SNES
Gameboy Color
Gamecube
Switch (Limbo I guess. It could move up or down because it is too early to tell. Loving it right now though)
N64
Gameboy Advanced
Gameboy
Wii
NES
3DS
WiiU
Wow, listing the systems out in a ranking really surprised me. I absolutely loved playing the NES back in the day, but it ended up being in my bottom three. After that though it feels like a drop off. I liked the 3ds a lot, but it doesn't even compete with the NES. Overall the WiiU was just a huge disappointment for me, but I still had fun with multiple games. GB Color almost edged out the SNES just from sheer playing time, but there are just too many memories of playing the SNES at home.
I did my home console list on p.7 of the thread. Now here's my handheld list. This was tougher and to be fair there's barely any difference between these, but anyway:
1. Game Boy Advance: Don't really know what to say about it... It's the GBA... It's great... Obviously. In a way it was like the SNES Mini before the SNES Mini. I think the original model is the best looking handheld ever (just wish it had better screen brightness). And the Game Boy Micro is possibly the ideal handheld, as you can genuinely fit it in your pocket. Whereas most handheld consoles don't really comfortably fit in your pocket unless you're wearing giant clown pants.
2. Game Boy (including Game Boy Color, which I consider to be an enhanced redesign ala DSi or N3DS, rather than a whole new console generation). What can you say about the original Game Boy? It's awesome. It's an icon. Also, I got it on my 12th birthday, which was not only a generally happy time, but it was the first console that was properly mine. Up to that point the NES and SNES had been shared between my and my older brother, so I guess it kind of felt extra special to me.
3. 3DS: I guess I have to separate the console and it's library (which I think are great) from its big feature (which I don't think is great). So maybe I should put 2DS instead. In any case, I could never really tolerate the 3D. It's certainly a very impressive effect, but it's not really worth it for all the ghosting, strobing, blurring and general headaches it caused me. Even on the supposedly better New 3DS I didn't notice much improvement, unless "slightly less awful" is a selling point. I've had turned off since the first few weeks of the console's life. It was basically an albatross around its neck from day one. However, the library it's amassed and its lifespan has been pretty impressive given the difficult circumstances it was in. I did think it was too bloated with pointless features. One of the things I really liked when I booted up the Switch for the first time was how simple and streamlined it all was. It almost felt like a pure games consoles of old (which Nintendo fans have often boasted about their recent consoles compared to the competition, even though they totally haven't been. TVii anyone?) Also, as with everything that features them, I have to mark it down for having motion controls. I guess handhelds being a refuge from the motion control plague was never going to last that long (oh hello Switch...). Thankfully it was rare, but still, having to move around the console/screen that you're actually looking at is really annoying (especially when you're also trying to push a completely unstable 3D effect...)! Oh and it had way too many iterations (though I guess the 2DS/2DS XL were unforeseen).
4. DS: Feels very wrong putting the DS last. Again, there's like about 1% difference in these. I suppose as someone who's generally against gimmicky stuff, the DS could be pretty gimmicky. Though I actually really liked the touch screen (when used appropriately). It did open up some new exciting gameplay opportunities (even just something like Pac-Pix blew my mind. Drawing stuff that came to life was like some sort of childhood dream come true). I never really cared much about the dual screen aspect. Almost every DS game I played could have easily been achieved with a single touch screen. It always made me laugh when people said dual screens "reduce screen clutter", when it basically just doubles the amount of screen clutter as they now have two screens that they need to fill with pointless junk. The thing I really didn't like though was the blowing and yelling into the microphone stuff, which was thankfully very rare (again, I'm having to nit-pick here), but still appeared enough times to erode my love for the console. It's the crudest and clunkiest of all the crude, clunky gimmicks they've clutched at in recent years. Believe it or not, my hatred of motion controls pales into insignificance compared to blowing/yelling into the microphone... Not just because I was embarrassed to do it in public, because I was embarrassed to do it when I was completely alone. But anyway, obviously the DS is still a legendary console, but something has to come last.
Dear Lord this was a difficult list to put together. I've own every Nintendo console and handheld ever made, safe for the Virtual Boy. I've gone through every console's line-up and made a top 10 games for each in order to make this list. I won't be putting the Switch on here yet, but I have a feeling it will reach number 1 on my list if Nintendo can keep it up like they've been doing so far.
01. NES
02. N64
03. 3DS
04. GB/GBC
05. SNES
06. GC
07. Wii
08. WiiU
09. GBA
10. DS
1). NES: How could this not be my number 1? It basically promoted my interest in gaming into a full-blown, life-long passion! Besides, how could any console that gave birth to Castlevania, Final Fantasy, Contra, Dragon Quest, Mega Man, the Kunio series, and so many others not be at the top of the list?
2). SNES: Just a slight notch below the NES. I remember detassling, during the summer of '93, so I could get the Link to the Past bundle. I was one of the few kids I knew who had both Sega Genesis and SNES. As much as I loved Sega, I had to give the nod to SNES. I clocked so many hours on Super Metroid, Final Fantasy III (VI), Chrono Trigger, Prince of Persia (if you haven't played Konami's SNES version, you missed out), S.O.S., Mega Man X, Mortal Kombat 2 (I remember feeling like it was virtually identical to the arcade, at the time).
3). DS: Talk about a bottomless well of gems, especially if you're a fan of JRPG's! Radiant Historia, Kirby: Canvas Curse, New Super Mario Bros, GTA: Chinatown, Sonic Rush, Sonic Chronicles, Retro Game Challenge, the Dragon Quest remakes, The World Ends With You, Trauma Center, Scribblenauts, Ghost Trick, a trilogy of ace Castlevania games, Professor Layton, 9P9H9D, Elite Beat, Metroid Prime Pinball, Rhythm Heaven....man, I'm so tempted to rate the DS higher!
4). Gamecube: This was a criminally underrated console that had more top-flight games than it was ever given credit for! Soul Caliber II, Resident Evil 4, Viewtiful Joe (one of my personal favorites), Baten Kaitos, Tales of Symphonia, Paper Mario TYD. It gave the world Pikmin, (arguably) the best installment in the Smash Bros series, my personal favorite Mario game (flaws and all, I love Mario Sunshine), etc.
5). Wii. This console is one in which I have a love/hate thing going. There were some absolutely stellar games (both Galaxy titles, Punch Out, Xenoblade Chronicles, Trauma Team, Sin and Punishment, Excitebots), but there were also first party disappointments (Twilight Princess didn't impress me at all, and Skyward Sword was very average), cheap cash ins, and dumbed down ports (Dead Rising had no business ever appearing on Wii). It had a really awesome selection of fun third party titles (Little King's Story, A Boy and His Blob, Mega Man 9, Zack and Wiki, etc. I loved the console, but I have little-to-no desire to go back to it.
6). Game Boy Advance. I should have liked this console far more than I did, but it was far too inundated with SNES/NES/Sega ports to really impress me. It had a few great games (Castlevania Harmony/Aria, Warioware, Tony Hawk, etc.), but it's library never really impressed me.
7). N64. This was the conosle that (temporarily) made me abandon Nintendo and get a Playstation. Part of the appeal of the NES/SNES, at least for me, was the perfect mix of first AND third party titles. When it came to the 32/64 bit era, the Playstation seemed like a natural progression of the SNES (which, knowing what we know, makes perfect sense). The 64 had great NINTENDO software, but PS1 had great Squaresoft, Konami, Capcom, Namco, Enix, Crystal Dynamics, Activision, and EA software. It was, sadly, no comparison (even though N64 games definitely aged better).
8). Wii U. This console simply bored me, and it holds the dubious honor of having zero games that I saw all the way through (well, until Breath of the Wild anyway). Did it have great software? Sure, but I wasn't compelled to buy it. It felt like an empty console.
9). Game Boy. Apart from Link's Awakening, Final Fantasy Adventure (Mana), Final Fantasy Legend 2, and (maybe) Mercenary Force, I have always hated this handheld! I've never understood the praise for the Mario Land games (boring garbage), Castlevania Adventure was unplayably slow, etc. I always preferred the Lynx.
*I refuse to place a ranking on Switch, due to how new it is, and the fact that it hasn't had time to develop a real legacy.
The SNES was the center of my childhood and I still love playing it today. The 3DS has a lot of things I'm interested in, plus ports/remakes of games I like from other systems. As for all the others, it was difficult to put them in order because I enjoyed them all. The only ones that I didn't play much of were the Wii and Wii U, there wasn't a lot of things on either console I was really into.
1) 3DS XL/New 2DS XL - My gaming preference has turned handheld for over 10 years, this just recently in 2017 became my favorite Nintendo hardware due to the strong selection of games i got in the latter half of 2016 and 2017, i still got a back catalog of 3 AAA games to complete. Before the Switch if you really wanted the best that Nintendo had to offer after the Wii (not my opinion, i didn't enjoy the Wii that much), then you needed to be on the 3DS (in my opinion the showing by Nintendo on the 3DS was much better than the Wii, but thats my opinion). Lots of people say that the Switch saved Nintendo, i agree with this to a degree, because had it not been for the 3DS and its turning around of fortune when the big N needed it most, during the height of the smart phone boom no less, there very likely wouldn't be a Nintendo (as we know it) right now, Nintendo managed to survive the WiiU blow purely on the merit of how good the 3DS has done, at it shows in the sheer quality of 3DS games available.
2) Nintendo DS Lite - I own a Wii but it hasn't had power run through it in 8 or so years so theres no telling if it would even work now. The reason for that decisions lies mostly with this little piece of handheld kit (and that the Wii was actually quite S***), now i was still console gaming on my 360 up until 2015 but my Nintendo console love was largely replaced by my love for Nintendo handhelds with the DS and the 3DS after it, it all started here though, and it will continue with the Nintendo Switch when i purchase that later this year. i own around 30 games for the DS, most of which i have beat, but i'll always have a back catalog here, just way too many games.
3) Nintendo 64 - My first gaming console that i bought with my own money, the first gaming console that got me buying Nintendo mags from my local shop, my first console that made me get a paper route job just so i can purchase a new game every month. I purchased this when i was 14 years old with my own birthday money. I still own it, with all the games, if i owned rose tinted glasses this would be #1. Fortunately i do not own rose tinted glasses, as great as these games are, many of them are unplayable today and a few of them were unplayable at the time (Carmageddon).
4) Snes - me and my brother got this for xmas, this was huge to us, we also got it with 3 games plus Super Mario All Star, unfortunately i have bitter sweet memories here, i loved the Snes as did my brother, we owned over 40 games for it, unfortunately my mother around when i was 20 felt that it would be better off given to charity, for no reason other than she hadn't seen us use it, the memories of finding out months after she had donated it that our old games box with the Snes, master system, mega drive and many handhelds + hundreds of games had been given away to charity is still too raw and painful for me to think about. Which caused me to donate my mothers entire makeup box/classic music collection on the merit that i never see her putting on her makeup or listening to those old classic's (both of which she did in private). Suffice to say me and my mother although patched things up now, took us more than a year of no contact to overcome that particular family tiff.
5) GameCube i bought long after its release in 2005, there was some great games for it, none more than Smash Bro's, but at this stage my gaming preference had already started to move handheld, i got the DS about 6 or 7 months after i purchased this, for some odd reason i continued to buy games for my GameCube long after i would even consider playing them, most likely for collection purposes.
6) Nes - Got this for my birthday, it was great but lets face it, these things had a life span of 1 or 2 years before they stopped working, i have vivid memories of my father having to purchase the 3rd one in 4 years, i didn't bother with the Classic Edition because it has no game on it that i would enjoy playing (id get it if it had Contra, TMNT and Dragon Quest i may well have considered it)
7) Game Boy Advanced/Wii - i loved this thing (GBA), but during its time i only really played one genre of game on it, that was Pokemon Red, Blue, Gold and Silver (granted i played these games to death). Outside of those games i never really explored anything else on the GBA at that time, while those are solid games, my memories of HeartGold and SoulSilver on the DS are better.
8) Nintendo Wii/GBA - I loved this about as much as the GBA, i can't decide which i liked more though, for entirely different reasons, both only saw maybe 4 games, my GBA saw 4 different versions of the same game, but i poured in crazy amounts of hours into all of them, this is where it becomes hard to decide which goes where between these two, because the Wii has been the most fun i have ever had with a video games system at a party with friends, by far the most, in fact you could still get a room full of party guests excited with Wii Bowling, even today, but outside of that, the wii has nothing of real substance to offer, Skyward Sword was good apart from the annoying motion control's and Xenoblade Chronicles was good but any desire i had to play the Wii by the time these two games rolled around was looooong gone, these are games the Wii needed to start with not end with, at that stage it was a case of "too little too late".
9) Game Boy - This should defo be higher up on the list but the reason its not is down to 2 reasons, one is more practical in that i do not own rose tinted glasses, i enjoyed it at the time but less than my Nes and much less than my Snes or Mega drive. The second reason was cost or time needed to maintain this, this is all about battery life, having to recharge batteries or replace batteries. I was young (between 8 and 13), rechargeable batteries cost a lot and a recharger for them cost nearly as much as a game boy itself. at some stage in my late teens i managed to acquire a recharger and batteries mainly for my GBA at the time, but this gives a clear indication of how hard it was to get my parents to fork out all that extra money for items to play a game with. This is something that rarely gets mentioned, but there needs to be a shout out to us kids who had to find batteries while playing in the street or get our gran ma to buy us some, only to bring 6 or 7 hours of gameplay before dying again.
10 Nintendo WiiU - It took me a while to laugh at the WiiU after purchasing it, mainly because i felt burned by the money i lost after selling it, but since i started laughing i haven't really been able to stop. Every company is entitled to moments of complete madness, moments that make every human turn their heads in a confused bewilderment and for Nintendo that moment was the Virtual Boy... so what on earth the WiiU was is a total mystery to gods responsible for mysteries. To be fair to Nintendo, they didn't know they had actually dropped the ball about a good 2-3 years before WiiU released, gamers had abandoned the Wii and even the casual gamers who had made that thing the success it never should have been had started using the Wii as a paper weight. Nintendo was totally oblivious to this fact and who can blame them, they had sat on top of an uninterrupted dominance of gaming both handheld and home console during the golden generation of gaming, the fact they had lost the home console market long before they even noticed it was gone can hardly be blamed on them when they knew that mobile phones where coming and giants such as Apple and Samsung were taking no prisoners.
In terms of how much I have enjoyed them personally - not nessicarily which I consider functionally the best/having the best games.
Game Boy Color
Game Boy Advance
Nintendo Switch
Nintendo 3DS
Nintendo DS
Gamecube
N64
Wii
NES
Wii U
SNES
If things continue going as they have been, I expect the Switch to pass up to the number 1 spot.
@Razer Great write up. That whole SNES/make-up drama must have been rough.
I can imagine the Gameboy battery situation was a right pain for a kid to manage, but don't forget you were in the minority lucky enough to have one at all.
You guys had me at blood and semen.
What better way to celebrate than firing something out of the pipe?
1) 3DS/New 3DS XL
2) Game Boy Advance
3) DS/DSi
4) Wii U
5) Nintendo 64
6) GameCube
And here's why:
#6: GameCube
Honestly, the only reason why the GameCube is so low on the list is that I just didn't play it much. That's not the console's fault, it''s just that I never owned some of the GameCube's best games. Stuff like Wind Waker, Mario Sunshine, Smash Bros. Melee, etc. Those are all awesome games that I never played, and as a result, I never truly experienced what the GameCube had to offer. Maybe someday I'll play them.
#5: Nintendo 64
The Nintendo 64 was a pretty great system. Like the GameCube, I never played it that much, but the games that I did play were really fun. Oddly enough, my favorite game from the N64 was probably Bomberman Hero, despite the fact that I played utter masterpieces like Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Star Fox 64, etc. But the best part of the N64 was the multiplayer. Anyone who's played a round of multiplayer Goldeneye could tell you that there's nothing else quite like it.
Also, the N64 controller is weird as heck and not very good.
#4 Wii U
The Wii U was a pretty phenomenal failure for Nintendo, honestly. It's not a bad system by any means, don't get me wrong, but Nintendo clearly didn't handle it well. That's besides the point, though. The Wii U had some pretty great games on it, like Splatoon, Smash 4, and Mario Kart 8. But my favorite game for it was definitely Mario Maker. Not only did it actually use the Gamepad well, making and playing Mario levels was such a crazy unique experience. More importantly, it was fun!
#3: DS/DSi
Now we start getting into the really good systems.
I've always liked handhelds more than home consoles. Sitting down in front of a TV/monitor for hours at a time is fun and all, but I like to take my game with me wherever I go. So naturally, the DS was perfect for me. Not only does it have an impressive library of games, the dual screens and touch controls made for some really great games. If I had to pick a favorite... well, I wouldn't be able to. There were just so many good games for that thing!
I'd also like to give the DSi a mention. I rarely see anyone talk about it on the internet, and that makes me sad because the DSi was the iteration of the DS that I spent the most time with, aside from the 3DS. I can't be the only one who remembers Flipnote Studio, right?
#2: Game Boy Advance
Specifically, the Game Boy Advance SP.
Where do even begin with the GBA. I could start off with the fact that it was my first video game system period, or that it's one of the most comfortable handhelds I've ever owned, or that the GBA was so good that the original DS was backwards compatible with it, but I think I'll just let the list of amazing games that this thing had speak for itself.
Mega Man Zero series
Mega Man Battle Network series
Mega Man & Bass
Super Mario World
Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy VI
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Metroid: Zero Mission
Metroid Fusion
WarioWare Twisted!
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
#1: 3DS/New 3DS XL
I was going to put the GBA in the top spot, but I decided to take off my nostalgia goggles for a moment and go with what I think is the objectively better handheld. I've long since put down my 3DS, and I have no reason to pick it back up again now that my Switch will be arriving soon, but the times I spent with it were unforgettable. The 3DS was a genuinely amazing system with an equally amazing library of games. I'm sure most of you know that already, so I won't bore you by listing off my favorites again. No, the main reason why I think so highly of the 3DS isn't the games...
It's the people I was playing those games with.
I'm an introverted person, and growing up I was always really shy. I was the weird kid who sat in the back of the class and din't talk to anyone. But there was a time in my life where I was starting to come out of my shell, and that was also when I was playing my 3DS a lot. Now, I'm not saying my 3DS cured my social awkwardness. But playing multiplayer Mario Kart 7 at summer camp, posting stupid jokes on Miiverse (may it rest in peace)... things like that helped me feel like I wasn't just a lonely kid in my room playing video games. I was a part of a community. And it gets a lot easier to talk to people and make friends when you have a common interest to bond over.
I'm fully expecting the Switch to be my new favorite Nintendo system once I actually get my hands on it, but I'll never forget the good times I had with my 3DS.
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Topic: Rank the Nintendo systems you have owned
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