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#20
Playstation 3 (2006)
   
ps3 console
 

I'm sure this placing will be unpopular but I'm sorry, to me this console is basically just a 360 released a year later for $200 more and with an early lifespan software drought. Sure it was more reliable than the 360 but that's not really saying much given how shamefully unreliable that console was, and taken on its own merit the PS3 itself was actually way below industry standards in regards to reliability too. In a very real sense this was Sony's Sega Saturn, an ill-conceived machine that was handily undercut and outplayed by the competition. Sony rested on its laurels while their competition innovated.

Now don't get me wrong, the system did end up becoming a cool console with its own flavour and memorable library, but this was a very long and arduous process. The PS3 didn't equalise the 360 in numbers of good exclusives until 2013! This was the year the PS4 arrived, and by which point Microsoft had switched focus to their upcoming Xbox One console. This milestone was only really possible due to the PS3 being able to ride the coattails of its popular forebears. To an extent it could rely solely on brand name and Sony's huge coffers alone, something that Sega did not have access to, and in the end the losses Sony incurred with PS3 ended up dwarfing those of the Saturn and Dreamcast.

The PS3's first year saw Sony scrambling to copy features from the 360. A year and a half into the PS3 lifespan it managed to get its dashboard, the XrossMediaBar working in-game through a software update. Previously PS3 users had had to leave the game to access it. Sony's answer to the 360's achievement system, which they named "trophies" also arrived at this time. The PS3 was not really designed with a lot of these features in mind though, so some 360 features such as cross-game chat never did see the light of day. Sony also quickly managed to get rumble features back into their controllers, this feature had been omitted from the PS3 controllers at launch due to Sony being caught up in legal battles with the creators, but they settled and the issue was put to rest in 2007.

Even where some of the PS3s advantages were concerned, such as with the admirable decision to make its online gaming features completely free, unlike Microsoft's subscription service, were tarred by subsequent events, with the PS3 being subject to one of the largest data breaches in history, where hackers accessed the personal accounts of millions of its users. Due to this the PS3's online service was down for long stretches of time as Sony desperately tried to plug holes in their security.

Even the system's much touted power was often not on display, with many multi-platform games running slightly better on the 360 due to being designed with that system in mind.

As mentioned earlier though the system did grow its library and by the end of the generation it had become a console worth owning, and due to supporting the Blu-ray format the console also eliminated the need for having games on multiple disks and provided PS3 owners access to high definition movies straight out of the box, two years before 360 owners would gain access to Netflix.

Thankfully Sony would also manage to completely steer back on course with the excellent PS4 during the next gen, while it was Microsoft who would be taken down by hubris next time around.
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#19
GameCube (2001)
 

 

gamecube console
 

And again, I know that this is another quite popular console but I've just never been that enamoured with it, and when you're this far into a top 100 any choice you make is going to be hated by one group or another anyway, because at this stage all the consoles are pretty cool to be honest, but something has to be put at the back end!

So basically to my mind I put the GameCube into a similar bracket as the PS3, in that whilst it had a handful of key titles, (games like Metroid Prime, Smash Melee, and F-Zero GX to the PS3's Uncharted, the Last of Us, and Metal Gear Solid 4) apart from these games you weren't really missing out on a whole lot if you just stuck to one of the main competitors during the generation. The console was really just a bit redundant all in all.

Shigeru Miyamoto once lamented that he felt that during the GameCube era, Nintendo just started following other people's trends instead of doing their own thing and I would have to agree with him. The GameCube was actually the console that I chose during the era and this was exactly how I'd always felt about the machine. When you're following trends you're self-evidently always going to be behind what the competition is doing.

Nintendo were also coming into a very difficult period at the time and were very much on the ropes. With the N64 they'd been overtaken by Sony in popularity and lost a lot of ground and 3rd party support. Nintendo came out of this situation primarily blaming it on the fact that they'd stuck with the cartridge format in the previous generation, and they thought developers would come running back to them now that the GameCube would be using its own disk media (even though Nintendo's licensing fees were still waay higher than those being asked by Sony and Microsoft). Of course this didn't happen, and it wasn't until Nintendo dropped their own licensing fees that games started to be ported to the machine in any numbers.

The GameCube just had a very difficult start in general, Rare had stuck with N64 development for too long, didn't have any GameCube games ready at launch and were soon bought out by Microsoft, and as already mentioned the 3rd party software just didn't turn up. Nintendo started to panic and began rushing their games to fill the void, which is something that they basically never do, this lead to some titles like Luigi's Mansion and Pikmin being very short, and others like Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker being padded out with Blue Coin challenges and Tri-Force quests and the like due to them having to cut some of the levels to get the games out early and plug that leaky hole.

Lastly in regards to the software, I have to say that Nintendo were incredibly fortunate that Sega were knocked out during this generation as Sega were one of the only major 3rd party's putting any priority into the system early on. Without the Dreamcast ports like the Sonic Adventure's, Crazy Taxi, and Skies of Arcadia, as well as the quirky originals like Monkey Ball and Billy Hatcher, and even F-Zero GX (which was actually outsourced to Sega's team at Amusement Vision), the GameCube would've been very much a lessor console than it was, especially during those difficult early years.

At least (and its actually a pretty big at least!) the console's hardware was very cheap and powerful for the time and represented great value for money. In fact I really have no complaints with the hardware at all, its fantastic, well... I guess it looks a little silly but that's really a superficial complaint! I loved the GameCube's controllers, which have to be some of the most comfortable controllers I've ever held, and the system always provided very vibrant and smooth graphics with an excellent picture quality. Most of the multiplatform games that turned up also had very nice GameCube ports, so whilst GameCube owners spent a lot of time waiting for PS2 ports, when they did arrive they were generally a little nicer.
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#18
Neo Geo (1991)
   
neo geo console
 

Often referred to as the Rolls Royce of gaming for its time, at launch the Neo Geo sold for the equivalent of well over $1000 in today's money, and with games that also cost hundreds of dollars each its easy to see how it got this reputation! Why was it so expensive? Well this was basically state-of-the-art arcade hardware brought to the home, with huge cartridges that contained a metric ton of data for the time, enough data that they could hold all the animation frames of the latest fighting games for instance. If you wanted the best of the best and had money to burn this was the console for you.

The game library is only a little over 100 games but as you'd expect the quality is fairly high, this isn't the sort of machine that attracts the publishers of shovelware, its just too niche. The library size can also be increased further with the purchase of converters which give you the ability to play the actual original arcade versions of Neo Geo games (as opposed to the home releases made specifically for the console). Not only were there more titles released for the arcade hardware, but these versions are also cheaper due to being less in demand.

Now in regards to the games themselves, this system sometimes unfairly gets criticised for only having 2D fighting games on it and little else, this is very much untrue. There especially were many high quality shmups and sports games on the machine and it had pretty decent numbers of brawlers as well. Some genre's admittedly were largely absent though. Given that this was really just a home arcade machine its mainly the sorts of genre's not seen in arcades that suffered, primarily things like RPG's and adventure games that do not have the immediacy required to grab the player right there and then and convince them to part with their cash for 10 or 20 minute sessions.

One somewhat surprising aspect relating to the system is that it was likely the first to use memory cards, which obviously ended up being very much a part of Sony's consoles later on. Though honestly its odd that memory cards would start here, given how expensive the carts were you'd think they would include onboard saving on the cartridges like SNES games often had, but eh, it is what it is.

The system's software lifespan also ended up being incredibly impressive with it being supported for well over a decade, making it one of the longest commercially supported consoles in gaming history.

A very impressive system but obviously given its price a very niche one as well.
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#17

Intellivision (1979)
 
intellivision console
 

The first console that looked like it had a chance of dethroning the almighty Atari 2600! The Intellivision was an advanced, forward-thinking machine from Mattel that would correctly predict the market direction and give an indication of what was to come. A drastic improvement over earlier systems like the 2600 and Odyssey 2, apart from including multicoloured sprites (which some previous consoles had had, though not to this level), the Intellivision also actually had a background constructed out of tiles and a hardware ability to scroll these tiles vertically and horizontally, this efficient method allowed for more colourful backgrounds at less cost to memory, and would be the set-up for the majority of subsequent 2D games consoles like the NES.

Other than the graphics the system also had an advanced sound chip for the time, in fact the sound chip is even a little bit better than the one that was used in the stock Master System released five or six years later! The controller used a directional disk that you push down on with your thumb to control the games that almost functioned like a sort of proto d-pad (though nowhere near as accurate), and the system even had an early download service where games could be downloaded through cable TV.

The games library is a decent size, not that large but fairly diverse and much more consistent in quality than that of the Atari 2600, and here we're starting to see the growth of newer, more interesting types of games like RPG's and strategy titles too. The system's high sprite counts also made it especially good for sports games, which was the area where it was able to drum up the most interest among gamers.

All of this came at a cost though as the Intellivision was quite an expensive machine at launch, pricier even than the PS3 when taking into account inflation, (though as already said consoles during the Intellivision's era were more expensive in general, though not usually quite to this level).

With all this in mind I'm sad to say that the system was never really able to reach its full potential, with many of the major developers choosing to stick to the 2600 or producing quick ports to the Intellivision that didn't fully utilise its feature set. More recently though we've been able to really see what the console was capable of, as it now has a very healthy homebrew scene with a lot of tools that make it easier to produce high quality games that really show off the untapped potential of the machine.
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#16

Sega Saturn (1994)
   
saturn console
 

So we've covered a bunch of consoles already that were caught unawares by the 3D revolution, but possibly the biggest casualty of this changeover was Sega, who had been one of the biggest gaming companies prior to the release of the ill-fated Saturn, rivaling Nintendo in prominence.

Magazines of the day laid out the course of events, but this speculation was eventually corroborated in recent interviews with Sega's employees too. Basically the Saturn was initially designed for 2D games in mind and most of their teams were inexperienced with 3D outside of Yu Suzuki's arcade team. Mid way through development of the hardware Sega realised they had gravely misjudged the direction the market was going in, and during 1993 they panicked and started to bolt extra pieces of hardware onto the Saturn at the last moment, in a bid to get it up to par in 3D capability with the upcoming Playstation, sadly this caused it to become an inefficient, unwieldy and expensive design. Sega sold the Saturn at a large loss but were still charging above the Playstation even at that stage, they ended up cutting the prices even further in order to compete, which Sony responded to by cutting their own prices, before long a price war ensued and Sega were now hemorrhaging money, the rest is history.

Software wise the Saturn had actually quite a large library of games, this was mainly due to it being a moderate success in Japan as Virtua Fighter was a huge phenomenon there when the Saturn launched, and actually it wasn't until Squaresoft announced that they would be bringing the Final Fantasy series to the PS1 did the Playstation start to conclusively lead in that territory. The software situation started out a little rocky, but very quickly developers started to master the hardware more and we saw some key titles appear, highly impressive 3D games like Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter 2 and the Panzer Dragoon games, many of which blew away the PS1's offerings (at the time of their release). There were also a bunch of very nice JRPG games on the system, like Grandia, the Shining games and the now notoriously expensive Panzer Dragoon Saga. The US company Lobotomy also created an underrated first person shooter for the system called Powerslave, and then subsequently used its engine to create some very nice ports of Duke Nukem and Quake for the system.

In the end it was really just not to be though, a system with such rocky foundations was always going to struggle, talking consumers into paying out more for your console when its performance is generally (though not always) worse in most areas was always going to be a very, very hard sell, and areas where the Saturn did have a strength, such as with 2D gaming, had fallen out of favour with the public and were seen as passé at the time. Still its 2D expertise and large library of 2D scrolling shmups and fighters makes it a darling among retro gamers to this day, and many of its titles are fondly remembered and highly sought after.

Unfortunately the Saturn was just not part of the zeitgeist of the times, which is a real shame, especially given that Sega had done so much for the history of 3D gaming in the arcades; Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, and Daytona had done much to popularise 3D gaming, but in the console world it was the Tekken's and Ridge Racer's that inherited the earth.
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#15

Magnavox Odyssey (1972)
   
odyssey console
 

This is where it all started, the first video game console ever made and the progenitor of every other console on this list. The Odyssey was an American console made in the early 1970s by an electronics manufacturer called Magnavox. The system's primary reason for purchase was its crude, proto version of Pong, which ended up influencing the creation of the much more familiar Atari arcade Pong.

The console isn't just here for being first though. Whilst simple in comparison to later releases of its generation, for its time it was actually quite forward-thinking as well and tried to provide a decent amount of variety. For instance there were actually different games available that you could swap in and out of the machine. Whilst superficially looking like the cartridges we all know and love they actually weren't, as there was no information held on them, they essentially just bridged the gaps in the console circuitry in slightly different ways to create slightly different effects. Regardless I'd imagine this system of swapping games in and out of the console probably did help to inspire the later, true cartridge designs as well.

Anyway about the games, the Odyssey came with a whole bunch of highly simplistic games which used screen overlays for your TV as well as other paraphernalia that you were supposed to use to alter the game play. Now, much of the variation was based on following rules that required a hefty amount of user input and self-restraint, as no scoring or automatic upholding of rules really applied, but at least the option was there.

More interesting though is the lightgun peripheral which allowed the playing of very simplistic lightgun games where one player would have to move a light around on the screen while the other would have to shoot at it, very simple, but again a nice feature to have, and another example that showed that whilst the machine was crude by the standards of later 1st generation machines, there was a lot of imagination put into its design.
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#14
Master System (1985)
 

 

master system console
 

So next we have the Sega Master System, now I'll admit placing this one was difficult. I feel that generally putting it above the Saturn is probably an unpopular opinion among Sega fans, and for a long time I honestly had them the other way around, but in the end I think for the time in which it was released this was probably the better buy. I think this not because I believe it to have the bigger or better library of the two because frankly it doesn't (although make no mistake the Master System was no lightweight in this regard either, it had a great library with many key titles for the time, games like Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Dragon's Trap, R-Type, and the superlative Phantasy Star were some of the best games of their era). No, Master System is above the Saturn mainly due to its fantastic price/performance ratio. This console had really nice hardware for its time and spent almost the entire generation in the same price bracket as the NES, even though the graphics these system's produced were in no way comparable at all. The console was good value for money and fitted in with the ethos of the time in a way that the Saturn often struggled with.

The Master System I think is one of the more underrated retro consoles, it seems to me that its generally seen as providing pretty much nonexistent competition for the NES, but this view is really not fair at all as I feel it offered a unique and worthwhile experience of its own. Of course having the pause button placed on the console itself was an oversight, and there were nowhere near as many games on it as the NES, whose library completely dwarfed it in size, but there was always a steady and diverse flow of software coming, always more than enough to keep anyone entertained, and the games you did get would provide visuals that for the time had surprisingly few noticeable compromises, heck, this was the first console that I can remember that even allowed you to hook it up to the TV with high quality RGB cables, which increased the fidelity even further.

Strangely enough the Master System received two different sound set-ups depending on the model, with one of the Japanese models containing the usual sound chip that we in the west are all familiar with, but also a more capable FM sound chip. Very often the games supported both depending on what model they were being played on and would automatically utilise the FM sound chip if detected. Sadly we never got this enhanced model in the west, nor did we get the upgrade add-on that the Japanese also received for their models without the FM chip, but at least we can now experience it in emulation.

Interestingly games on the Master System actually came in two different formats, you had the familiar cartridges which most major games arrived on, but you also had these simpler games which came on these little cards that had been passed on from Sega's earlier console the SG-1000. These cards were effectively sold as budget games for people who were more strap for cash, another admirable inclusion.

Sadly the machine passed most gamers by, in Japan it was released too late to compete with the NES, and in America it was most certainly bogged down by advertising and distribution issues. Only really in Western Europe, Australia, and Brazil was it a success and as such we got many, many more games released here than other territories. People often lament about how many quality Saturn games never left Japan, but this is almost just as true for the Master System outside of Europe in many ways.
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#13

Colecovision (1982)
 

 

colecovision console
 

This is actually a great machine that people rarely talk about, and it has to be placed as another one of the more underrated consoles of all time. The Colecovision was released in 1982 to much fanfare, the hardware was very affordable (and this was actually probably the first instance of a console being released at what we would consider to be a modern price range). Coleco, who were already somewhat established in gaming at the time through their Telstar series of Pong machines managed to come out with a truly excellent product at a great price.

The system was famously bundled with Donkey Kong as its pack-in, which was the console's killer ap at the time. Donkey Kong had been a phenomenon in the arcades but until this point no home console had been able to do the game justice, then the Colecovision version turned up and no longer did gamers have to settle for a blocky, vague blob representing Mario as he walked through barely recognisable levels, no, the Colecovision could do high resolution graphics (for the time!), and by doubling up on sprites we even got a multicolour Mario!

But Donkey Kong wasn't the only game the Colecovision had, oh no. The software library of the machine actually grew at a very fast rate and ended up quite respectable in size for a console that had such a short life span, and it was very consistent too, very unlike the Atari 2600 the system had few stinkers. It was also quite a vibrant library for its time too with lots of variety, with many of the newer types of games and genres that had started making inroads on the Intellivision making an appearance here as well, but providing a much smoother experience. Titles like Alcazar and Fortune Builder would be an early peek into what the future would hold for gaming.

Due to all these factors the Colecovision's sales in the US actually picked up very, very quickly, with the console hitting a million sales by the start of 1983. The future looked very rosy for the Colecovision... so what happened? Well, unfortunately the US was about to enter a massive gaming slump as the entire industry crashed, stalling sales of the system and bringing the whole US industry to its knees, to the extent that it would take years for it to recover and that Japan would take over from the US as the dominant force in gaming for many years to come.

Its quite sad really as I think if any console could've migrated gamers away from Atari and averted the crash it would've been this one, with its nice clean graphics, consistent software library and excellent pricing it was clearly a great deal. Unfortunately the system just couldn't gain critical mass fast enough.
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#12

Dreamcast (1998)
 

 

dreamcast console
 

Ah, Sega's swan song, the Dreamcast. It only lasted a short few years but it accomplished a lot during its short time on earth, and established itself as an innovative console with a library of odd, quirky, and artistic games like Chu Chu Rocket, Rez and Jet Set Radio, and ambitious early sandbox titles like Shenmue and its sequel. There were also odd hardware ideas like the VMU, which was the Dreamcast's memory card that had a little screen on it which gave every controller its own simple display and also doubled up as a sort of handheld console and virtual pet, at a time when they were all the rage.

The Dreamcast got so much right, it was actually one of, if not the cheapest mainstream consoles at launch but no major sacrifices had been made with the hardware. This thing was powerful in 1998 and represented absolutely phenomenal value for money, with games like Sonic Adventure and its famous whale chase scene wowing gamers when the footage first started appearing, blowing away what could be seen on the N64 and PS1 at the time.

Sega had learned their lessons well from their failure with the Saturn and had done everything they could to try to make sure the Dreamcast would not suffer the same fate, taking in developer input on what features to include in the hardware and making sure that creating games for the Dreamcast would be as easy and painless as possible, very much taking the ethos of the original Playstation from the previous generation. The console had a great launch line-up in the US and Europe, including the much lauded Soul Calibur which would become one of the most respected 3D fighters ever.

Sega decided to push for online gaming as well, going as far as to include a modem in every console. Previously only the Pippin had done this, but the Pippin had not backed it's features up with any games to catch the audiences imagination, not so with the Dreamcast and its high profile release of Phantasy Star Online, as well as polished PC ports of games like Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament. Unlike the online gaming of previous consoles many Dreamcast owners actually did decide to jump in, and the online became much more of a mainstream success than it had been in any console before, and it only grew from this point onwards with the baton being passed to Microsoft.

So why did it end up going the way of the Saturn regardless? Well I think truth be told that Sega were already past the point of no return before the console was even released, they were in too much debt and their brand name had suffered too much due to previous failures. Gamers never really gave it a chance, instead simply waiting for the PS2 to arrive.

If I would search for something to criticise it would perhaps be the controllers. Now, the analogue triggers were a nice addition, especially for racing games where you were given much better control over your car's speed, and they would rightly be adopted by most of the other console manufacturers afterwards, but the controller itself was very toy-like in appearance and ended up being the only controller of that generation to have only one analogue stick. To be fair to Sega when the Dreamcast was launched it was not yet clear that dual analogue controls would be the future of 3D gaming. While the PS1 had dual analogue controllers they were not really being used to their full potential until quite late in the life span. Gamespot actually famously panned the dual analogue control set-up for 1st person shooters in their review for Alien Resurrection for example, a game released for the PS1 in 2000! Previously when the Dreamcast was being designed it was just really being used for Ape Escape.

Sadly the Dreamcast did not manage to pull Sega out of their financial woes, and it ended up being their last console. One lucky break that did occur though, was that the Dreamcast copyright protection turned out to be quite insufficient for the job, which made the console perfect for the homebrew scene, and a cottage industry of unlicensed games are still being created, produced, and sold to this day, and at a semi-professional level no less, keeping the console alive long after its discontinuation.

The Dreamcast was Sega's last console, but quite honestly under the circumstances Sega fans couldn't have hoped for a better system as a conclusion to Sega's time in the industry.
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#11

Xbox (2001)
 

 

xbox console
 

Another of the underrated consoles among retro gaming fans I feel, and frankly I can understand it. There's something that just feels bland and generic about the system and its whole look and feel, and if anything I believe this really highlights the importance of superficial factors for making a product, the branding, aesthetics even the name, as the Xbox really is a high quality console that had a lot of ideas incorporated into it, and a very large library of imaginative and memorable games, and it really doesn't get the credit it deserves.

This was Microsoft's first foray into the console market and it was clear they meant business, it was by far the most powerful hardware of the generation and Microsoft took a big loss on every system they sold. They'd initially designed the system to be a premium product, then after realising this sort of market didn't really exist for consoles they rethought their tactics and dropped prices by the time of launch to try to get it into as many homes as possible. Whilst doing this they put lots of money into software support and just started buying companies outright, like they did with Rare, who had previously been a superstar developer for Nintendo. As opposed to the position Sega were in with the Dreamcast, for Microsoft money was no object, they knew they could take astronomical losses no problem, and in the end that's exactly what they did, losing billions of dollars on the system.

The software library here is quite underrated I feel and is only beaten in that generation by the PS2. Due to the console's power and similarity to PC architecture the Xbox got a lot of major PC games that would not see release on any other consoles of that time, and 3rd parties like Sega and Bioware, as well as many other companies that Microsoft would invest in, provided the system with a respectable number of exclusives too and a much needed identity of its own. Multiplatform games were also well represented; many of the best PS2 titles would see release on Xbox and the majority would see improvements, not only in graphics and performance, but with other novel features like custom soundtracks, a feature of the Xbox that allowed you to rip audio from your music cd's to your hard drive and then play your own music during games like Grand Theft Auto and such.

The hard drive, which was included in every Xbox often made for a smoother game play experience too, lacking the memory card loading and saving screens of its competitors. In fact the hard drive would be a staple of every subsequent console from this point on. This, coupled with the focus on online gaming inherited from the Dreamcast, with every Xbox containing it own ethernet port as standard, would place the Xbox as the most forward-thinking of the console hardware's of its gen.
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3DO
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Amstrad
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Commodore 64
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Master System
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