What's your favorite retro console?

Started by pxlbluejay, July 24, 2019, 10:44:16 pm

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pxlbluejay

Many people prefer different kinds of consoles. For example, Joe from down the street might prefer the Sega Genesis over the Atari 2600, and Sam might think the Super Nintendo is better than anything. Personally, I hate Sega consoles. I just hate them. Hey, don't be mad at me--there will be someone out there who hates the Atari 2600 too(which I like)! I guess this is little biased since this website is called "Famicom World", but still, I'd like to know ;D One vote for the Colecovision!
Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda. The NES and the Famicom themselves. These are well known after more than 30 years after their releases. I highly doubt that Fortnite, PUBG, or any other modern-day game will be as well known in 2050.

FAMICOM_87

September 24, 2019, 06:18:54 pm #1 Last Edit: September 27, 2019, 10:16:24 pm by FAMICOM_87
My list:
1 Famicom/NES
2 Atari 2600 6 switch heavy woody/Atari 2600 Junior big rainbow
3 Atari Jaguar/Sega Mark 2 and 3  (only because of the designs)
4 /Sega Mega drive 1
5.Sega Mega drive 2/Super Famicom
6.Super Nintendo/Nintendo 64 (ugly designs)

Oh I forgot the PC -Engine! It have to be on second place :)

R_Leo_1

1) Famicom
2) Sega Genesis
3) Super Famicom
4) Atari 7800
5) Atari 2600
6) Gamecube (Not sure if this one is retro enough lol)

L___E___T

September 25, 2019, 09:47:14 am #3 Last Edit: September 25, 2019, 02:51:07 pm by L___E___T
 

For me personally, it's:

- 01. Famicom
- 02. Mega Drive (JP Model 1 ride or die)
- 03. Super Famicom
- 04. Capcom CPS2 (I think this counts as you can get them consolized now anyway, and there was the CPS Changer if we want to get technical)
- 05. GBA (sure it's a handheld but play it on the Gamecube if you think it doesn't count)
- 06. Virtual Boy
- 07. Neo Geo (MVS/AES whatever)
- 08. Saturn (JP Model 1 forever)
- 09. Dreamcast
- 10. PlayStation 2

Going to leave it at 10 - at least that's my solid top ten.
My for Sale / Trade thread
http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=9423.msg133828#msg133828
大事なのは、オチに至るまでの積み重ねなのです。

P

I don't really hate any system in particular, but I'm more interested in certain systems than in others.
This list is limited to the fourth generation and down, because 3D systems are too new for me and symbolizes a jump out of what's retro.

Favourite retro consoles in no particular order:
Game & Watch
Famicom
Game Boy
Super Famicom
PC-Engine
Neo Geo (only played MVS but yeah)
Master System
Megadrive

I've never played the Virtual Boy (more than a few seconds in a retro store) but would love to have it. Neo Geo Pocket Color is also interesting. Those are both considered fifth generation though.


I'm also a fan of classic 8-bit PCs like the MSX computers, ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. They are very close to retro consoles (some consoles are even more like a hybrid computer/console) but also fully programmable by default. And unlike modern computers you can actually understand how they work. I have very little to no experience with ZX Spectrum and C64 though, although they were both bigger in western/northern Europe than MSX was.

I like the non-propertary specifications and the large library of good games of the MSX computers, and the fact that they have a good solid BASIC from the start with video and audio commands. Most MSX computers also have proper arrow keys made for gaming in mind as a fallback when you don't have a joystick at hand. Except a large library of games, the C64 lacks all these things. Although its SID chip seems to blow most other audio chips out of the water and it has a 6502 CPU core (same as Atari 2600 and Famicom) which is an instant win for me.

Jedi Master Baiter

Me:

1.) AV Famicom (design and functionality, yeah I know, I'll go do that to myself later)

2.) GBA SP AGS-101 (not only do I love the clamshell design, but the brighter backlight (or even the frontlit model) is a must; couldn't stand the original GBA no light; I just wish I had the backlit model :( also the sheer number of games in this library: GB, SGB, GBC, & GBA)

3.) God! Now it's a tie between the N64, SNES, and Mega Genesis... the Sega and SNES might take priority even though I got the N64 before these two... and when I say Genesis, I mean just the Genesis (I don't like that clunky CD attachment, nor that useless 32x add on [what 32x games were any good? ???]) Wait, was there ever a Megadrive model with the CD built in? :-\

L___E___T

 



AV Famicom is best Famicom, no doubt.  GBA wise though I prefer the original, albeit with a 101 screen.  Have a few of those from Rose Colored Gaming and I'm very fond of them.  Wiggy can create masterpieces of product design.

There are some good 32X games, but not very many.  I have one, but I really don't like the design of the thing, and it failed for clear reasons.  Also, it really doesn't feel 32-bit...  It might be on paper, but it's closer to 2D Saturn games.
My for Sale / Trade thread
http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=9423.msg133828#msg133828
大事なのは、オチに至るまでの積み重ねなのです。

portnoyd

1. Everything 8-Bit Nintendo (NES, Famicom, FDS) - Not much more to say than that.

It's a pretty steep drop after #1, but I still very much like:

2. Genesis - If you want 16bit, this is the system. Their relationship with EA and their arcade ports/originals made the system. Where the color palate was lacking, the sound chip more than made up for it.

3. TG-16 - Some of the appeal of branching out into Famicom/FDS from NES is why I like the TG16 so much. Titles you don't see anywhere else.

4. Gameboy - Most of the system is disposable, quick play stuff, which is ok because that's what it's supposed to be, but the unique games are really cool. NOT including the GBC in this. Talk about a system with next to no games to speak of.

5. SNES - This system sure has soured for me in recent years. Unless it's a top tier title, most of the system library is loose pastel barf. But it's still a must play because of those top tier titles.

6. Virtual Boy/Vectrex - Kept for the same reason, unique, niche experiences you can't get anywhere else.

7. GBA - Kind of like the SNES, the titles on the system have lost their luster, especially since the system is drowned in GBA ports. But the original stuff is top notch.

After that, it's systems I have for a handful of titles and not much else - DC, N64, PS1/PS2, Saturn, Gamecube, original XBox. If I sold everything I had for these systems, I'd be ok with it. Anything not mentioned I could never play again and be totally ok with it (as it is, I don't even own those systems anymore).

If the DS is included in this discussion, then it goes up on the main list. What a library it has. So good. The PSP gets an honorable mention.

Nakazoto

This is a tough question because the old consoles all had such different purposes.

If we're talking about games, then it's 100% the SNES/Super Famicom.
Without a doubt, I feel some of the prettiest, most entertaining and most influential games of all time came out on this console. Final Fantasy 6 and Seiken Densetsu 3 are works of art. Pure pixel art beauty that 99% of indie games today wish they could achieve, but most never do (CrossCode and Stardew Valley being exceptions, they are beautiful games). F-Zero and Super Mario Kart were insanely good and took up many hours of my childhood. The list of SNES/Super Famicom hits goes on and on.

However, it gets a little more interesting if you go back a generation. The Super Famicom was pretty much exclusively a game console, but the Famicom lived in an interesting bridge between the two. It was very nearly a successful home computer as well as a gaming console. In the early 80s, systems like the Commodore 64 and MSX systems dominated this space halfway between a game system and a personal computer. There were tons of games available, but there was also BASIC and/or an OS (Commodore BASIC and MSX-DOS). This allowed the systems to be much more flexible, like what the modern PC has become. Need to do some spreadsheet work on your Commodore 64? MultiPlan is there for you. Need a word processor for your MSX? Tasword can get it done.

So, from that standpoint, the original Famicom is the most interesting for me.
Not the US NES, but the Japanese Famicom. The fact that it had a BASIC programming interface and keyboard with Family BASIC, it had network connectivity with the Famicom Modem, it even had a disk reader with the Disk System. All the components were there for a full-on home computer system. I mean I see no reason why an Operating System with a word processor, spreadsheet program and BASIC interpreter couldn't have been written on the more spacious disk used in the Famicom Disk System and the Family BASIC keyboard used for input and control. At that point, the Famicom would have been a proper home computer!

P

Ah finally some love for the Super Famicom! I find it strange that it gets as much criticism as it gets. To me it's the clear king of 16-bit home gaming systems. The Megadrive is great too and I'm a bit biased to Nintendo since I grew up mostly with their systems, but I think there is no question that Nintendo's systems has a much larger library of quality games, and is generally higher quality in hardware as well (Sega's and NEC's controllers are not really up to Nintendo's for example). The numbers of quality games for both Famicom and Super Famicom are far greater than any other home gaming system or computer of their respective era. The same can be said about the Game Boy for portable systems. The GBC might be a bit lacking in games since it came late, and was soon replaced by the GBA though.

Hardware-wise I do love all of them, but I think Famicom feels a bit incomplete. It is supposedly inspired by the Donkey Kong hardware which in turn is inspired by Namco's Galaxian. I think it's also possibly inspired by the ColecoVision to some degree (or at least its video chip TMS9918 which was used in tons of other systems as well including improved variants in MSX and all Sega computers and consoles). I feel it's incomplete because of many strange and buggy things it has in its hardware. For example it has a system for detecting too many sprites on a scanline, but it's bugged and doesn't work as it should. It seems Nintendo learned from this however and fixed these things for the Game Boy.

The Game Boy feels like such a complete system in comparison, and I feel the same about the PC Engine. It is actually quite similar to the Game Boy, and it fills a gap between the 8-bit systems like the Famicom and overpowered 16-bit systems like the SFC.

The SFC is almost too overcomplicated for its own good, with so many features (transparency, mosaic effects, a ton of screen modes and sprite modes and an address map that looks like a Swiss cheese). The sample-based audio chip of the SFC makes sound being very varied in games, but it also makes it a bit less characteristic compared to games that uses synthesized sound (it's characteristics is mostly the muffledness of the samples). The Game Boy Advance and Wonderswan also both has sample-based PCM channels and both are hated for their sound. The GBA at least still has the excellent Game Boy sound chip as well as the samples.

Speaking of the Wonderswan, that is a system I've been planning to get for my collection since forever. The most obivously interesting feature is that it can be played in both tate and yoko modes (like arcade games that requires the cabinet monitor to be rotated 90 degrees), and the fact that a large number of games actually supports this. Some games even supports both and requires you to rotate the system while playing.

Also I agree that the DS is a really great system. Although there are tons of shovelware there are tons of quality titles as well. It feels like Nintendo's last real 2D system.



Quote from: Nakazoto on December 20, 2019, 09:34:19 pm
So, from that standpoint, the original Famicom is the most interesting for me.
Not the US NES, but the Japanese Famicom. The fact that it had a BASIC programming interface and keyboard with Family BASIC, it had network connectivity with the Famicom Modem, it even had a disk reader with the Disk System. All the components were there for a full-on home computer system. I mean I see no reason why an Operating System with a word processor, spreadsheet program and BASIC interpreter couldn't have been written on the more spacious disk used in the Famicom Disk System and the Family BASIC keyboard used for input and control. At that point, the Famicom would have been a proper home computer!

Although I fully agree with you, I think Family BASIC and the Disk System shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence when comparing it to a computer. The Disk System's sole role was as an alternative media for distributing games on. It was never used the way floppies are used on computers. There's the unlicensed Tonkachi Editor and developers seems to have made their own disk tools as well, but it wasn't really useful as a storage medium by the consumers. The QuickDisk floppies was a cheap alternative to more expensive floppy formats, and technically it is very similar to cassette tapes. It doesn't have random access, the drive has to seek (like when you rewind a tape) up to the point you want to read or write to, and you can't just move files around in it like you can on other file systems. You generally have to rewrite the whole disk if you want to rearrange files, and the RAM adapter doesn't even have half the necessary RAM for this. Besides Family BASIC (which is the title that would benefit from floppies for storage the most) has no support for it.

The keyboard on the other hand allows programming the Famicom fully like a computer and reading/writing to tapes. It's much more of a gaming computer than a business computer though, since it lacks any useful software besides BASIC, and the PPU is lacking a bitmap graphics mode (unlike the TMS9918 and its derivatives) which might be needed to draw graphs and stuff. Also business computers generally requires 80 characters per row.

Daggerthorn

1. Famicom
2. Turbografx-16
3. Sega Mega Drive/Genesis
4. MSX (not a game console since it's a computer but it of course did have good games.)

crade

1 Intellivision
     + I find the intellivision the system I most often go back and actually play the original system these days. 
     + The wierd controllers on the system work well with the games but don't really lend well to emulation worth crap..
     + The games are fun and generally don't require a lot of time investment
     + Some of my favorite games still stand as pretty unique in terms of gameplay that you can't really get elsewhere.  Tron Deadly discs and space spartans come to mind.
     - Many games are 2 player only and I rarely have a buddy onsite to play
     - Difficult to get it to work / play nice with modern tech
     - Hard to replace the controllers when they break
2 NES/FC
    + I find myself going to this platform more since I got the AV nes since it is so easy to switch to it and use it now on my TV.
    + Many games that will give you an quick fun and challenging experience.
    - A lot of the games take too long to be really playable as an adult with no time to do anything but work and sleep
3 SNES/SFC
  + got some fun stuff pretty similar to NES/FC platform.
   - Most of the games are rehashes / sequels of NES/FC games and not original
GRRR!

Pikkon

If I had to pick just one it would definitely be.


unoclay

1. NES
2. SNES
3. Atari 5200  (sentimental value)
4. maybe virtual boy, no joke
5. Lynx

drops mic

xIceMan

1. SNES
1. NES/FC
3. GBA/GBC/GB
4. PSX
5. PS2