Blog:Grust's 10 Top Favorite Retro Consoles

With the state of the gaming industry in the shape it's in, developers and publishers siding with SJWs over gamers, microtransactions, loot boxes, and greed, I've been getting more and more into retro gaming and enjoying some great classics and having fun. So I decided to take a look at my favorite consoles. Now many people have their own way of defining retro consoles but for me it has to either be at least 2 generations old or at least 10 years old for me to consider it retro.

Update: About a year ago, my view on retro gaming has changed. I now view it as before HD, DLC, and patches, and thus the retro era for me ended with the 6th generation of gaming and the 7th generation being the start of the modern era with the Nintendo Wii as a bridge between the two. Thankfully very little needs to change on this blog.

Okay with that out of the way, onto the countdown:

10. Atari 2600:  Ancient, primitive but fun as hell. This is one of two consoles on the list that's older than I am, having been made almost 42 years ago in 1977. Many of the games are arcade style and are about getting high scores rather than beat a game. As you play these games they get more and more intense requiring much more focus and reaction speed. It's high on the list though because it's still primitive compared to others on the list and it was the original shovelware console which played a role in the The North American Video Game Crash of 1983. If I had to choose my favorite game on the console, it's Seaquest.

9. Nintendo Wii:  One of the most innovative consoles of all time with its introduction of motion controls. While some consoles or accessories experimented with motion controls before (cough.. Power Glove.. cough cough, excuse me) this had some of the most fluent motion controls at the time. The motion controls even gave us what I think is the best port of Resident Evil 4 hands down. However, it also sadly had one of the largest collection of shovelware ever (A game of the movie Beastly, seriously?) which makes it still high on the list. However when you skim through the crap, you can easily find some super awesome games. If I had to pick my favorite game, it'd be Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

8. Sega Genesis: Genesis does what Nintendont, that's the slogan. This console gave us one of the best franchises of all time, Sonic the Hedgehog and the superior Aladdin game. It was considered a more adult console and had some intense games. The cases for the games were innovative at the time and is now an industry standard. The cases also didn't get in the way like SNES boxes so it's much much easier and cheaper to find a Sega Genesis game in its case than an SNES game in its box. However, Sega gave Sonic too much attention so a lot of the gems for this console are pretty obscure at least to me. A better fan could find the gems much better than I could. While the Sonic trilogy is an easy pick for favorite game on the console, I'm sticking with Aladdin.

7. Nintendo Gamecube:  This is the first console I ever bought with my own money and selling the games was one of my biggest regrets, though I am reworking on the collection after falling in love with the game collecting hobby. The controller is comfortable and cool looking and feels like they took the 64 controller and vastly upgraded it. The console is also a must own for fans of survival horror with 6 Resident Evil games and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Many games from the Dreamcast were ported to the Gamecube with some improvements like Skies of Arcadia and Sonic Adventure. If I had to pick my favorite game, it'd be Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

6. Dreamcast: An awesome console for Sega to go out on and way ahead of its time. The controller, despite its look and design is comfortable to hold. It had a pretty good library of games despite its short life and is popular with homebrewers. Even after 20 years, I can still remember the slogan, It's Thinking! in a whisper. It also has 2 of the best JRPGs I ever played, Grandia 2 and Skies of Arcadia. If I had to pick my favorite game, I'd have to go with Grandia 2.

5. Playstation 2:  Of course you knew I'd add Playstation's best selling console of all time. Continuing with the original Playstion's adding of great JRPGs, The Playstation has a high number of the genre, along with some great survival horror games including Silent Hill 2, 3, and 4 as well as the Fatal Frame trilogy (there are more but other than Spirit Camera for the 3DS, most of the sequels never saw another U.S. release). It's also the console that gave us one of the best crossover games of all time, Kingdom Hearts. If I had to pick my favorite game on the system, it's Final Fantasy X.

4. Nintendo 64:  This came out when I was 10 years old. Me and my older brother pooled our money to get this system and at the time, both our minds were blown away by the 3D gameplay. Looking back at this 23 years later, yeah it's primitive and some games haven't aged well, such as clunky camera controls, but at the time, this not only introduced us to 3D gameplay, but set a very high standard for 3D gameplay as well with Super Mario 64 having extremely good controls and fun gameplay. My love for this system was even renewed when I bought Retro-Bit's Tribute 64 controllers and have been having a blast (I even reviewed the Tribute 64 controllers on Awesome Games). If I had to pick my favorite game, I'd have to pick The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which is also my all time favorite game.

3. Nintendo Entertainment System: The console that saved gaming in the West and easily among the most beloved of retro consoles. It's the second console on this list that's older than me but only by one year, being released in the U.S. in 1985 (The Famicom was made in 1983 though so it could also be 3 years older than me). My early childhood consisted of me playing this system all the time. It had a large library and some very good games and the introduction of some I.P.s that are beloved even to this day like Super Mario (technically started with Donkey Kong), Legend of Zelda (my all time favorite franchise), Megaman, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, and Metroid. A lot of the games were often super tough so it can feel very satisfying to beat some of these games. If I had to pick my favorite game for the console, I'd have to pick Contra.

2. Playstation:  The console that made me fall in love with the RPG genre. I often like to call this system the "King of RPG consoles" with a collection of very good RPGs that are fan favorites even to this day. It also helped popularize survival horror with Resident Evil and the stealth genre (probably my 5th favorite genre) with Metal Gear Solid. The RPG collection is so good, I even have them in a drawer separate from my other Playstation games. If I had to pick my favorite game on the console, I'd have to go Final Fantasy IX.

A few honorable mentions before number 1: Sega Saturn: While I like the Saturn, it has its problems, the cases are unnecessarily large, many games are too expensive, I need watch batteries to keep save data, and most of the games were Japanese only,  but it has some games I want to play and look forward to. I don't have a lot of games for it right now but if I had to pick my favorite, it's Panzer Dragoon: Zwei.

XBox: Set an industry standard for the FPS genre with Halo: Combat Evolved but other than that, not much I can say about it. If I had to pick my favorite game, it's Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly.

Sheepsaver: Technically a computer program to play old Apple computer programs, especially games. I downloaded it once and played some good classic PC games from the 90s including my favorite edutainment game, 5 A Day Adventures. Technically not a console but worth mentioning. I've already listed 5 A Day Adventures as my favorite.

DOSBox: Like Sheepsaver, this is only a computer program but it lets you play old DOS games from the 80s to 90s. If I had to pick my favorite DOS game, it'd be the Catacomb Abyss, which I played as a kid. Too bad I can't find a working ROM for it though.

And my number 1 choice is:

Oh come on, if you had been following me on the wikis, you know what my favorite is:

Super Nintendo Entertainment System: This system was the bulk of my childhood. When my old Genesis broke, my late grandmother bought me and my brother this for Christmas and I never tired of playing it, even when I had other systems, this stayed plugged in even to this day. It was also one of the first consoles I opened up for cleaning and restoration when I got some security screwdrivers cleaning it up neat and tidy. Now while I wasn't into RPGs as a kid, this also had a big number of great RPGs that I call it the Queen of RPG consoles and as an RPG fan now, this only made my love for the system grow. Outside of RPGs, there are many great games that are memorable even today. In fact, The SNES library is easily my all time favorite library with so many memorable games that instead of mentioning any, I'd rather link the Awesome Games category here otherwise this blog would get too long. While this has a huge number of great games, I'd easily pick The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the past as my favorite game on my favorite console.

As said in the opening, the gaming industry is in a state of uncertainty, and while my faith is very low, retro gaming is giving me the fun I expect to have when gaming. And even if all the problems I mentioned go away, there's still something great about these classic systems and I could never really give most of them up. Do you yourself have a favorite retro console? How do you define a retro console? Let me know in the comments.

