but it didn't have GTA 3, vc, Sa or the stories games the mainline entries didn't hit the Xbox until many years after being on PlayStation.
Then the PS3 with it's cell architecture ramped it up again and just hurt Devs they didn't focus on the GPU as much as they should have and they didn't realise their deals they made with IBM could have resulted in the cell architecture being shared with Microsoft which it was and it did help them develop the 360
But really the 90s and 2000s were a wild time for game consoles now it's a little boring it's all off the shelf components and everything is mostly the same
After losing so many 3rd party exclusives, they buckled down and concentrated on amazing first party games! God of war 3, Killzone 2, resistance, uncharted, the last of us, MgS4, little big planet, demon souls and so many more games!! They won the gamers back by playing smart! Even though the media and all big gaming websites from ign, gamespot, kotaku etc were all against it!! I had fun with ps2, but it's ps3 where I really grew up and had the time of my life.
It’s weird to look back on how even today the games media narrative was stuck in 2006 to say it was overpriced and had no games which was outsold by 360 (all incorrect).
In many ways, it’s similar to how the Xbox One was never really able to move past the launch even though after a year or so it was an entirely different proposition (but Microsoft didn’t do nearly as good a job as Sony did to recover IMO).
I'm glad it received the hate from western media! It humbled them quite a lot and forced them to buckle down and concentrate where it mattered most! Games games games!! And they learned a lot from their mistakes with ps3 and they made one of the greatest consoles ever in ps4!!
So true! Where Sony realised their mistakes and corrected everything, MS were either too arrogant to change course or just didn't have the tools/capabilities to correct course and get back to basics! Games games games! Which is sad because with no rival, Sony this generation has stagnated a lot!! This generation is a write off in my books!!!
I was committed to that whole generation. What turned Ps3 around from being a failure to a success was in 2009 with the releases of the first ps3 slim model with a cheaper price tag, the kevin butler marketing campaign, and a ton of 1st party AAA games that were critically acclaimed and loved by the fans like Uncharted 2 (this was a bigger deal than the first game), Killzone 2 (91 on metacritic), inFamous, LittleBigPlanet (a serious threat to mario at the time), Demon's Souls( it was very niche but the word of mouth and gamespots goty award helped it and helped ps3). The big game everyone that bought a ps3 was waiting for was mgs4 in 2008 and GT5 in 2010. Anyways I think the ps3 was way ahead of its time with the games I mentioned above and breakout hits like the last of us.
Glad to see SNES take the top! It really is timeless. Graphics and gameplay that even the youngbloods can appreciate today (still influencing modern indies!), but we aging gamers hold such fond memories of experiencing firsthand. Man, what a time to grow up.
I still hold my NES and Gameboy in the top 3... I still love playing them today and were so groundbreaking for me, but I completely understand that it doesn't hold the same timelessness for everyone that the SNES has. My 6 year old daughter adores Super Mario World, but doesn't get into the original SMB as much.
Good list!
For me…it would be
SNES
N64
Nintendo DS
Game boy
Switch
NES
GameCube
Wii
Couldn't agree more with number 1.
1. N64
2. NES (insane library, but the worst console design ever)
3. Super Nintendo
4. Switch
For me it's
1 NES
2 switch
3 SNES
4 wii
5 n64
6 GameCube
7 wii U
I cut my teeth gaming on the NES and then owned a mega drive followed by ps so I don't have the same nostalgia for the SNES as most people but pretty much most systems after the fact are interchangeable depending on my mood there's something amazing on each system even the Wii U.