What are your top 10 favorite video game consoles/handhelds/computers?

[Kriven]

I've been thinking about platform preference a lot lately. In the past I would try to choose a "favorite platform" based on its library, but with backwards compatibility being kind of all over the place and so many games these days being on everything (even moreso than in the past I would say, since back in the SNES and Genesis era you would have say Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on both consoles but they would actually be different games, and emulation is now exceedingly accurate) that doesn't seem like a legitimate position. Lately I've been looking at things like controllers, which ones do I prefer, what is the primary delivery system for games, etc. when deciding on preferred consoles, but I haven't really put too much thought into it. Let's see.


Fifteen minutes have passed.

I've come to the conclusion that it's somewhat silly to favor a specific platform when isolated from its library. You can say "Hey, I like the Wii because of motion controls" or "I like the PS3 because it uses Blu-ray discs instead of DVDs" but at the end of the day there isn't a whole lot of difference. Yes, the controllers matter--they matter enough that I chose to support Xbox One over PlayStation 4, but in most cases the controller is only superficially different. It's a different size, a different shape, has a different D-Pad, but with modern consoles the layout is the same across all of them. Only first-party developers build games for their controllers, and even then the gimmick is usually halted after the first year or so. Old consoles with interesting controls (such as the Genesis) often see their titles ported to modern consoles with more traditional controllers--or even the PC, which allows you to use whatever controller you feel like configuring. The only two platforms which offer experiences that are unique to themselves are the Wii and the DS family. In the case of the DS family that's primarily because it's very difficult to port those games to other devices without seriously changing the entirety of the game. With the Wii it's because of forced game design decisions most of the time (such as waggling in Donkey Kong Country Returns). There are a few experiences which depend on motion controls, but for the most part their inclusion is hacky or superficial.

The only reason anybody upgrades to the newest console is because of the lack of a unified delivery format for video games (and in PC where that isn't a problem, it's because eventually the games become so demanding that new hardware is necessary to operate them). For the most part end-users have no idea about what's going on with the guts of a system. To most people a console is a block that plugs into your TV and a controller with two sticks, a d-pad, four shoulder buttons and four face buttons. All the same. Even the Switch. The Switch you can at least take with you. Anyway, point is, consoles don't offer tremendously different experiences between them. My favorite console is going to be whichever one lets me play the most games with a control setup that suits my tastes and with the least overall financial investment and manual hassle. It would have been easy for me to pick one in years past. I could have said "The Wii U, because I can play almost every Nintendo game that has ever mattered on it." I could have said "The DS Lite, because I can play GBA on it as well" and my God if they had simply allowed it to handle older Game Boy games that would have been great.

But ultimately, almost three decades into my life and the majority of that time being a gamer, having used it all from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Switch, I have to say that I'm just disenchanted with closed platforms. Disenchanted with the proprietary delivery systems, disenchanted with "the same but different" network environments, disenchanted with having to buy the same game over and over again if I want it to be as readily accessible as the rest of my contemporary collection. People keep telling me that all of this proprietary stuff will lead to "competition and innovation" but all I'm seeing is stagnation and bullshit artificial limitations. So you know what? I don't have a favorite platform anymore. I'll keep buying them because I want to keep playing games, and I'll find some sticking point that will make me prefer one over the others, but I just don't care very much about how I experience the games anymore so much as that I get to experience them. Yeah, I love all the little logos, and the jingles, and my God do I love "GameCube Smell," and I might get a little nostalgic for that on occasion but it's never going to be the consoles themselves I look fondly back on but the games.

I'm sorry for the derail and for not actually answering your question. I tried, but I realized partway through that I would be lying.