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Consoles which you've grown to appreciate more/less of over time?

pramod

Banned
Consoles I've grown to appreciate more:

Sega Genesis - still the king of 16-bit IMHO. Those beautiful FM tunes never grow old, in fact I think there will never be better sounding chip tunes than what we got from the ole' Genny.
Xbox 360 - I still have it hooked up on my TV. I've probably spent more time on it than any other console, and that number will just keep increasing.
Nintendo DS - I just started digging into its library, and oh boy, it's sure got A LOT of great games I've never even heard of before.
Dreamcast - Sega's greatest achievement. The fact that people are still making games for this "failed" console should be enough to tell you something.

Consoles I've grown to appreciate less:

Turbografx - I know Turbo fans will hate me, but let's face it, it just wasn't very good hardware-wise, except for the color palette. And its video output was poor so games look washed out.
And I feel like a lot of its "great" games are actually overrated.
 

GruntosUK

Member
Dreamcast - Sega's greatest achievement. The fact that people are still making games for this "failed" console should be enough to tell you something.

Nothing will surpass the Dreamcast console wise for me, so many good games, quick arcade blasts like Crazy Taxi (which are missing these days), some great single player stuff and amazing couch multiplayer. it was well balanced.
 

Daneel Elijah

Gold Member
All the NES clones with the 1 million games cartridge. Probably one of the most common first experience in gaming and old enough to be inherited by your parents and grandparents.
 

Loxus

Member
The PS3 is my all time most appreciated.
Not only was online accessible without a fee.
Multiplayer games were really good.
Grand Theft Auto 4
Max Payne 3
Red Dead Redemption
The Last of Us
Uncharted 3
Gran Turismo 5
And the list goes on.
 

Rykan

Member
Nintendo Gamecube.

Nintendo Gamecube didn't have a lot of games when compared to other systems like the Playstation 2, but what is there is good and has aged pretty well. It was cheaply priced, good specs, build to last and had a good controller. I still think that the PS2 was the better option as a primary console, but as a secondary console? Gamecube is fantastic.
 
Wii u and ps3 (bc model)

Once you hack the wii u, you can play games from every Nintendo console apart from switch of course. Very convenient.

That PS3 model lets you play PS1+2 games. So if you have that and a PS5, you can play games from all 5 generations of playstation.
 
I’ve grown to appreciate a lot more the 3do over the year. It has such a weird and interesting library if you know what to look for and can pass through all the FMV games. Sega CD is another one that I find very enjoyable.

On the other hand, most 8-bit systems are kinda crap to my taste. To be honest, the only one I eventually play is the 7800.
 
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None. Consoles keep getting better and more powerful and as long as there is BC and you can play older games if you choose on newer models I don't need to keep old ones around. Games are what I remember and when I play old games I loved I realize how they aren't as good as I remember. I'm better off not playing them again and just remembering how fun they were at that time.

And controllers especially are much better than they used to be.
 

nush

Gold Member
Xbos 360 is now my top console of all time, it was hard to accept this reality having thought my top 3 consoles were set in stone for eternity. Sit back and look at the catalogue and the hardware that was running it, well it's a lock.
 

CeeJay

Member
Gamecube >>>>>
<<<<< Wii
I was so excited to get the Wii but felt disillusioned with it fairly quickly once the novelty of the waggle mechanics wore off and I came to the realisation that the games were dumbed down to appeal to a wider market (even the hallowed Ninty first party) along a catalogue full of endless third party shovelware. The only saving grace for the Wii for me was full BC with GC games and controllers and I can honestly say that my Wii spent more time playing GC disks than Wii disks over the course of it's life. The GC catalogue is small, focused and chock full of gems that still stand up well today.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
The only console I ever grew to dislike was N64. So much blur and fog and slowdown everywhere.

The Dreamcast is probably my favorite home console ever and I still love it. Literally no other console brought the arcade experience home like Dreamcast with the 60 FPS Sega arcade ports. I still play it when I want to feel that feeling.
 
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The N64, the Sega Dreamcast and the original Xbox (which at launch felt like a spiritual successor to the Dreamcast) are by far my favourite consoles to date. I bought the N64 after owning the PS1 and the difference in the quality of the graphics really made Sony's console look old, even with the soft blurry look and low framerates of most Nintendo games. I always hated the unfiltered textures on PS1 and the texture seams and warping even back then. The N64 was a massive leap in quality in comparison, only suffering from being cartridge based rather than CD-based like the PS1.

The PS2 is perhaps my least favourite; not because it didn't have any great games, of course it did, but mainly due to the horrid image quality (Ridge Racer 5... eeek!) and massive PAL borders and slowdown of many of its releases. The Xbox version of multi-format games was always the one I preferred- Microsoft were early adopters of widescreen and DD5.1 supports as well as fullscreen games - so I started to use my PS2 less and the Xbox more. PS4 and PS5 were great though with hardware that developers could finally understand and code for properly and that was reflected in the quality of the games.
 
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sncvsrtoip

Member
Ps4: single player focus, quite fast move to currentgen only, new good ips like horizon, days gone, ghost of tsushima, death stranding, astrobot, not spending resources on other platforms
 
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WoJ

Member
I think if anything I have come to appreciate more and more consoles over time. I'm one of the weirdos who does not really care for the PS2. I get why it is largely considered the best console of all time....but it didn't resonate with me personally in that era. I much prefer the PS1 and PS3 (and PS4 for that matter). I go back and forth between appreciating it more and appreciating it less.
 

Mr.ODST

Member
N64, Playstation 2 and Original Xbox

Bonus points for Xbox 360 as it revolutionised a lot of stuff in a positive way.
 

cireza

Banned
I enjoy the most 224p/240p, clean picture, 60fps, nice pixels that are not zoomed in or distorted, and no/short loading times.
So with time, this banned quite a lot of consoles from my list of favorites.

I still love the MegaDrive, Master System, 32X and Mega-CD. I also love the Game Gear hardware-wise, but it is impossible to get a proper screen on this console nowadays, and all replacement LCD do not offer native resolution, so they suck. Same with the Neo Geo Pocket, awesome hardware, but no good screen today.

Dreamcast is still great. Lots of great games that run super smooth. I also have an OG Xbox, but this one is not the most useful console. I only have a handful of games on it. Keeping it mainly for Outrun 2 and SVC Chaos.

Even though I had a Neo Geo CDZ, which was a fantastic console, I eventually parted with it. Controller always was an issue, and the games were all arcade games with limited content for single player. Also had a PCE, but never was a big fan.

3D games on early 3D consoles are often not smooth enough, I can barely stand them anymore, even on CRT. My Saturn gets less hours of gaming nowadays, but it does have a lot of great 2D games still.

With time, I came to appreciate even less pretty much every Nintendo console, with the exception of the Gamecube which was by far their best designed console hardware-wise. But the controller was shit though. I also like my Wii U, but it is mainly used for emulation.

However, NES, SNES, N64, GBA etc... All suffer in a way, and I can't get around the flaws they have, be it the poor CPU, poor video quality, poor sound quality. Handhelds have terrible screens for the most, and 3DS has very low framerates for its 3D games. Nintendo DS was great back then, but the screens did not age well. GBA is simply impractical nowadays.

Switch probably won't last for long in my house, not a great handheld. I still have a Vita, even though I played most of the better games. I mainly play on Xbox Series X as modern console.
 

MikeM

Member
I’m appreciating these new consoles more and more:
- legitimate 120fps modes
- Unlocked framerates for VRR TVs
- User graphic/performance choices
- Improved back compat (fps boost, AutoHDR)
- Dualsense
- 3D audio
 

sainraja

Member
The PS3 is my all time most appreciated.
Not only was online accessible without a fee.
Multiplayer games were really good.
Grand Theft Auto 4
Max Payne 3
Red Dead Redemption
The Last of Us
Uncharted 3
Gran Turismo 5
And the list goes on.
I'd have to say the same....many great games on the system and Warhawk!!!!
 

Bragr

Banned
Xbox 360 runs and plays better than the PS3, considerably, I have been impressed with how good that system was.

The Wii though, I can't stand the motion controls, I can't stand the system anymore. You can't pay me to use it. Especially as you get older, you feel like such a fuck sitting there waggling around.
 
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EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Classic consoles do a good job of getting to the point, you start the game and it plays that’s the best.
 

Midn1ght

Member
The PS3 is my all time most appreciated.
arnold schwarzenegger predator GIF
 

DavidGzz

Member
Imagine Ezekiel saying this about the Xbox in a couple years when he can't resist that there Game Pass. LMFAO
 
OG Xbox for me probably. I loved every game I had on it and played them to death, Mech Assault and Rainbow Six 3 were delightful in the easy Live days.

I also have a fondness for PS2, didn’t have many games on it, but those 007 games and GTA were fucking fire.

Tbh I loved all my old consoles, I had real good times as a kid playing them.
 
I have an ever growing appreciation for the PSP 3000.

Back when it was released, I was just starting my 20's and foolishly caught up in Fanboyisim to really give it a chance. Years later I eventually came around and picked one up, and enjoyed tons of games on it.

Fast forward to today and handheld/portable gaming is taking, in my opinion, some really unfortunate directions. Vita was more powerful sure, but design wise it was a big step backwards. It grew a big chin bezel and they swapped out the brilliant analog nub for protruding analog sticks. Nintendo Switch comes along, and while I love a lot of things about it, it substantially pushed the standard for size which had a big impact on it's portability and comfort. Now Steamdeck is here, and has thrown most of these original ideals out the window. Enormous size, heavy, hot, loud fans, analog sticks, and pathetic battery. It pretty much guarantees it's not traveling anywhere without being stuffed in an even bigger dedicated carrying case. When I see comments praising Steamdeck for "finally getting us out of the handheld ghetto" or slamming Switch for it's weak horsepower, I feel like a dying demographic. Handhelds were always about compromise, most reasonable people knew that, you were sacrificing graphical fidelity and ideal controls for aspects that mattered for portability.

But back to the PSP, this almost never happens in tech, but for a device that's 22 years old I still think the design is great. Pretty thin bezels around the screen, very little wasted space around the controls, and yet it still managed to be comfortable to hold (MH Claw aside lol). The size of it was ideal, big enough to have a nice widescreen display and still small enough to comfortably hold and look discrete. No gimmicks or goofy looking clamshell design. The Analog nub was such a novel way to give Analog level control on a portable device. The designers understood that a regular protruding analog stick would catch on everything and get easily damaged. The XMB interface was a pretty slick way to organize Music/Movies/Games. The thing even had TV-out on it, granted you had to have a fat cord going from your little handheld to the TV, but it was exploring this awesome concept years before the Switch came out.

I still have mine sitting in my closet and every time I look at the thing it makes me appreciate everything it did. What I wouldn't give for handhelds to go back to the idea of being portable again, because I think with modern tech the design could be perfected even more.
 

angrod14

Member
PS1 to PS4, they were all special. I'm with the 5 right now and everything points that it will be special too. I will always treasure the moments of joy I had with all of them.
 
PS1 and PS2

These were the last Sony Consoles I loved. Just so many games and memories I have. Too bad they went the way they did with the PS3. I did love PS4 but it didn't have the same feeling. That's also when more and more Japanese Third Parties have started to go multiple platform for their releases. That's when I started going PC gaming, I hardly even play my PS4 and I game mostly on Steam

GameCube

It didn't have a massive library but it had great first party and third party games. Still the most impressive hardware to come out of Nintendo. The controller is still my number 1 favorite controller of all time. I still love the look of the hardware. Packed alot of Power in that small cube

Dreamcast

Too bad Sega went out of the hardware business after this system flopped

Excellent variety of games
At the time, the graphics were fantastic

The only con is that controller wasn't comfortable for me to hold


I mostly game on Switch/Vita/3DS/PC Nowadays

I'm planning on getting a Steamdeck, but I'm Thinking of waiting for an announcement of Steamdeck 2
 
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Switch was cool during the pandemic for animal crossing but as a console I can’t stand mines anymore. No games I enjoy, terrible technically, and Pokémon arceus was the draw that broke the camels back.
 
at the time i had PS1/Gamecube i didn't like them much. Where as i think PS1 was actually even worse than i thought back then.
Gamecube is actually a way better machine than i thought. I used it back then as just a Wind Waker/Luigi's Mansion machine. But there's actually a decent catalogue
 

Daytonabot

Banned
Turbografx - I know Turbo fans will hate me, but let's face it, it just wasn't very good hardware-wise, except for the color palette. And its video output was poor so games look washed out.
And I feel like a lot of its "great" games are actually overrated.
I feel like you lack historical context. The PC Engine was originally a Famicom competitor. Despite its late release in the US, it's an 8-bit system. Much like the SMS, its hardware crushes Nintendo's. It also was home to the best game ever made: Akumajō Dracula X: Chi no Rondo.
 
More: Sega consoles. Sega really tried with their consoles by creating new IPs that feature new innovative gameplay which would then would later became cult classics.
Less: N64/GC/Switch. Really no innovation in games. It's still Mario/Donkey Kong/Zelda/Pokemon. Seems like they took more risks on SNES/NES/NDS. I guess keep pumping out the same games if it sells consoles ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Trunx81

Member
I used to love my PSP, but only one analogue stick just doesn’t do it anymore. Every game is so much better on the Vita, which I really learned to appreciate until I got my Switch.
 

Daytonabot

Banned
After having played God of War (2018), Days Gone, and to a lesser extent Horizon, I appreciate the PS4 acting as a low rent foster family until these games found their way home to Steam. Whether that's a more or less I'll leave up to the reader.
 

reinking

Gold Member
I think for me the one that stands out most was the Sega Nomad. It was literally a portable Sega Genesis and at that time was incredible. I had two of them and both came up missing. I am sure some stole them back in the day but I didn't even have any suspects to point the finger at.
 

kunonabi

Member
Genesis and playstation for me. I only used my genesis for a couple games growing up but it really did a lot more going than I realized. The first playstation has some of my all time favs but it's really only now after how underwhelming the PS3-5 are that I'm actually developing a fondness for it.

Can't really think of a console I've lost appreciation for. Maybe the NES since in hindsight I'm not that big a fan of the NES library outside of the top tier classics. Then again, I've been getting into the Famicom library which is actually great so I guess it sort of evens out.
 

Naked Lunch

Member
Ive actually grown to appreciate almost all consoles more over time.
Checking out different consoles' libraries more and more over the years - discovering tons of hidden gems.
Theres just too much - you wouldnt be able to play it in a lifetime.

The translation scene of NES and SNES has been around awhile, but still theres so much to discover there.
Its wild seeing these translations carry over to the Gamecube/Wii and PS2 eras.
 
I'm going with something a little different, Xbox Live. As much as I bitch about latency it's been an incredible gaming journey since day one of Xbox Live. Looking back at the days of coax PC LANs to what we have now is pretty ridiculous.
 
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