Probably either the NES or the SNES. The NES felt the most "magical" at the time. Before the NES, consoles had games that were general clunky and not particularly fun and controllers that were all over the place. There was a good reason that the NES revived the console industry. The SNES just happens to be the home of many of my favorite games of all time. If we're going newer, then I suppose the PS1 or PS3 (before Sony ruined it) would be my choices.

I wasted many hours on my PS2. So much ratchet and clank.

PS3 was the last revolutionary console imo. It's my favorite as well. It was focused on gaming but I could watch porn on it too! Plus it had blue ray!

Do handhelds count? 3DS.

The Wii.

It is such an underpowered console, with only a handful of must have titles if that.

But man those titles hold up. Even my little gen alphers love it and get into it. Its mostly just a wii sports machine but its still going strong even in this era of mobile and AAA gaming.

I have a bunch of old consoles but the Wii is the only one that gets regular play without needing convincing.

Very fond of the PS1 as it was my primary console during childhood, especially the many JRPGs of the era but also other games like Ape Escape, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Syphon Filter, Soul Reaver 1, I go back to these every now and then.

The OG Playstation had, by far, the biggest collection of games that I consider my favourites.

Probably GBA or PS2. I was a teenager and started working part time jobs, so I had money to buy the games I wanted. I was also getting a bit older, so my parents were relaxing my restrictions a bit. I couldn't play RPGs as a kid since apparently anything having to do with demons or magic would turn me into a cultist.

Special mention for the N64 as well. I have countless memories of playing 4-player games with friends, primarily Goldeneye (though Perfect Dark was better and I will die on that hill).

3DS, no contest. Even factoring in PCs, Steam Deck is a bit behind.

I'm past the phase of daily playing it, but still don't usually leave home without it, and I feel I'm only halfway through games I might be interested in after almost a decade. I just found Professor Layton this year.

September 1997, my dad gets us a second hand Sega Megadrive from who knows where, with Sonic and a couple other games. My mind is blown. All these gorgeous, rapidly-moving images... some time later we get a stack of games at the flea market : Sonic 2, Coolspot, Rocket Knight Adventures (gorgeous platformers), Hellfire (a horizontal scrolling space shmup), D&D, an F1 game (maybe Senna?), Last Battle (impossible to beat), Streets of Rage 1&2, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat... I have most of these installed on my computer with Romstation today

For me it's the N64. I know it's a slightly dubious pick, but there's something alluring about those early 3D graphics. No one knew what they were doing yet and it produced some of the most lovable jank.

PC.

My PC.

But if it has to be a console console, N64. Easy.

All of them, they had their draw backs and benefits but allowed me to enjoy a hobby I loved.

Without factoring in nostalgia I think I'll have to go with the Switch. Its library including rerelease of older systems' titles is hard to match. I played so many cool games on it that I still think about a lot years later.

Xenoblade 1, 2, 3, X
Dragon Quest XI
Shin Megami Tensei V
Monster Hunter Rise
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate
Smash Ultimate
Breath of the Wilds
Mario Odyssey
Mario Kart 8
New Horizons

and countless others. Then there's the whole handheld/console hybrid aspect of it. For years I would exclusively play it handheld because I didn't even have a TV. Crazy good system, just a shame it marked the beginning of Nintendo leaning heavy into their anti-consumer and profit maximization BS. Not planning on getting a Switch 2 for a long time.

Mega Drive. Home of Sonic, Streets of Rage, Toe Jam & Earl and many other great games

SNES (Super Famicom?) is the one I think of when I think "console".

N64 gave me the best Xmas ever playing Goldeneye with my 2 brothers. 4 controller ports! No more fighting eachother with "winner stops on" rules.

Xbox 360 takes it overall i think. Shipped with a headset and Xbox Live started mass adoption with internet speeds actually making it playable and not a complete laggy mess. There was a sense of, not community, but shared wonder and optimism that I've not encountered since.

For me, I think it's the Megadrive/Genesis.

I was a Nintendo kid, originally. We had a NES and a Gameboy in our house, and I loved them. But during a visit to the US in the summer of 1993, I got to spend pretty much the whole of the 4th of July at a family friend's house in Massachusetts, playing Genesis games with a bunch of American kids. That cemented it in a special place in my mind.

I have to give it to the Nintendo DS. Absolutely incredible library, much of it too unique to play anywhere else.

The SNES will always be my favorite console. It's got some stinkers in the library, but the best games of the console still frequently rank among the best games ever made

N64. Such a solid lineup of games.

The OG Xbox was so good.

Modding it was surprisingly easy, all you needed was a memory card (or a DIY adapter for plugging in a USB drive into a controller port) and a copy of Splinter Cell.

Not only would this allow you to rip games and play them directly from your hard drive, but it also opened up the world of emulators and homebrew apps & games. Shoutout to the xbins IRC channel.

XBMC was amazing, it allowed me to watch all my legally obtained media without having to burn DVDs. Crazy to think that would eventually lead to Plex, which I still use to this day.

I also played around with Damn Small Linux on the Xbox, which is what got me interested in Linux in the first place.

Now that I think about it, tinkering around with that console ultimately led to my love of homelabbing and Linux - I now run 9 servers in my utility room, and only use Linux on all my machines.

Thanks Microslop!

The SNES. Hands down.

Steam deck. Does it count? Plays everything you see here and more.

Consoles are kinda meh. Can't do much with them.

That said I think the ps2 with network and hardrive, then the ps3, then the wii. I like them all for what they could be made to do and have one of each.

But really: all superceded by the steam deck. (Ended up selling my PSP, no need for it anymore).

Poor N64 and its fucked up joystick get no love

I would have to go with either the Steam Deck or the Oculus Quest. But realistically I've spent orders of magnitude more time on the Steam Deck so I'll go with that. But both were revolutionary in a way that no other console approached. Sure, the PS2 was great, but it was just a PlayStation with better graphics, and the PlayStation was AMAZING, but in my mind it was a Nintendo with better graphics.

Gamecube probably holds the most special place in my heart. More for the games that released for it than for the console itself.

ps2.

I loved the ps3 don't take me wrong, but the ps2 just had that nostolgia and legacy aspects of it. The splash screen, the menu design, the simplicity. It was so nice.

Steam Deck?

Playstation 2

Playstation 1

Over 4000 games, many of which are weirdly experimental because "how to make 3D games" wasn't codified yet, and CDs gave developers about 200 times more space than they had on the biggest cartridges from the previous gen - not to mention the lower cost of production.

Also, most of the soundtracks are absolute bangers.

Edit: another point - growing up poor, I still got to experience a lot of the PS1's library because of the abundance of demo discs.

N64 for me partially nostalgia but I still love the cartridges even though i know they are sub optimal and the controller and the games in general are still top tier to me.

Nintendo DS

That era was so good that Nintendo didn't even know what they had until they screwed it up and lost to modern smartphones.

Looking at it just purely because of the console capabilities itself, the Wii was the best console.

Most of what the Wii did, no other system console or PC replicates well even to this day. They did this while undercutting other consoles on price, still putting out solid entries to their core IPs, and broadening gaming to new gamers.

All of the other consoles I would want to put at number 1 really are only great because of the library of games they had. Most of those libraries would have been better off if they were not forced to be on proprietary hardware.

Not a console but the psp, it was so hackable and customizable and one of the first handhelds that did 3d and emulation well.

As a console, probably the n64, mostly cause the game changing factor compared to its predecessors and sick ass titles. Nintendo sucks balls now and I dont buy any of their shit but it was cool back then.

Real hard to beat the Sega in my book. Not only was it an amazing console on its own, but you could attach other consoles to it. Slap that 32x on top. Slide the Sega CD on the side. Who could beat that? Plus the Sega Channel? I mean come on.

Sega Saturn and PlayStation Vita are honestly my favorites

PS Vita or PS2.

PS2 mainly for the games, so many fantastic ones I still play and replay decades later. Keeping track per platform the owned-played ratio and how many liked games in absolute numbers each has for me, the PS2 is still king in both. Even lesser known games I generally have a blast with.

On the Vita, its library isn't as strong as the PS2's, even if many of my favorite games were found through the Vita. But it compensates at being a fantastic console to mod. While I know people modding consoles do it for playing ilegitimate copies of games, if you ignore that, its mods still give you a lot to use the console for, possibly risking seeing the console dying in your hands while you read an ebook on it, try some homebrew ROM from Itchio, play with PSP homebrews, etc. Also it's a bit of a learning curve and technical information on it is sparse, but learning how it ticks makes tinkering second nature (...unlike the PS3 =.=").

I recently modded a Wii and I must say it's starting to become one of my favorite.