What video game systems have you owned in your life?

[civvver]

Just curious, has anyone owned a virtualboy?

 

[dragonprobably]

No, did you?

 

[Rub'Rum]

I would joke about the virtual boy being a myth, some abomination constructed by our collective imagination, or a memory implanted in our brains by the Matrix.

But I've played one myself when they came out. Never owned it. The kid I was went:

Before putting my face in it: "Wow this is gonna be awesome, VIRTUAL REALITY IS HERE"
While having my face in it: "This looks terrible, red lines and blurry crap"
Five minutes after stopping play: "I think I'm gonna be sick"

 

[dragonprobably]

Yup, that's the virtual boy for you.

The only game console whose entire game library you can fit into one hand.

 

[civvver]

No but in 1995 I was 11 and thought it was the coolest thing ever. I played them at EB (remember electronics boutique? bankrupt now) and was saving my money but they stopped selling them before I ever got enough. Looks like a decent investment though if you never actually played it. New ones going for $600 on amazon! That's a 333% return over 18 years! That's like 7% annually!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Still fondly remember the Intellivision. Back when games were simply called "Baseball" and "Auto Racing" and so on.

My mother owned one as a child and we dragged it out of a closet and had fun with it for a while. Pretty cool little machine if I may say so myself.

 

[illram]

I remember when some game about sea warfare, Destroyer or something came out for it and it had a voice that spoke commands. At the time it was this groundbreaking thing.

Skipping a few generations, I remember when Street Fighter II, the greatest arcade game ever in the history of the world, came out for the SNES and it was the coolest thing ever. There was all sorts of oohing and aahing because it needed some special "chip" or something to accommodate all the awesomeness. It finally ended the Genesis/SNES console wars as when it was also released on the Genesis it was gimped, due to the Genesis's hardware, and the 3 button controller didn't really work. The beginning of the end of Sega.

Also remember when Sony and Nintendo were going to originally team up on the next gen console, which then fizzled, and we got the Playstation and N64. The rest is history...

 

[shadowplay]

NES
SNES
Gameboy
Game Gear
Nintendo 64
Sega Nomad (handheld that played Genesis games)
PS1
XBox
XBox 360
Nintendo DS
Nintendo 3DS

The Sega handhelds got terrible battery life and couldn't be played outside because of glare.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

I remember when some game about sea warfare, Destroyer or something came out for it and it had a voice that spoke commands. At the time it was this groundbreaking thing.

Sea Battle? I played that one. Don't remember the voice, but it's been a while...

 

[civvver]

I think sega more failed because they didn't have any unique franchises outside of sonic, and even the latter sonics started to fade in quality. Other than sonic, every game you could want on genesis was on super nintendo except maybe phantasy star (which I never played)? I can't think of any other famous franchises that are sega exclusive. On the flip side nintendo had every mario game and spin off (mario kart, mario rpg, mario party each by itself enough to merit a nintendo system purchase), zelda franchise, launched dk country on snes, final fantasy until playstation anyway, among others. I bought a genesis simply for sonic and when I look back on it I regret not getting super nintendo instead. As an 8 year old kid I was too busy playing sonic to care but I do remember major excitement going to my friend's houses to play mario kart and super mario land. Sega died because they simply didn't have a good game library.

 

[shadowplay]

Sega died because too many people lost confidence in their hardware. They released tons of systems and add-ons in the 90s, many of which were not well supported. Their last system, the Dreamcast, was supposedly fantastic - I'll never know, since I never played one; not many people adopted it, having been burned by Sega in the past.

During Sega's heydey in the very early 90's, they had the best sports games outside of the arcade, IMO.

 

[dragonprobably]

I remember when some game about sea warfare, Destroyer or something came out for it and it had a voice that spoke commands. At the time it was this groundbreaking thing.

Skipping a few generations, I remember when Street Fighter II, the greatest arcade game ever in the history of the world, came out for the SNES and it was the coolest thing ever. There was all sorts of oohing and aahing because it needed some special "chip" or something to accommodate all the awesomeness. It finally ended the Genesis/SNES console wars as when it was also released on the Genesis it was gimped, due to the Genesis's hardware, and the 3 button controller didn't really work. The beginning of the end of Sega.

Also remember when Sony and Nintendo were going to originally team up on the next gen console, which then fizzled, and we got the Playstation and N64. The rest is history...

Link to video.

The Sega handhelds got terrible battery life and couldn't be played outside because of glare.

I feel your pain, brother.

 

[illram]

What I remember about Sega is this: the Genesis was the "cool" console. Sonic was cooler than Mario. Anyone old enough to remember those years probably remembers that. When Mortal Kombat came out on the Genesis, it had blood and gore and it was awesome if you were a little kid. Nintendo had the fat plumber Mario running around saving the princess, rather than the mohawk, fast hedgehog who raced around levels like a badass, and a gimped Mortal Kombat with green "blood," which cemented the idea that the SNES was totally lame. All the good sports games, Madden, NHL, etc. were on Genesis. While this lasted it hid the hardware deficiencies of the Genesis vs. the SNES.

Street Fighter began to change that and that game absolutely killed the Genesis since it was so popular and you just could not really play it on Sega. The cool factor dipped. The value of technological superiority in a console became clearer in that generation. The Genesis maintained the lead but the next cycle killed them. Sega really flopped with the Saturn, which absolutely sucked. Sony, which had none of the baggage of Nintendo (i.e., "just for kids") cleaned their clock with the PS1 the first time around and the PS2 the second time around. By the time the Dreamcast came out, it was way out of the cycle of the console wars and a lot of publishers ignored it. EA for example refused to release anything on it. That was the last nail in their coffin.

 

[Perfection]

Nes and that s it

 

[Wolfbeckett]

This Street Fighter 2 nonsense is lies, there was a six button controller for the Genesis and it worked even better for SF2 than the SNES controller did . Sega lost IMO because they just didn't have enough strong game brands that were exclusive to them. They did have some great RPG's though. Shadowrun. Shining Force. Phantasy Star. But the SNES definitely had more even though the Genesis Shadowrun and Shining Force 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games of all time.

 

[civvver]

This Street Fighter 2 nonsense is lies, there was a six button controller for the Genesis and it worked even better for SF2 than the SNES controller did . Sega lost IMO because they just didn't have enough strong game brands that were exclusive to them. They did have some great RPG's though. Shadowrun. Shining Force. Phantasy Star. But the SNES definitely had more even though the Genesis Shadowrun and Shining Force 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games of all time.

That was my whole argument. I don't think most kids could tell a difference between hardware. And while genesis had those rpgs snes had breath of fire, secret of mana, fire emblem, final fantasy just to name a few off the top of my head. Plus zelda franchise, plus mario franchise, plus dk country. Simply put snes offerings blew sega games away.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Fire Emblem doesn't count because the franchise was not available outside of Japan until the 7th game which was on GBA. If Fire Emblem counts then SNES obviously blows Genesis out of the water based on the strength of Fire Emblem 4 alone.

 

[illram]

This Street Fighter 2 nonsense is lies, there was a six button controller for the Genesis and it worked even better for SF2 than the SNES controller did . Sega lost IMO because they just didn't have enough strong game brands that were exclusive to them. They did have some great RPG's though. Shadowrun. Shining Force. Phantasy Star. But the SNES definitely had more even though the Genesis Shadowrun and Shining Force 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games of all time.

You didn't have to buy an extra controller for the SNES though, and the SNES version looked and played way better. The Genesis version was slow too.

 

[civvver]

Bumping for nintendo release of 2ds. I personally think this is what the 3ds should've been to begin with, though I'd still like to see it under 100 for a portable ($99 bucks is perfect entry point imo). Still think the cameras are unnecessary, who takes pictures with a ds when everyone has a smart phone? I think removing the hinge is a little weird and makes it less portable, but it looks like it will be more comfortable to play with a larger area to grip. I still probably won't get one as I don't travel for work anymore, but it's much more appealing.

 

[Kyriakos]

Amstrad-Amiga500(1024)-Snes-Nes-Gameboy.

Then only a couple of PCs :/