1. Atari 2600 (c. 1977)
Best Games: River Raid and Pitfall. Enough said.
2. Nintendo Entertainment System (c. 1985)
Best Games: Sheesh, lotsa ways to go here: Double Dragon, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Paperboy, Jordan vs. Bird, Excitebike, Marble Madness (even though I sucked at it), Super Mario Bros. trilogy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Duck Hunt, etc., etc.
If you pressed me, I'd say Mario and Zelda take the cake for the NES. You could knock out a solid 8 hours every Saturday and not lose interest one bit. Top shelf games.
Random aside, does anyone remember The Wizard with Fred Savage?
3. Super NES (c. 1991)
It's a little tough for me to be objective about this system because I didn't actually own one. Don't discount my authority though, I did my time on the SNES. Two extra buttons and you didn't have to blow the damn cartridge every 5 minutes. Improvement.
Best Games: F-Zero, Donkey Kong Country, Legend of Zelda, Street Fighter II, Madden NFL '94.
Worst Games: Annoyingly, every game made for original Nintendo with the "Super-" prefix thrown on. All 71 of them.
4. Nintendo 64 (c.1996)
Nintendo 64 came out at roughly the same time Playstation did and our family had both. I preferred Playstation, while my brother fancied the N64. Because my face time was limited with the Nintendo 64, I only played one game… possibly the best multi-player game ever.
Best Game: GoldenEye 007. Proximity mines anyone?
5. Xbox (c. 2001)
Microsoft released the Xbox the same year I went to college. That. Was. Awesome.
Best Games: Halo and Wakeboarding Unleashed with Shaun Murray.
If there was one multi-player game to rival GoldenEye, it was Halo. Shaun Murray's Wakeboarding game was the cult Xbox game in my senior year of college.
So that's it. Unfortunately, I was only able to review 5 video game systems. I would review the PS3 and original Playstation, but I couldn't find any cool icons for them.
Did I leave anything off?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Atari had a pretty kickass Sesame Street game
. That’s the only one I could play when I was little without throwing things (even then, patience wasn’t my best attribute). I was always a huge fan of Kirby on the original Nintendo, mainly because I could get to higher levels in that game than in the Mario games.
I LOVED The Wizard. Fred Savage, Christian Slater and the kid from Little Big League? Prime entertainment… Cal-i-FORn-ia….Cal-i-FORn-ia…
Hello, someone left out the Sega Genesis! Sonic the Hedgehog baby!
Time well spent, TB. While we did not have any gaming consoles in the Hanks home, I did regularly hit them up at friends’ houses. River Raid, Mario and Goldeneye – three best (most addictive) games ever.
I can still close my eyes and see the paths on River Raid. I am sure scientist will discover that is an illness one day.
@Jennifer Call me a wuss, but Kirby always frightened me as a child.
@Cameron They didn’t have a Genesis Icon!!! Remember Altered Beast?
Super Tecmo Bowl has to take it all on the NES >> Bo Jackson at his finest!! Of course, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out and RBI Baseball were solid game plays as well.
I’m surprised that Mario Kart 64 didn’t show up on your N64 list.. it’s an absolute classic. GoldenEye 007 is the master of all games with the system.. but Kart comes close around the Smith household.. even today it is played every Christmas.
Thanks for throwing all these out here.. a nice touch of memories to them all. The Wizard was when the Body Glove was revealed.. and the warp-levels of Super Mario Bros 3 shown. It was Wonder Year’s boy at his peek!!
@Jared Oooh wow, how did I leave off Super Tecmo?!? I knew that you would have beef with me for not including Mario Kart!