Topic: Worst console you owned

I don't think I owned a bad console, but I did get some terrible games for the Mega Drive. It was probably the last system I had where I didn't buy most of the games myself, rather than get them as gifts. The one that sticks out as being particularly bad was a fighting game where the characters were made up of balls - I think it might've actually been called 'Ballz'. It was awful.

I don't have a console I haven't enjoyed to some extent but the worst ones would be N-Gage and Wii U.

The few games I have for N-Gage are all great and I've beaten all of them multiple times. N-Gage's real problem is the form factor. It's no GBA, despite it trying to be one. It also wasn't a cool thing to own.

As for Wii U, the GamePad is bulky, ugly and attracts finger prints and dust. It was great for Nintendo Land and maybe couple other first party games but that's pretty much it. The device is also really slow. It takes long to turn the thing on and it takes just as long if not longer to start a game. By the time I'd be ready to play a game, I would've already booted up my 3DS, started Picross and solved my first puzzle.

I dont think any console is bad, however, the most underwhelming console I've owned was definitely the Xbox 1.
The lack of big titles pushed me across to Sony and the PS4 which was a fantastic machine and I ended up trading my xbox in as it wasn't getting used.
I came back to xbox this gen after impulse buying a Series X when it was hard to get hold of and I spotted one in the wild.
Gamepass is also such ridiculous value for such an amazing library of games it has made my xbox the most played current gen console, the PS5 and Switch are pretty much just used to play any exclusives that grab my attention.

Well, I guess mine would be Virtual Boy, but I really don't care about what everyone else says, I really liked that bizarre little gadget.

Not really a console, but anyone else get one of those Walmart controllers that have like 20 games on it and you hook it up to the TV? That's the worst console I've eve rplayed on
The bots in the fake battleship cheated

The worst is a cheap famiclone and SNES mini (cause it's more emulator then console). If we talk about normal consoles, then It's Wii. I just hate motion control. And I never owned something like Virtual Boy, Wii U or Xbox One. I'm sure, that they more worse then Wii.

Worst: PS5 (mediocre AAA games library, ugly as hell)

Meh 1: XsX (mediocre AAA games library, but some rare goldies in Game Pass, beautiful)
Meh 2: PS4 (sudden decline in quality in videogames, but the production values remain impressive)

Best 1: Switch (The All-In-One games machine, excellent product focus)
Best 2: SNES (The golden age of console games for a JRPG fan)
Best 3: PS2 (THIS is the millennium leap in gaming!)
Best 4: X360 (A Brave New World, for better or worse)
Best 5: PS1 (The cool kid in the neighborhood)
Best 6: Dreamcast (Cool kid's friend, the lovable weirdo kid)
Best 7: Wii (gaming for the masses, Dare To Be Different)

Honourable mentions:
Megadrive (ahh, the rad 90s...), NGC (Nintendo's experiment...), WiiU (... continues), NES (HISTORY!), Atari VCS (I swear I started smoking cigars while playing this thing)

@WaveBoy Beautiful post, take a bow 👏 The section about Wii, DS and 3DS... bells were just dinging "Yes!" in my head.

That said, I have to challenge you on this:

Knowing Nintendo's penchant for incorporating its past into its future, I would not be writing off the chances of Nintendo ever revisiting 3D or VR.

My worst console?

At the time of writing, I think it has to be my PS4 Pro.

It's not a console I've used a lot, partly because I prefer portable gaming, but the console shoots itself in the foot massively because each time I've turned it on I'm forced to sit through a system update, then when I go to play my most frequently played PS4 game, Gran Turismo Sport, the ****ing **** thing insists on forcing a ****ing game update that some ****ing genius ****head decided means the whole game has to reinstall over itself, which takes a stupid amount of time and turns the whole attempt to just turn the ****er on and play a ****ing game into the most infuriatingly **** experience you could fathom for an entertainment device. Bravo Sony, bravo... you ****ing ****heads.

I'm fairly sure I could set it up to download and install updates in sleep mode or something, but as its only ever been an occasional occurrence to want to play on it, I'm not leaving it in sleep mode indefinitely and letting god-knows-what-and-how-many updates get installed without my knowledge.

Just ****.

Worst Nintendo Console: vanilla Wii U . I enjoyed every Nintendo console to varying degrees, so in this case I consider it the least great, not outright horrible. It had some great games- I definitely had fun with it and did not regret actually buying it altogether. However, the flaws of the Wii U were/are massive for me. The Gamepad has terrible battery life, the distance limits enacted on the gamepad are finicky and frustrating, and the console was basically dead for me after Twilight Princess HD released in early 2016, not even ~3.5 years into the console's lifespan, and ~1.5 years after I got mine. Notable third party support almost completely dried up in 2013, and no official backward compatibility with GameCube stung after seeing launch PS3 offer BC to both PS2 and PS1 games. Several Nintendo series were partially or completely MIA, compared to previous consoles and the Switch. The menus, although having that 2000s/2010s Nintendo charm, were slow too. Every Nintendo console has its share of flaws for sure, but Wii U just had the culmination of the largest ones, for my tastes.

Worst Nintendo handheld: Solely on the quality of the screen, the original brick 1989 Game Boy. Even back then in its heyday, I recognized that it was a TERRIBLE screen and getting the right light angles+contrast settings were very frequently a nuisance. I adored some games of the Game Boy itself such as Link's Awakening, Mario Land 2, Pokemon Red, Tetris, G&W Gallery and the Donkey Kong games; I also like the feel of the buttons plus the colorways. It's surprisingly more comfortable to hold as an adult now. One of my hobby goals is to learn soldering skills and replace the OG melted spinach screen with a new, modern backlit colorized screen (same goals with Game Boy Pocket, Color, and launch GBA as well), to give them new life.

Worst non-Nintendo console: a plug-n-play Atari joystick console from the 2000s. I've tried, but I just really cannot get into most Atari 2600 games. It's not that I dislike all pre-NES/Master System generation games or extremely simplistic/primitive games- although picky, I do like several original arcade games from the early 80s that I discovered as an adult and I also have some Arcade Archives games on Switch, also some "neo-faux" Atari games like the minigames in Timesplitters 2 were quite fun. I suppose Atari is just not my thing. I disliked the build of the plug-n-play joystick as well, and the video output was very poor imo, disregarding the age of the games. I might get a little more enjoyment playing the original wooden 1978 Atari 2600 system.

Worst overall handheld game device I've ever had were the 90s' Tiger Electronic handhelds; I had 1 for sure, maybe 2. Don't get me wrong, as a very young kid I had fun with them, but I'm inclined to agree with AVGN on them now, unlike Game Boy games which I enjoy to this day. I rarely touched the Tiger handhelds for more than 5 minutes after I got Game Boy Pocket/Color etc. I liked the case art and the goofy buttons more than the games themselves; they felt more like collectors' display items than as games after time. When it comes to those really old LCD one-game systems like Tigers and the 80's Game and Watch systems, I think Nintendo had the right idea with the Game and Watch Galleries on the original Game Boy+Color-- remake+bundle a bunch into a single game, with new gameplay twists/graphics/sound while simultaneously including the untouched classic versions and a little unlockable history/gallery to round out the whole game packages.

Worst mini console/repro: vanilla Playstation 1 Mini (2018). Paltry list of games that are missing some of the best PS1 games, the North American console has the PAL versions of games for some reason which run slower/have some glitches, only has part of the iconic PS1 startup logo+sound, and the controllers were the original d-pad-only ones with no analog sticks.

The worst one I ever had was, I think it was called, the R-Type. It was this weird thing you strapped to your head and it displayed an LED video game on a reflective lens of some kind. Think of the Virtual Boy, minus the neat little 3D stereoscopic thing. I forget how I had it, but thankfully my family didn't buy it, it was donated by a friend.