Ok so I think those of us who grew up playing consoles tend to have a console that was extra special to us. I am wondering what was yours and why.
For me, it would be the Super Nintendo. While growing up I had an Atari 2600 and a NES but it wasn’t until the SNES era that things got more interesting to me.
I don’t know if it was because of the console war between SNES and Genesis or what it was exactly but when I think of my happiest times as a gamer, the SNES is what comes to mind for me.
I didn’t even have that many games, and I still think Super Mario Bros 3 on the NES is probably the best Mario game ever. But the SNES would be my answer.
Oddly enough my 2nd choice would be the N64, but that’s also the time when I lost interest in Video Games for a few years.
The consoles I was fond of during my youth would have to be both the N64 and the Nintendo Wii.
The N64 was the first console you and my parents introduced me to. I was fascinated by its simple design. Additionally, I was obsessed with technology back then. Devices like my TV and N64 were mystical artifacts that possessed strange powers to me. Back then, I did not know how they worked. I thought angels were working behind the scenes, showing me visions of strange worlds through these machines.
One of the N64 games I played was the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. This game was a game my parents motivated me to play since it had text boxes for me to read from the characters’ dialogues. I loved reading back then, and the Legend of Zelda was a game that combined both reading and fun.
That game introduced me to the world of gaming. It was a spiritual experience to me. I literally thought the angels were showing me a window to another world made by God. The Golden Goddesses of the Legend of Zelda were the face of God manifesting in that world. Ganondorf was the incarnation of Lucifer attempting to ruin this new world. So, I thought the angels were giving me the opportunity to save this world before it was destroyed by Ganondorf’s hordes of monsters and demons.
I took gaming very seriously in my youth, thinking I was saving worlds from all of the Devil’s incarnations, from Bowser’s magic, to alien space bugs, and the Witch from Banjo Kazooie.
Overtime, I grew to appreciate video games as fun pastimes. The Wii was the console to help me realize that games can be both fun and relaxing without any worry for spiritual danger. Wii sports brought me closer to my brothers and parents. We played together. As a result, we got to know each other.
Without the N64 or the Wii, I don’t know how I would be. Most likely, I would have become a neurotypical husk devoid of imagination and love for my family. I would have been as hollow as Satan and the many husks that wander the planet, pretending to be people by expressing joys that are not their own but what forces tell them say. That fate would be worse than death for me. A Hell on Earth.
Interesting question. If you asked me in the past I would have said whatever I was playing at the time. I think I invested the most time into the NES and Sega Genesis. The Super Nintendo was great but I was going through that teenage I’m a grown up now time. So I didn’t put as much time as I would have like to into the console. So I would have to say the NES gave me the most memories.
Back then I publicly hated the Sega Genesis because I was a Super Nintendo guy, but deep down I was a bit jelly. I would not have traded my Super Nintendo for a Genesis but I was certainly curious about some of the things Genesis was doing. Specially when the Sega CD came out, and then the 32X. Good times.
Oh the N64, I was SUPER interested in the N64 because I had been reading about it for so long. I was a big time Nintendo Fanboy back then and I kept seeing all these other consoles doing cool stuff in the 32 bit era so of course I was jelly! lol
But when I started reading the rumors of the N64 and started seeing the pictures and then there were the Cruisin USA and Killer Instinct arcades promising us that this is what the N64 was going to be (Code Named Ultra 64 back then) I was soooo excited.
By the time it came to the home, it was great in many ways but the decision to stick with cartridges really hurt Nintendo on this one IMO. When Killer Instinct finally came to the N64 I was so disappointed by the lack of Full Motion Videos that the arcade had.
Maybe that’s what subconciously got me to give up on video games for a while? lol I doubt it. I just know that by the time the Banjo games came out, I just didn’t care for the N64 and honestly to this day, I see Banjo and I just hate the look of that game lol. I know a lot of people love it, I just can’t stand it.
Funny how so many of us have gone through that phase, we get rid of our systems and games and later on just come back to it. I guess some never come back, only the good ones do lol
I had no idea how novel and advanced the N64 was during its time. It shouldn’t surprise, though, since a lot of old technology were new during their release. Mario 64 and Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time were marvels of technology back then due to the N64’s hardware supporting 3D software.
As for the cartridges, I am bit bias for them since I grew up with the N64. I saw the cartridges as a more convenient way of storing, transporting, and accessing video games. Much more durable than disks, at least to me, due to not being scratched easily by fingernails. Yet, I imagined cartridges back then had small amounts of storage space. Maybe, that was the reason video games on the N64 were not impressive to you. The cartridges had little space to support big software elements into their games.
Also, I didn’t really like Banjo Kazooie all that much as a kid. The polygonal 3D models of the characters looked horrifying to me, so I quickly turned off the game once I saw the witch. Lol.
Well, you gotta remember, we were going from sprites and MAYBE some polygons like on StarFox on the SNES to a full on 3D world. I would look at the images of Mario 64 on magazines and the idea that you could see the ship under the water and you could actually swim to it was mind blowing to me.
I don’t even know why, we had 3D games on the Playstation, I would imagine I had already played some but nothing was like SM64.
Also CRTs really masked the flaws. We now see those early 3D games terrible but usually we see them in a computer screen or modern console like the Switch.
Yea I really didn’t know some of this until you pointed it out to me, how developers would think about the way CRT works in order to create sprites that looked good and now when we play those games on modern displays they just don’t look right.
Here are some examples:
Here both look ok but obviously the CRT one looks nicer, to me anyway.
