Which console generation would you like to go back to?

[Dyne]

Not only did we all call the NES "a Nintendo" but we actually used "Nintendo" as a synonym for "video games". I'd tell my mom I was going to my friends house "to play Nintendo". He had a Master System.
I think this was partly because we were uniformed kids, but a big part of it was the gigantic market share that Nintendo had in those days. They were a juggernaut in the late 80s, compared to any other company making game consoles.

The thing Gorse posted looks like an attempt by Nintendo to save their copyright/trademark from becoming a word like band aid (which was a specific brand) and lose its exclusivity.

*This is in the USA at least. I know other regions of the world had different trends.

 

[Azuris]

I was never only into one Generation, my Super Nintendo was right next to my Playstation 2 and i played Lands of Lore at the same Time as Doom 3 (wich was new at the Time).
For 2D i would choose the Super Nintendo.
For 3D the Playstation 2.
In both the Developers learned how to handle 2D or 3D and the Controls.

I guess someone at Nintendo must learn what an Adjective is.
Easy to spot by asking: How is it?
- good
- big
- wide
- small
- tasty
- smelly
- funny

But Nintendo?
Nintendo is a Name and it got used for the Console by People to "shorten" it, such as i never have seen someone say SNES, everybody here was just saying Super Nintendo.

 

[rosemarymenace]

thanks to my extremely strange taste I've experienced nearly every generation of gaming hardware except ironically for the current one
but GT7 is totally fine on PS4 so it's not like I have a reason to care about 9th gen systems

 

[χKai]

Nintendo is a Name and it got used for the Console by People to "shorten" it, such as i never have seen someone say SNES, everybody here was just saying Super Nintendo.

 

[rphilip]

Without a doubt the era from 1997 to 2002...

 

[Fat_Wombat_55]

6th gen + psp (considered to be 7th gen) is all I play these days.

I'm still living in 2005.

 

[Cheela Cheela Cheela's icon]

i will love to experience the snes and the genesis on their pick days :3 Libraries full of bangers and soo many of my favorite games of all time. But also i will love to go back to the 5th gen too, especially for all the PlayStation games i miss when i was a silly little kid >:3

 

[Fat_Wombat_55]

i will love to experience the snes and the genesis on their pick days :3 Libraries full of bangers and soo many of my favorite games of all time. But also i will love to go back to the 5th gen too, especially for all the PlayStation games i miss when i was a silly little kid >:3

I have such good memories of 5th gen, it was a great era for innovation. So many unique titles came out in those days and some of them went on to become some of the greatest games/franchises of all time.

One of the things I find fascinating, is how Spielberg's interest in WWII paired with watching his son play goldeneye gave us Medal of Honor, so technically he is the grandfather of the Call of Duty franchise! All of the 22 original team members of Infinity Ward came from the team that had worked on MOH Allied Assault while at 2015, Inc.

 

[Ian Naxieas]

This was a hard choice, but I chose the 6th generation in the end. The PS2 was a monster and the GameCube was no slouch either. The Xbox didn't quite match up to the other two, but it had some good games and got Microsoft's foot in the door, which led to the beast that was the Xbox 360 the next generation. The Dreamcast was neat, but it didn't last long and was completely crushed by Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. It's a damned shame too, it was ahead of it's time in some areas and I feel it just wasn't able to reach it's full potential.

The 5th generation would take second place, but only by a slim margin. I like the PS1 more than the PS2, but I feel Nintendo did way better with the GameCube over the Nintendo 64. Like the Dreamcast, the Saturn was also neat, but it didn't stand a chance. x)

In 3rd place would be the 4th generation. The SNES is one of my favorite consoles and one of the best of all time. I grew up with a Genesis and it had some fantastic games (Gunstar Heroes, my love) but I really don't think it's library came close to the SNES. I've never played a TurboGrafx-16 nor a Neo Geo, but from what I know they really didn't stand a chance. The TD-16 had to first compete with the NES and Master System, then the Genesis and finally the SNES. Ouch. I know the Neo Geo was a little powerhouse with lots of excellent arcade ports and lasted a super long time, even after it was discontinued. It's gigantic price tag ensured it would never be a huge success though.

 

[Parasite_Steve]

It would be fun to experience the development of gaming as a medium since its inception but I’m quite happy with the cards I was dealt. I caught the tail end of the 16bit era, lived through Dos, the advent of cd-based consoles, the arrival of graphics accelerator cards and even survived the drab, brown blizzard of the ps3/xbox360 generation. As much as I miss being a kid in the late 90s and early 2000s, spending 9 hours a day in unreal tournament or Timesplitters, I don’t think I’d wanna live through it all again.

 

[Jotaro]

6th = ps2 and 7th gen = ps3, easily, so many games and gems, plus, we had consoles like gamecube, xbox360, wii, og xbox, psp, 3ds, etc, good times

but, to be fair, ps1/n64/dreamcast era, had also amazing games

i mean, take for example ps1

it had gems like

- most final fantasy games
- koudelka
- legend of legaia
- wild arms 1
- mgs1
- tales of phantasia
- re2 and re3
- the jackie chan game
- spider-man
- chrono cross
- dino crisis games
- legend of the dragoon
- parasite eve games
- vagrant story
- xenogears
- megaman legends 2
- breath of fire 3
- galerians
- the tenchu games

and many more

i know, i cant replay most of these games from that era, because irl, limited time, grew up and my taste changed and all, but, i will still remember the good times, everyone can easily find classic games, from various eras, overall.

 

[ZombieFish]

Really interesting results, good pole.
I had to go 6th, cause it’s what I still end up playing the most of, but 4th and 5th were charmed eras as well. One of the things I love about this place, and emulation generally, is that you can always go back, and using super cheap and accessible hardware. What other medium lets you actually interact with and immerse yourself in vital culture from the past for the price of an internet connection? I love my IRL collection, but I can’t imagine trying to build it now on any kind of budget. This stuff is history, and we should all give ourselves a little golf clap for helping preserve it without gatekeeping anybody but the big N’s lawyers. Video games fucking rule, y’all, and y’all rule too.

No I’m not drunk, dammit!

 

[ThunderBoy]

16Bits era.
With Genesis and Snes ?

Sega and Nintendo in their peak ?

 

[Loops]

Gotta be the 6th Generation for me - fond memories of playing Dreamcast around it's launch at my friends, he didn't have a VMU for a good couple of months so we would stay up and complete/ unlock characters in games in one sitting!

Then my friend group mostly played the Gamecube and its open approach to 4 player multiplayer was amazing, so many nights spent playing Melee, Crystal Chronicles, Wario ware, F-Zero, Four Swords, Mario Kart, PSO, Tales of Symphonia's semi coop mode! The list goes on and on and on!

 

[laughingoctopus]

If we take pure nostalgia out of the way I feel the best console generation was 100% PS2/Gamecube/Xbox. Nostalgia wise PSX/Dreamcast with a lil N64 in there as I feel the N64 is quite overrated but has a high nostalgia hype because most kids in the US had an N64 'cause their parents saw N64 as a family friendly. Whereas PSX and Dreamcast had a lil more edge to them and were more popular initially in PAL regions, where I'm from.

Post automatically merged: Jan 23, 2025

Gotta be the 6th Generation for me - fond memories of playing Dreamcast around it's launch at my friends, he didn't have a VMU for a good couple of months so we would stay up and complete/ unlock characters in games in one sitting!

Then my friend group mostly played the Gamecube and its open approach to 4 player multiplayer was amazing, so many nights spent playing Melee, Crystal Chronicles, Wario ware, F-Zero, Four Swords, Mario Kart, PSO, Tales of Symphonia's semi coop mode! The list goes on and on and on!

I got a dreamcast just as the PS2 launched and I adored it. It didn't hurt that the copy protection was lacking and you could buy burned games really easily.

 

[Deleted member 309]

Most of the games I play now are from the ps1/ps2, so I would go with 6th.

My dream is to own an actual ps2, but the second hand market is so terrible I'm not sure if it'll ever be worth it.

You can't get one at a second hand shop for 50 dollars like you could when the ps3 was brand new...

 

[zacharinolongpants]

Wow this is a surprising result - didn't expect people to so strongly lean into 6th gen. But hey, I can't blame em. I was in my early teens when that wave hit and I remember it very fondly. Having a PS2 back then was an exciting time.

 

[χKai]

Wow this is a surprising result - didn't expect people to so strongly lean into 6th gen. But hey, I can't blame em. I was in my early teens when that wave hit and I remember it very fondly. Having a PS2 back then was an exciting time.

I still remember the hype about the PS2 technology, people were worried about terrorist groups using it to launch nukes. ?

 

[zacharinolongpants]

I still remember the hype about the PS2 technology, people were worried about terrorist groups using it to launch nukes. ?

Yeah I remember news channels showing clips of server farms of PS2s and shit lmao

 

[NoctemDead]

I would rather be in today's current state - yeah, AAA has tons of issues but we have so much emulation, huge digital storefronts with access to games from a huge timeframe, and a glut of great indie games available to us. That's worth more to me than any one console generation.

But I've often said that if I had to pick a console to be my only one and only have access to its library, it's PS2 hands down. PS2 is packed with so many thousands of hours of awesome and iconic games. If I can open it up to the whole generation and play the Dreamcast too? That's just icing.

I think there would be something cool about experiencing some things in the early 2000s that we don't today. The first online consoles, trading pokemon over link cables, downloading the Sonic Adventure New Year's DLC. Think it would have been mind blowing at the time. (I was alive and gaming at the time but aside from 1 or 2 link cable trades I just did not have the knowledge or equipment to take advantage of some of those capabilities)

 

[vaçago]

PS1
Because so many good games and also because that was a really nice moment in my life (late childhood and early teens).

 

[Deleted member 309]

I would rather be in today's current state - yeah, AAA has tons of issues but we have so much emulation, huge digital storefronts with access to games from a huge timeframe, and a glut of great indie games available to us. That's worth more to me than any one console generation.

But I've often said that if I had to pick a console to be my only one and only have access to its library, it's PS2 hands down. PS2 is packed with so many thousands of hours of awesome and iconic games. If I can open it up to the whole generation and play the Dreamcast too? That's just icing.

I think there would be something cool about experiencing some things in the early 2000s that we don't today. The first online consoles, trading pokemon over link cables, downloading the Sonic Adventure New Year's DLC. Think it would have been mind blowing at the time. (I was alive and gaming at the time but aside from 1 or 2 link cable trades I just did not have the knowledge or equipment to take advantage of some of those capabilities)

I'll admit that indie games and digital storefronts are pretty great (even if the storefronts don't have the best triple a titles).

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

That's honestly a hard one, as I have different kinds of nostalgia tied up in different platforms. Snes and PS1 takes me back to being a kid, staying up all night on stuff like Megaman X/Legends or Resident Evil, while Dreamcast takes me back to grinding out and labbing Last Blade 2 or Jojo's Bizarre Adventure with my Highschool/College friends.

 

[AnonymousCookieMonster]

This needs multiple choice. I'd have chosen 4th-6th gen... Though a bit less on 5th gen.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

This needs multiple choice. I'd have chosen 4th-6th gen... Though a bit less on 5th gen.

It really does, there's way too much good stuff across the board to narrow it down to just one.