PC Gamer ranks EVERY Console

Before this is over, I'll piss off some Fanboys and start a shot at Big Daddy red. You could argue that Nintendo is the biggest

console

maker of all time, originally a toy and trading card company, they founded some initials. success in gaming in the Midway space, but it was the million units of its first home

console

, the color television series, that blocked its Destiny. Too bad the thing ad and look. Sorry, but first-gen consoles don't really hold up and While our rating system will take into account the lower expectations

gamer

s would have had at the time, sort of inflation-adjusted opinions, at the end of the day, a An important consideration has to be the historical significance, as well as how fun the games are today and The good news is that when we get to Nintendo's third-generation offering, the answer will be largely thanks to the inclusion of funds from hardware displacement.

I know it doesn't seem like much, but this is what the platforms look like at the beginning of the competition. to the left, jump over the obstacle, reach the right side of the screen, rinse and repeat woohoo, meanwhile, in the nest, watch it, go wooohoo and the improved cartridges would boost its capabilities even further, changing video games forever, the famicom or family computer as it was known in Japan. It quickly took the crown of the best-selling console in history, and thanks to Nintendo's savvy third-party publishing negotiations, a living room-friendly brand, and a focus on quality content, they would continue that success in the challenging North American market.

In our opinion, NES marks the end of the game console. Childhood and the beginning of his childhood years was the beginning of great franchises like Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid Mario and more, and it was also affordable, it's an A and the only reason is that, as innovative as they were most of his best games. are essentially obsolete, all of the franchises I just mentioned got a bigger sequel on Nintendo's next console that was better in almost

every

way and we'll get to that after this quick message from our sponsor Ridge, hey, it's an old wallet and boring. in his pocket, are you happy to see the high-quality, stylish, alternative wallets?

In any case, go to the link below and use the code lineus to save 10% on your purchase and get free shipping. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System didn't change the formula much, but its more refined technology gave developers a platform to focus on what was most important to making great games and this was clear from the beginning with F0 a striking look at the future using the power 3D mode 7 and Super Mario World, which is still the best 2D Mario game and the hits kept coming with a huge library of games ranging from still playable to contenders for the best title ever in the gaming genres. role-playing and 2D platforms.

There were some bad things too, of course, but Super Nintendo is our first level. and, unfortunately, Nintendo is last for a while with competition increasing

every

where and pirate flags flying high. Nintendo doubled down on their Wall Garden philosophy, leading to the big mistake that they, along with several others, would ruin this generation by choosing proprietary cartridges over CDs. Understand, Nintendo's lucrative licensing deals were easier to control when they ran the production line, but the cartridges cost many times more and contained only a fraction of the amount of data, leading developers to make serious compromises to run Nintendo's 64-bit machine, which is a shame, because the N64's raw performance was actually at the top of its generation, but community modders wouldn't fully unlock it until decades later.

However, sometimes limitations breed creativity and the N64 ended up with a very solid library, at least if you focus on its goats, okarina of time, and Mario 64 still comes up in those conversations and most of the system's first-party titles are, or at least they were, outstanding, even if Yoshi did a little dirty, the problem is that good third party games for the console were rare to come by and we would need to see a deeper library for a higher placement. It's going to be a b. The good news is that Nintendo learned that for GameCube they worked on their relationships making sure it was easy to develop and even chose.

Optical media, albeit in a stupidly smaller size, so the old purple lunchbox would end up with a more complete library with some entries in long-running franchises that are even considered the best, such as Smash Melee Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4, is okay, the controller sucked at Donkey Kong during almost any game that wasn't specifically designed for it, but at least it wasn't as weird or limp as its big brother B, it's a b, it's a shame no one cared at the time , leading Nintendo to a major change in strategy that persists today. avoid going head to head with HD systems from Microsoft and Sony Nintendo basically repackaged the cube into an overclocking rectangle with some extra RAM and released it alongside a motion controller which, by the way, was also originally designed for the GameCube at the time the Wii felt. a little disappointing considering its revolution codename, but if you felt that way you were probably a real

gamer

because for everyone else it was something else, it was fun, it would be easy to dismiss the console based on the mountain of waving paddles and they wiggled published for it, but it was Nintendo's first backwards-compatible home system and its early sales lead incentivized third-party developers to work on building its library, even if the ports weren't the best available now, unfortunately for Nintendo enthusiasts. emulation and the eShop.

Many of their most interesting titles are stuck there because of the novel control scheme, but we're still putting the Wii in the A tier for all the retirement homes that still bowl and golf, unfortunately like the people in those homes where the tricks of the wi became friendly. of yesteryear and its successor was probably Nintendo's lowest point, it had more power than the aging 7th generation hardware Nintendo pitched it against, but it also had confusing branding and a quasi-portable controller screen gimmick that most the games failed to take full advantage and did not help. New first-party games were slow to appear due to a focus on remastered HD, leading to slow sales, leading to poor third-party support again.

It got some ironically great games, including the decade-starter Mario Kart 8 in which Nintendo refused to give us another Mario. Kart, but these days there are fewer and fewer reasons to leave an unmodified Wii U connected, other than its ability to play older Wii games over HDMI, let's give it a try. Fortunately, the Switch immediately changed the conversation by delivering on the hybrid handheld's promises. of Wii U and put Nintendo back on top, released what is arguably the best game from one of the strongest gaming franchises in history and followed it up with Banger after Banger after Banger, the massive install base has prompted developers to move Heaven and Earth. reducing your games to work on it, sometimes resulting in a pretty good experience, especially considering the console is little more than an Nvidia Shield tablet with custom firmware and drivers, it's underpowered compared to today's machines and even with his time machines, but it's a great way to store Mario and the Gang in the screen-safe slot of your LTT backpack.

LTT store.com we're giving the switch our second step in revitalizing the handheld gaming market, as going forward it remains to be seen whether Nintendo can maintain the Switch's momentum against the rise of handheld computers and rumors of a return. from Sony, not to mention Microsoft's entry, but I'm hoping that the good, bad, good, bad pattern can't continue talking about things that couldn't continue. Sega and oh. Wow, do they ever have stranger origins than I realized? The Japanese giant was founded by Americans who sold slot machines to US army bases, that's why at one point they were called Iris GS, by the way, strange forged, but okay, Sega's first home console like the one from Nintendo. was designed to play simplified arcade ports and the sg1000 was in that sense better than the color TV with interchangeable cartridges and a little more power, which is good, but the MK3 or, as you will know it in the west, the Master System , is where Sega sales went parabolic, we are giving the sg1000 an announcement that won't surprise anyone and we are giving the Master System an announcement that will surprise people in regions where it would have an exceptionally long life with some type of peripherals impressive in every other way although it suffered from its focus on arcade style games and Sega's notorious bad habit of supplanting its systems too quickly just 3 years after Master System Sega released the mega drive or Genesis for us yanker Doodles powered by the Motorola 68,000 a familiar 16-bit chip that powered many other arcade games and home computers.

Sega brought explosive processing to the party, which is a real thing; We think no one is 100% sure what it was, but it most likely referred to dma or the ability to directly control a CRT. Brute Force, regardless of the limitations of the vdps palette, also had a more powerful CPU than the Super Nintendo, which arrived two years later, and thanks to some clever design choices, even had compatibility with Master System games, although it is not that I needed it. Genesis has a phenomenal library that is hands down Sega's best, even beyond Blue Blur. There are a wide variety of games designed to appeal to a slightly more mature audience thanks to Sega's more flexible third-party ecosystem, and many Genesis games simply play better than their SNES competition, even if they typically look a little worse.

I so wanted to put it in the S tier, but before we can rank it, we need to talk about some of the really baffling moves Sega made at the end of its life cycle. They first released a CD add-on that was actually a mild hit that allowed their older '80s hardware to surpass the newer SNES in some key aspects, such as improved Sprite scaling as well as CD-quality audio and the ability to play interactive FMV video games if you like them, but then like this guy. from nextg stop Gap Sega designed and released the 32 Sega surprise released the console 4 months early in North America only for Sony to immediately respond by announcing that the PlayStation would cost only 299999, so if you're confused trying to follow exactly what I'm talking about here, imagine how consumers felt at the time , what I just bought and what is this new thing from Sega.

In one fell swoop it burned the Goodwill they had fought so hard to claim from Nintendo and suddenly they were far behind Genesis. As for Saturn, it was a complete failure everywhere except Japan, which I guess is what happens when you move on from us. I'm going to make the best 2D system for True arcade 2 oh my god here comes Sony and they have 3D. Now, in retrospect, Saturn has a pretty incredible library of hidden gems that I would highly recommend you check out, but back in the 90s when 3D was the new hot thing, developers just couldn't bring themselves to discover their chip architecture eccentricity. and Sega's penultimate effort would pave the way for the company's wholesale exit from the console hardware space, we're giving it a c for, at least come on. deserved a chance, the Saturn is the most underrated system Sega has ever created, maybe even by us, and I say that knowing that most people would think that award goes to Sega's final effort, the Dreamcast, with a modem for integrated network play. and a high-quality VGA-capable output, it was truly ahead of its time, and between excellent ports for the system, not to mention a host of phenomenal new games, the Dreamcast would have the strongest start in gaming history - until a big old black man appeared.

The DVD player we'll get to in a moment, don't worry, arrived with its pink slip. Less than 3 years after its launch, Sega announced that not only was the Dreamcast behind the barn, but the entire console business was going with it. Sega, we congratulate you on your service and give the Dreamcast a strong B for being something still worth dusting off to this day. The good news is that in the same year that Sega admitted defeat, a newContender would pick up his torch. Microsoft was looking to make its own gaming machine and the good thing is that you can still see some of that Sega DNA in the original lightweight Windows 2000 machine, six face buttons, a focus on network play and even rumored support for Dreamcast, although that never came to fruition. even though it used similar Windows CE and Directex development tools.

I mean, I'm sure the Xbox, compared to the full custom chips the competition used, was basically a glorified Pentium 3 computer with a big controller, like what were they thinking big, but? It was the most powerful system of its time, meaning it often had the best version of cross-platform titles, not to mention a strong library of exclusives. This was before Microsoft settled into their Halo Gears and Forza safe spaces and launched platforms with strange characters and Epic. RPGs that competing machines couldn't even run, the Xbox got off to a spectacular start and that was just the beginning.

Just 4 years later came the Xbox 2, sorry, 360, with easily the best online service and game delivery of that generation. With a modest entry price and developer-friendly hardware, the 360 ​​was a midday gaming machine for gamers where almost any cross-platform title would arrive first or better, or both - even franchises that had been exclusive to Sony began to appear. on the Microsoft machine, I mean, sure. It doesn't have a huge list of first-party exclusives, but there are some greats and Microsoft's big push in Japan gave the 360 ​​the best Japanese library of any Xbox system. Can someone remaster Lost Odyssey for Crying Out Loud?

Reliability issues aside, the three 360s are Microsoft's best and are an easy solution to the countless Halo 3 nights that sadly kept millions of people from getting a rest. appropriately, although Microsoft would be a big fool and try to make its next Xbox the one device for everything it had. The HDMI input for the cable box goes through mandatory plug-in integration for voice and motion controls, and worst of all, they infuriated gamers from the start by simultaneously announcing an always-online DRM scheme that, in retrospect, seems pretty similar to where we ended up, but I guess people weren't ready to hear it, this poor message combined with underpowered hardware and a higher price contributed to a major loss for the PS4, which had outsold it 2 a one at the end of 2017 and with Sony back on solid footing after its first PS3 tokens.

PlayStation exclusives started making the rounds around Microsoft's struggling Xbox franchises, to their credit the Xbox team started cutting back on the machine's cable box connection and did a much better job of supporting their friends Windows, but outside of Gears and Forza it was kind of a wasteland. However, Microsoft clearly understood its advantage in building cloud and data center services and followed up its successful Xbox Live subscription with Game Pass and a free-to-play subscription that, frankly, kills the competition on value. Unfortunately, this was too late in the cycle and they knew it. the one that gets a c because I wish I was playing as Master Chief, not Jameson lock, which brings us to the 9th generation Xbox or boxes for the first time, we got two versions with wildly different performance characteristics and for the second time we focused on Services rather than games, the series continues Microsoft's trend of cross-platform play and backwards compatibility, which is great, but it also continues Microsoft's trend of, especially the latter, being a bit uneven.

Microsoft has gone on an aggressive Studio gaming spree that, in theory, should lead to something really exciting. Box Move titles, but we're still waiting to see them and apparently so are Microsoft customers, with combined sales of the two Xbox series well behind the PS5. Now it's still a little early to give the Xbox Series a definitive rating, but despite its poor sales, we're actually leaning toward a B for the best gaming PC you can buy for $300 or $500, or times, even less on sale. We'll have links below for the series and the other consoles you can still buy. but before I rank the rest of them, I want to go back in time to some things you couldn't buy in 1977.

Nolan Bushnell founded Chuck E Cheeses. That franchise gets an F for its shitty pizza and creepy rat. I promise. going somewhere with this 5 years earlier, he also co-founded Atari, maker of pong C and VCS or as many now call it 2600, was one of the most important machines for bringing games into people's homes, even if the software now It seems painfully primitive. We almost gave it an A for possibly the most important console of all time, but we're going with a B because it's best not to play it unless you have an academic interest, since the 5200 arrived 5 years later with hardly any technological improvements and no -Library of existing games, which means we have our first F level here, friends, since the 7800 has a c and that is only due to its backward compatibility with the 2600, since the Jaguar is difficult to program for expenses.

I have and once again I don't. Game Library, that's another F and that was the end of your console, sorry. Atari, I'll see you later. For some of Atari's competitors, like channel f, is it for fun or is it for their ratings? It was the first proper home console. with a real processor and ROM cars, but other than that there's not much more to say about it, we're going to go with a d Magnavox Odyssey that came out in 1972, OMG that's 5 years before '26, that alone gets a c more The Odyssey 2 games have exclamation points in their titles, so, Mattel's only intellivision console that isn't one built to scan rfad cards, we'll give it a c and, uh, the Connecticut leather company, yeah, That's what kico means kico vision. a technical Juggernaut compared to its contemporaries and, uh, it gets enough of a C out of that too, although fast forward a decade, the SLT Turbo Graphics 16 PC engine was mostly ignored in the West, but in Japan it outsold the Mega Drive and It had a solid library of games. which make good use of the CD addon, we're giving it a b, the Neo Geo was great, it literally brought the power of an arcade machine to your home and all it cost you was about the same as an arcade machine anyway , as for the The Philips CDI that costs over $2,000 in today's money is yours, my friend, as long as you have enough rubies fffffffffff later for the Amiga cd32 this one.

I don't know, it's possible, it's amazing, but at these kinds of prices for units that work, I'm just never going to know, if collectors eventually fill out our list of others, we have the 3dio and it will be listed for having some games and ports decent even though it was a huge waste of money for both customers and consumers. for its creators they talk about PlayStation, okay, I was almost there anyway pcfx D there, the origin of PlayStation is really a crazy story of corporate traitors and little business sense during its early years. Sony was a big player in electronics and music and had become one.

One of Japan's biggest exporters, his collaboration with Phillips on the invention of the compact disc was revolutionizing the media world, but it would take Maverick engineer Ken Karagi to finally turn his R&D engine toward video games, forging a deal secret to making the Super Nintendo sound chip this The sound chip led to a second, much larger deal with Nintendo One for Sony to produce a CDROM version of the super famicom called PlayStation Now, as you may know, that deal didn't work out as planned and depending on who you ask you will get a very different answer to the question of who screwed up who, on the one hand, Sony was the largest company and had been using its muscle to impose very unfavorable contract terms, including exclusive international rights to every game developed for the system and full control of the licenses for all music and film deals, Nintendo had a history of strict and exclusive control over its consoles, they were concerned that Sony would use towards a dominant position in video games, so they secretly sent emissaries to negotiate a more favorable deal.

Elsewhere, just one day after Sony publicly announced their joint console at CES 1991, Nintendo slapped them in the face by abandoning both the contract and years of joint development, announcing a partnership with Sony's collaborator on the CD format. , Phillips, and Sony split up. What to do next Some members of the old guard were looking for an excuse to pull out of the Space video game anyway, while others preferred to simply bend the knee to Nintendo and try to salvage something from the original deal, there were even talks with Sega of America about development . a console alongside them, but that idea was killed when Sega's CEO apparently said it's a stupid idea.

Sony doesn't know how to make hardware and they don't know how to make software either. Why would we want to do this in retrospect? amazing drug guys, as for Karagi, I think we all know where he stood on this, he was still seeing red from his recent embarrassment at CES and wanted to build it himself, importantly, he had a key ally, the Chairman of Sony partially obfuscated what he was doing from the Sony board of directors by moving his team from headquarters to Sony Music Entertainment Japan and while they were working some key things happened, the success of Virtua Fighter confirmed that 3D Graphics was the way to go and The failure of 3D and Jaguar showed that their console would live or die on third-party support, so a team from Sony's record label was sent to hundreds of studios to support Garner and their proposal was simple but effective, they promised. easy development and fair promotion of first-party and third-party games.

Over 250 teams showed interest and the rest is history just 2 days after its launch in North America, Sony had outsold the Sega Saturn in the UK in 5 months, outsold the Sega 3 console by one and , by the end of its first year, Sony had taken a They were selling so many games, representing 20% ​​of the American video game market, that the co-inventor of the CD needed to build new CD printing facilities to keep up with the outrageous demand. , and even when Nintendo's 5th generation competitor appeared 2 years later. Thanks to superior 3D power, not to mention the iconic IPS, the Playstation only came into its own at the end of its life in 2006, the PlayStation had sold over 102 million units, more than double the sales of the N64 and Saturn combined , and a big part of that success is its huge game library, it has more games than any console before it or any console that has come since reaching a final count of 7,918 titles and it wasn't just quantity either.

I mean, it's easy to find knocks against the PS1 like its atrocious loading times, but what can't be argued is the depth of its library, not to mention its appeal to gamers, some of which grew out of Nintendo's stubbornly family-oriented approach. . It's an S level for two reasons, one because we didn't have a higher level. rank and two, two because if we ranked anything else, I would first be killed by my staff and then dragged down the street by the rest of you. Now Sony knew that the secret to the PS2's initial success was going to be its great value: it offered backwards compatibility. with the PS1 thanks to using its big brother's CPU as an IO controller and, more importantly, it was one of the cheapest DVD players available, so although the PS2 library might have taken a few years to be completed due to its somewhat exotic architecture, there were strong Reasons to buy it from day one and buy it.

We did it. PS2 sales almost immediately drowned out the Dreamcast and would come close to tripling sales of the Sega machine, GameCube and the original Xbox combined. The PS2 remains the best-selling EST gaming console of all time, although the Switch is hot on its heels and at the end of its decade of support it had over 2,500 games to play with more in the goat conversation than probably any other machine, the PS2 is an easy level and according to our rating. system is the number one console of all time, oh that means it's downhill from here, so right here comes Sony's first hurdle in their efforts to replicate the success of the ps2 by turning it into a performance horse once again.

Trojan for the latest optical and fullon media. backwards compatibility by inserting a PS2 into it, not to mention the fact that they put effort into developing the supercomputer chip. The initial price ofSales of the PS3 ended up being a major sticking point for consumers, which made matters worse. The line of launch titles was weak and the ports to the system. They were generally inferior to those of the Xbox 360, so for years the PS3 seemed to be the clear loser of the Seventh Generation (a first for Sony); However, eventually Sony Studios would figure out how to maximize the performance of its unusual cellular processor and produce some impressive exclusives that help undo at least some of that damage, actually a lot of it.

I mean, if you told me I could never play a video game again unless it was on a PS3, I'd still have a lot to play, which is pretty goat, but it can't be an S, let's call it a, thankfully, although Sony would learn from some of its mistakes and the PS4 would be a sensible first gaming Oasis in Microsoft's strange, ever-watching cable TV world. Sony Studios got to work immediately. and there wasn't a year, maybe 2013 and 2019, that didn't have several games that made players sit up and shoot. I'm going to need a PS4, now we'll eventually have a lot of those titles on PC, but if N64 is a b and PS3 is a PS4 has to be an S and this is a special highlighted by perception or maybe it's just us that the monolith Sony's 9th generation white looks more like an older PS4.

I mean, it's more powerful but still focused on x86 games. The PC has full support for PS4 games, which is great and we're only in year four with a pretty solid library of titles, but we can't help but feel a little desperate to take some risk here rather than just repeating more of the same. work formulas. I also don't love the direction they've taken their subscription services. Not only is backwards compatibility very poor, it's locked behind recurring payments and Cloud actually saves you guys, who do you think you are Nintendo? They would want a level, unless it's something big. changes like if you stopped doing Segways to patronize Squarespace, creating your own website doesn't have to be difficult, luckily with Squarespace they aren't, they are a single platform that makes it easy to get your website up and running quickly, designing with its smooth engine.

Site Builder is easy, you also start with a template and customize every detail imaginable with drag and drop technology for desktop or mobile devices. You can also use their asset library to manage all your files from one Central Hub and use them across the entire Squarespace platform with Squarespace's analytics insights. you can see what's working well and what needs a little attention, and if you need help, Squarespace has your back with helpful guides and a 24/7 support team, visit squarespace.com SL LT and get a 10 % off today. We know you guys will have different opinions on the best consoles and games, so we want to know what your favorites are in the comments and if you like the tier lists, why not check out the one where we rank each generation?

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