What is the best console EVER?

[nickbits]

SNES
PS the psx foes not load fast.

And most people are going to answer with the console they had when they were a kid. There is no best, it is all a matter if timing and perception.

[mazeroth]

NES. First Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy etc.

[Pr0d1gy]

Atari 2600? When the athletes were 11 blocks and the running was mauling a joystick as fast as you could...

Tandy 1000? When hard drive and modem were deemed useless, and the games were on a dozen floppy disks...

My brand new Windows 8 gaming PC? Where everything is instant and the games are too numerous to count and mostly free (to a point lol)...

Yeah man, life only gets better.

[exdeath]

Originally Posted by nickbits

SNES
PS the psx foes not load fast.

And most people are going to answer with the console they had when they were a kid. There is no best, it is all a matter if timing and perception.

What about people who had every console from Atari 2600 to Playstation as a kid but can easily name one system as the best without having to think about it?

[exdeath]

Originally Posted by Sulaco

SNES. And it's really not even close.

And I owned pretty much every single major console, when they were new, not bought on eBay 20 years later. My nostalgia bias is fairly "evenly" distributed then.

But the SNES library has so many utterly timeless gems. PSX is close, NES was great, but SNES is the clear winner.

Case in point.

[gorcorps]

I'll say SNES. The NES was great but I brought it down for the hardware issues it eventually suffered from. Blowing into cartridges to get them to read was not my idea of good equipment, and I hardly remember that part fondly like some seem to. The SNES had just as many fantastic games IMO except I never had any hardware issues. It was a fantastic console.

[KentState]

Owned all of the Sega, Nintendo, Sony and MS systems including portables and have a hard time naming a best. There have been some crappy ones, but they all have good games and have kept me busy. Honestly, the PC has the been the best platform.

[crisium]

SNES

I don't even consider it a competition.

[cmdrdredd]

Maybe it's me but I think I enjoyed more Sega Genesis titles than SNES titles after having owned both. I never really played Metroid and Zelda until long after the SNES was gone.

[jman19]

SNES, PSX, and of course NES

[jmarti445]

I would say Dreamcast...shenmue 1 and 2(I imported the European edition), as well as soul caliber. I'm partial to Sega though.

[Adrenaline]

SNES

[Sulaco]

I'd give a dark horse nod to the Dreamcast as well.

When you consider its effective lifespan was two, maybe three years, tops, it's amazing the library of quality, unique titles it built up in that time.
Had the stars aligned and it could have survived a full generation (5-6 years), it likely would have had a library size and depth to rival some of the best.

As it is, it's still very impressive.

[CZroe]

Originally Posted by Sulaco

SNES. And it's really not even close.

And I owned pretty much every single major console, when they were new, not bought on eBay 20 years later. My nostalgia bias is fairly "evenly" distributed then.

But the SNES library has so many utterly timeless gems. PSX is close, NES was great, but SNES is the clear winner.

Same here except I couldn't afford them at launch. How many others in this thread can say that they even have one of these connected to their TV right now?
Philips CD-I
Panasonic R.E.A.L. (or any 3DO for that matter)
Sega Master System OR Sega Genesis model 1 with Power Base Converter
Super Famicom
Turbo-Grafix 16 (well, I have the portable Turbo-Duo version sitting around)

I can't plug their power cords all in at once, but that's just a fraction of what is in my component racks right now in addition to the usual (NES, N64, Wii, etc).

[CZroe]

Originally Posted by rayfieldclement

What is the best console ever? In my opinion the best is the Sony PlayStation.

I honestly don't know how you could say any of those things. Were you even around then?!

Originally Posted by rayfieldclement

I think it has durable hardware.

Easily scratch-able games, cracking disc hubs, over-heating causing laser misalignment (having to play upside-down was extremely common with the early units). It had a reputation of being particularly UNreliable.

Originally Posted by rayfieldclement

It loads fast.

Sony used the absolute slowest optical drives available (2x) and only bumped up to 4x when 2x supplies dried up. Games had mini-games to play while they loaded. It is the perfect example of everything that is wrong with disc load times.

The GameCube, on the other hand, was Nintendo's first disc-based console and used lots of tricks to hide loads. On first party games I never saw anything take longer than a highly compressed N64 cartridge (Diddy Kong Racing level selection previews on N64 come to mind). I don't think I've ever seen a load screen on a first party game and most 3rd-party games with them only had them because they were quick and dirty unoptimized ports from other console versions that had them. I noticed how Metroid Prime was delaying a door opening for a second longer than others and realized what it was doing a long time ago and was very impressed. Even loading off a HDD, PC games could never load that seamlessly in the middle of gameplay. Sony, on the other hand, went and released the PSP with load times on a PORTABLE console. Battery life is wasted physically spinning a disc just to get to the data and even more is wasted as you wait for titles, menus, levels, etc. What a BAD format choice! I'll admit that the gaming world was more than ready for discs when the PSX came around, but the least they could have done was to integrate it into a caddy-cartridge so that the discs would not get scratched and common data could be loaded from a small ROM instead of reloaded every time (character, title, menu, etc). It would also have allowed for expansion and built-in save. If they had done this then the game wouldn't have had to freeze every time Shang Tsung changed forms in Mortal Kombat 3 and the Sega Saturn memory advantage for 2D fighters (RAM cart) could have been erased.

Originally Posted by rayfieldclement

The controllers are top notch.

The controllers are derivative. It was originally just a handled version of the SNES controller with two sets of shoulder buttons instead of one and no innovation at all. When the competition innovated, they just shoe-horned everything onto their existing pad and doubled it for symmetry. They added the dual-analog thumb-sticks and the force-motors as an afterthought. That's why the D-Pad is still prioritized on their controllers in this day and age (SO backwards!). There's a reason it took ten years for anyone else to make a dual-analog controller with a prioritized D-pad (Nintendo Wii Classic Controller). Even that is probably only because PSX/PSX were so popular in Japan but they wanted to attract those gamers and make those kinds of games seem tongue-in-cheek old ("classic") when compared to their new controllers that didn't even have dual analog.

Originally Posted by rayfieldclement

Many games would become classics.

OK, I guess I can see how you would say ONE of those things. This one is certainly true.

Originally Posted by rayfieldclement

It is also easy to use.

Huh? How was it any easier to use than anything before or after it? Now you are just fluffing it up!

[bigrash]

xbox 360

[CZroe]

Originally Posted by bigrash

xbox 360

Because it has very few exclusives destined to be classics and you can get almost all the major titles on PC or a competing console platform?

[Soundmanred]

Originally Posted by CZroe

Same here except I couldn't afford them at launch. How many others in this thread can say that they even have one of these connected to their TV right now?
Philips CD-I
Panasonic R.E.A.L. (or any 3DO for that matter)
Sega Master System OR Sega Genesis model 1 with Power Base Converter
Super Famicom
Turbo-Grafix 16 (well, I have the portable Turbo-Duo version sitting around)

I can't plug their power cords all in at once, but that's just a fraction of what is in my component racks right now in addition to the usual (NES, N64, Wii, etc).

I did back around 2000. I collected games and systems like a madman until around 2003. Boxes and tubs full of games, accessories, spare systems, wires, etc. I had multiple systems hooked up to my TV, and to monitors when it was possible. Domestic games and systems, import games and systems, common games and systems, rare games and systems, everything I could get my hands on. Luckily I bought most of it before the classic gaming craze took hold, so I got alot of it for almost nothing.
I finally sold it all off for a fortune and now I deal in arcade games as a hobby. Just bought and converted a Fast & Furious: Super Cars sit down machine so my 6 year old can drive it. Paid about $7k after shipping, but it's awesome. looking for another one so I can link them up!

I played the hell out of "classic games" in those days, and honestly got bored of them. There are a few games I still want to play once in a while, and emulation takes care of that for me.

[CZroe]

Originally Posted by Soundmanred

I did back around 2000. I collected games and systems like a madman until around 2003. Boxes and tubs full of games, accessories, spare systems, wires, etc. I had multiple systems hooked up to my TV, and to monitors when it was possible. Domestic games and systems, import games and systems, common games and systems, rare games and systems, everything I could get my hands on. Luckily I bought most of it before the classic gaming craze took hold, so I got alot of it for almost nothing.
I finally sold it all off for a fortune and now I deal in arcade games as a hobby. Just bought and converted a Fast & Furious: Super Cars sit down machine so my 6 year old can drive it. Paid about $7k after shipping, but it's awesome. looking for another one so I can link them up!

I played the hell out of "classic games" in those days, and honestly got bored of them. There are a few games I still want to play once in a while, and emulation takes care of that for me.

How should I go about trying to net Killer Instinct 1 & 2 machines? Should I look for dedicated cabinets or would it be cheaper to just get a Jamma cabinet? Do they make any dual cabinets that I can put both boards inside and save money?

[Soundmanred]

Originally Posted by CZroe

How should I go about trying to net Killer Instinct 1 & 2 machines? Should I look for dedicated cabinets or would it be cheaper to just get a Jamma cabinet? Do they make any dual cabinets that I can put both boards inside and save money?

Killer Instinct was the first cabinet I ever bought, it's my favorite arcade fighter ever. It was in bad shape, so I replaced it with a better one fairly recently.
Love KI1, hate KI2, so I never looked into anything KI2 related.
I bought a restored dedicated KI1 cab and got the CF hard drive replacement for it. It used a small hard drive for storage and these are known to go out. Here's where I ordered the replacement kit from (and they have KI2 info) :
http://www.thekillerinstinctproject.com/

[gorcorps]

Originally Posted by CZroe

Because it has very few exclusives destined to be classics and you can get almost all the major titles on PC or a competing console platform?

It at least has the best controller to date IMO. Not sure about the console itself though.

[CZroe]

Originally Posted by Soundmanred

Killer Instinct was the first cabinet I ever bought, it's my favorite arcade fighter ever. It was in bad shape, so I replaced it with a better one fairly recently.
Love KI1, hate KI2, so I never looked into anything KI2 related.
I bought a restored dedicated KI1 cab and got the CF hard drive replacement for it. It used a small hard drive for storage and these are known to go out. Here's where I ordered the replacement kit from (and they have KI2 info) :
http://www.thekillerinstinctproject.com/

Thanks. I've always entertained the idea of owning both. I hate the character design in KI2 but do like that they made the combo system more of a "system" with less random memorization of button/direction combinations (Mortal Kombat 3 and Tekken - UGH!).

I played SNES Killer Instinct on XBAND frequently. You and I should play some KI via emulator netplay. Ichinisan will play you too.

[Anarchist420]

Originally Posted by Geosurface

The revenge of Shinobi had motion video in it too.

Anyway, the answer to the OP's question is:

Sega Saturn, Super NES, and Game Boy Advance.

The runners up would be PS2, DS, and Gamecube even though they sucked in some way or another in terms of hardware they had good games.

Japanese games have not been made as much with the PS3, Xbox360, and Wii so this current gen is one of the worst (I blame the bad American and European games on IP more than anything else). I worry about people like Yuzo Koshiro, Naofumi Hataya, Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka, and IGA all the time... they're good people who make good products.

[A5]

SNES or PS2, depending on your tastes.

[cmdrdredd]

Originally Posted by gorcorps

It at least has the best controller to date IMO. Not sure about the console itself though.

Depends, for some titles I prefer the PS3 controller's tighter layout.

Originally Posted by Sulaco

I'd give a dark horse nod to the Dreamcast as well.

When you consider its effective lifespan was two, maybe three years, tops, it's amazing the library of quality, unique titles it built up in that time.
Had the stars aligned and it could have survived a full generation (5-6 years), it likely would have had a library size and depth to rival some of the best.

As it is, it's still very impressive.

Plus the PS2 couldn't do 2D sprites as well for fighting games. So the Dreamcast had all the fighters.