Top Video Game Consoles : Ranking the Rec Room Rulers

[Falselogic]

All I know about the Master System I've learned from Parish's video history of the system.

 

[RT-55J]

The only Master System game I've played to completion is Golvellius: Valley of Doom, but I just think it's a very nice little machine with a lot of fun little idiosyncrasies. The dinky little square wave generator from 1979, paired with a graphics chip that could output 4 bit-per-pixel graphics (with positively garish RGB222 master palette) before just about anything else on the home console market is a combination to behold.

(I am, for the record, not a big fan of the FM sound expansion in some models of the system, despite being an FM-head in general.)

I did mess around with making some homebrew for the system a few months back. I got far enough to figure out how to get the line interrupts to work:

I haven't done much since then, but again it's fun to tinker with.

 

[Purple]

If we're gonna bring up Brazillian Master Systems, we need to have a talk about the Master System Girl.

YEARS before stuff like the WiiU or Switch, Techtoy shrank a whole master system down, build a controller into it, and just give it a damn broadcast antenna. Portable version of the console that'll just wirelessly put your game on any TV in range, fixes the Master System's biggest design annoyance of having the pause button on the console not the controller, and I mean JUST LOOK AT IT. If not for the fact that I'm almost positive it would not be compatible with any TV I could get my hands on I would want one of these things so so badly. Also came pre-installed with the Wonder Boy sequels (kinda).

 

[Issun]

The 2600 was my first console (the first time I ever had something that played vidya games was my dad's old Atari 800 compy) and I have fond memories of running from ducks in Adventure, shooting up bugs in Yar's Revenge, puzzling out Swordquest, and trying to scrute the inscrutability of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I never owned a Master System but I have enough experience with its software to deem it a pretty solid system. Plus there's just something cool about the grid background of its game boxes.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

I had a Master System but I never vibes with it. Largely because I wanted an NES that Christmas and got it instead with Penguinland. I rented a lot but none of the games hit with me strongly. I did put "Snail Maze", the game that plays when you don't put in a cartridge, through it's paces.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Hey everybody, here's some interesting things I just learned about the SG-1000:

• It was released the same day as the Famicom.
• Because Sega released more games for the SG-1000 and some Famicoms were recalled due to a faulty circuit, SG-1000 sales were over 3 times more than Sega had projected.

 

[Yimothy]

Ultimately the reason I put the SMS first is because it was the first system I had. The way I remember it, my local Kmart had a colouring competition (probably actually drawing rather than colouring but that’s how I remember it) which my older sister and I entered and she won, and the prize was a master system - the version with Hang On built in. I never got any good at Hang On (I think I didn’t understand gearing and would always immediately switch to high gear and so take off really slowly) but my dad was pretty good at it. Eventually we were allowed a second game, and again as I remember it the Kmart clerk recommended Wonder Boy and also told us how to access the hidden snail maze game built into the console (or possibly told us how to use the level select cheat in Wonder Boy and we found the snail maze by accident trying to put in the cheat code too early). Wonder Boy is pretty good, so I bought the sequel, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, to this day the best game ever made, and eventually Wonder Boy III, arguably the second best game ever made. We got Sonic 2 for Christmas at some point, and somehow were able to beat it only to learn that its bad ending is really sad.

I don’t remember which other games we owned, and which we borrowed from friends or rented repeatedly. In my memory the SMS was a more popular console than the NES, which was maybe just because I know at least three kids in my primary school class had one and I can only think of two with the NES. I never played some of the now more famous games like Phantasy Star as a kid (I hardly played Alex Kidd, even, since that was built into a later version of the console than the one I had), but I played a lot of great games, like the Wonder Boys, the first couple of Sonics, Psychic World, Golvellius, Bubble Bobble, Choplifter, Castle of Illusion, and Lucky Dime Caper. Once I got on the internet I heard about Phantasy Star and played it, and a bit over a decade ago I got a nomad, modified it to run SMS games, and started collecting them and discovering a heap of great games I hadn’t known before: Power Strike (aka Aleste) 1 and 2, Spellcaster, Master of Darkness, Ninja Gaiden, the excellent R-Type port, Ys, Zillion.

It’s a solid little system with some solid little games. But ultimately of course it’s number one for me because when I made a sword and shield out of cardboard and declared the climbing frame in the park sandpit was a castle, it was Wonder Boy in Monster Land who I was pretending to be.

 

[JBear]

The SMS was my #1 with a bullet as soon as I started making this list. I love everything about that system. The console is cool (although putting the pause button on it instead of on the controllers is admittedly not ideal), it has built-in video games (I had the version with Safari Hunt/Hang-on), the box art is neat, the game cards are neat, the accessories are neat (always preferred the SMS light gun to the zapper, and the 3D glasses were cool as hell), and the games themselves always felt more alive and vibrant than what I could get on NES. It wasn't my first console (that was the 2600), and I got a 2nd-hand NES soon after it, but it will always be my favourite. I have fond memories of going to the one video rental store in town that would rent SMS games and looking over the shelves, or going to Consumers Distributing and ordering games for it from a catalogue attached to the shelf with a wire and then waiting months for them to arrive (this was the only way to purchase new SMS games in town at the time).

I'm pretty sure that I've written more than one love letter to the SMS across TT 2.0/3.0 (one of which is embedded in my Phantasy Star Let's Play, which is my favourite game on the system, as well as one of my favourite games of all time), so I'll settle for a bit of brevity here, but suffice it to say, I think the SMS is a way better console than most people credit it for. It's unfortunate that it never really broke though in the US market, but I think that if it had, a lot of people would join me in looking back at it quite fondly. As one of the few people who owned both, the winner was always clear to me.

 

[Torzelbaum]

#13

Wii

236 points, 10 votes
Console Champion: Johnny Unusual (#5)

Gen: 6th
Lifespan: 2006-2013

Media:
Wii optical disc
GameCube game disc
Digital distribution

Lineage: Nintendo

Franchise foundation for:
Just Dance, No More Heroes​

At this point in time Nintendo was facing competition from PlayStation and Xbox consoles. After the GameCube Nintendo decided that instead of trying to compete on technical specs they would try "appealing to a broader audience through innovative gameplay". Their strategy for doing this was by building the Wii around a motion-sensing controller, the Wii Remote/Wiimote.

The Wii Remote used multiple technologies to track motion including an optical sensor (combined with a sensor bar attached to the TV / monitor) and it used wireless communication to allow a full range of unhindered motion (but maybe too full since a strap later needed to be added to keep it from slipping out of your hand). The remote allowed players to control console video games in new and different ways letting them "interact with and manipulate items on screen via motion sensing, gesture recognition and pointing". The Remote also had different attachments and peripherals to provide gamepad-like features or so it could act like other peripherals. This allowed for new gaming experiences while still working for tried and true classics. Motion controls proved so popular that Sony and Microsoft both released add-on motion control devices for the PlayStation and Xbox (& PCs).

The Wii was also the first Nintendo console to be built with and for online connectivity. And it could also remotely connect to certain Nintendo DS games.

(@Johnny Unusual @Mogri @Violentvixen @Aurelia @JBear @Issun @WildcatJF @Yimothy @Purple)

 

[Torzelbaum]

Here's what a few of you had to say about the Wii:

A bunch of weird apps with some killer OS music and sound effects. I played way more virtual console games than I did Wii games, but there were plenty of good Wii games as well.

It was a year or more before you could find these on the shelves. My then-girlfriend had a friend with connections, so she got one early. We fell in love over the tanks game on Wii Play.

I have picked out a game for each [console], because I felt like it. - Wii Sports Resort

With its fantastic motion controls, the Wii can be best remembered for the cultural phenomenon that was Wii Sports, but that’s not all. With a mix of entirely new experimental titles, great games and fantastic ports using motion controls the Wii has a library still worth experiencing in 2025. In an era where HD games were all the rage, the Wii had no issues succeeding with 480i/p output with visuals that were better than the GameCube but not a huge jump. Alongside online play, WiiWare and Virtual Console, the Wii offered a lot to differentiate itself from the GameCube and keep up with its HD competitors. It also had full backwards compatibility with the GameCube on earlier models which was always something that I appreciated,

Recommended Games: Wii Sports + Resort, Wii Play, Super Mario Galaxy 1&2, Metroid Prime Trilogy, TLOZ: Twilight Princess + Skyward Sword, Fragile Dreams, Resident Evil 4, Super Smash Bros Brawl, No More Heroes, Opoona, Sin & Punishment 2, Mario Kart Wii, Prince of Persia; The Forgotten Sands, Zack & Wiki, Sonic Colors, Xenoblade Chronicles, MegaMan 9&10, and The Last Story.

I don't know what order these will be in but I suspect that when this one comes, it won't be near the top. I also think that after this you will hear me singing the praises of Nintendo to a terribly sycophantic degree. Look, I have problems with Nintendo "the company" but I also trust that the design part of Nintendo tends to know what they are doing. Nintendo is basically the Disney or McDonald's of video games; a brand that is deeply entrenched in the minds of many people that equals comfort (again, part of the insidious element of the "company" aspect). But Disney and McDonald's are companies that are rarely asking big things of their consumer. Nintendo, however, often feels like it is trying to find the sweet spot in being the innovation and remembering that while games are art... they are also toys (toys are art, too).

While X-Box and Playstation change with the generation, it's more "power". But Nintendo is bold to actually ask its audience to play in a different way even though the last way to play sold so well. So sometimes their failures or flawed successes often feel admirable, because they take some big swings. In the case of the Wii, literally. And that's why it didn't rank higher; there were times where the motion controls felt a little awkward (Trauma Center is a game that needs stylus rather than a pointer) but the games it did work for were great! I remember spending the day playing Wii Sports, spending the next two days super-cramped up and excited to play it some more. Punch Out was a rollicking good time. It's not my favourite Nintendo system but it's one I feel like really accomplished something in going for a new thing.

 

[JBear]

The full backwards compatibility was huge for me, because it let me immediately store my gamecube, plug 4 wavebirds into my Wii, and keep on playing my GCN backlog. I played Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn back to back on the same hardware!

 

[Issun]

I spent most of my time with my original Wii playing Wii Sports and VC games, though I did eventually get around to the Mario Galaxies and those are some whiz bang fun.
The disc ejection mechanism stopped working on both mine and my ex's around the same time (2017) so I wonder if that ever happened to anyone else?

 

[Daikaiju]

The Wii was a helluva thing. Frankly loved the other companies joking about the wiimote and one year later all of them were a'wagglin'

 

[Torzelbaum]

#12

Game Boy

244 points, ~10 votes
Console Champion: Lokii (#4)

Gen: 4th
Lifespan: 1989-2003
Media: Game Boy Game Pak (ROM cartridge)

Lineage: Nintendo

Franchise foundation for:
Kirby, Mana, Pokemon, Saga, Super Robot Wars​

Handheld / portable electronic games have existed since 1976 but most of those devices only played a single game (or variations of it) so they weren't allowed in this list. Nintendo entered the handheld electronic games market in 1980 with their Game & Watch series of devices. Nearly a decaded later they would introduce our next console - the Game Boy. The Game Boy screen only displayed a single color which disappointed some critics but gave the system a fairly long battery life. The system and its cartridges are also notorious for being able to withstand quite a bit of physical punishment.

Legendary Nintendo designer Gunpei Yokoi was involved in creating both the Game Boy console and the Game & Watch devices. (He also invented the cross-shaped d-pad).

I had one as a kid.

The underpowered portable that conquered the world through sheer tenacity.

I played a ton of Qix and Tetris, and later Pokémon, but the Gameboy began a lifelong trend of me realizing that I don't really like portable games and reluctantly follow exclusives onto those platforms.

(@Lokii @Falselogic @Yimothy @Kirin @Baudshaw @Johnny Unusual @Violentvixen @JBear @Issun)

 

[Falselogic]

I played so much TMNT on this thing.

 

[JBear]

I played so much TMNT on this thing.

Hell yeah. Fall of the Foot Clan was a goat. Love those stupid hidden minigames.

 

[Yimothy]

I remember when I was a kid I wasn’t allowed to use my Game Boy for a week after getting in trouble for something or other, and just despairing of what I was going to do for a week without it. I also remember buying Kirby’s Dreamland on lay-by over several weeks, then taking it home and beating it on the first play. Still love that game, though. I had Link’s Awakening (still my favourite Zelda), the Mario Lands, Gargoyle’s Quest, Dynablaster, and of course Tetris. Music A is the famous one, but Music C is the one my piano teacher assigned me without knowing about Tetris. I sadly loaned my copy of Link’s Awakening to a friend shortly before his family moved away, and was highly disappointed in that boring old Donkey Kong he’d loaned me in exchange. Until years later I heard of DK ‘94 and realised I’d had one of the best platformers ever in my possession all this time.

 

[Lokii]

I vote the Game Boy high because that boy was really something, right? Really something.

 

[Lokii]

I sadly loaned my copy of Link’s Awakening to a friend shortly before his family moved away, and was highly disappointed in that boring old Donkey Kong he’d loaned me in exchange. Until years later I heard of DK ‘94 and realised I’d had one of the best platformers ever in my possession all this time.

Incredible story.

 

[Daikaiju]

My own family was a microcosm of the Game Boy's impact. Thanks to Birthday money and some assorted saving, I managed to scrounge enough for the original GB. I loudly announced to my family I was heading out to buy it. Their response was varying levels of indifference.
Within a week my mom was hiding it from me to get Tetris play time.

I purchased every iteration of the GB; the new colored case model, the GB pocket, the GB Color. Withered Technology philosophy at its zenith.

 

[Issun]

Like with the N64, my brother was the one that had the grey brick. Then I got the Super Gameboy and being able to decide my own palettes for Metroid II and Link's Awakening was magical.

 

[nataeryn]

I'm going to catch up on this thread real quick:
#23 - PS4 - I got PS4 the year it came out almost as a joke. My siblings and I were doing a name swap for chirstmas and my brother and i got each others names. I joked we should just buy PS4s for each other. My dad decided to go out and get a pair of them for us. I was very grateful to have it. I used it for The Last of Us, God of War 2018, GTA5, The Witcher 3, Nier: Automata, Person 5 and all of the Kingdom Hearts games thanks to 1.5, 2.5 rereleases and KH3.

#22 - Xbox - I've never owned any of the Xbox series of consoles. My suitemate had one in college and we played a lot of Halo and I was terrible at twin sticks movement at the time. So much staring at the floor.

#20 - WiiU - I have one! I don't even remember why i got it. My ex-wife loved playing Lego City on the WiiU. It took good advantage of the tablet controller, it had more of an open world type of play style than the other LEGO games and the story was super cheesy, but the gameplay was just right for her. Probably my least used console ever, but at least someone in the household got a lot of enjoyment out of it.

#18 - PS3 - I got a PS3 after I graduated college with my new "real job" money. Then I along with many others lost my job so i got to use it maybe a little more than I would have expected. I know I played the Uncharted games on it and Rock Band. In that era, i had been less into the rpgs and so I played some of the modern warfares and such back then too.

#16 - N64 - I never owned a N64, but my best friend down the street did, so I went over to his house a lot. We played a ton of Goldeneye, and they would let me play Legend of Zelda sometimes.

#13 - Wii - Similar to the PS3, I got as an adult, but they were in such short supply, i found one randomly at a Walmart and snapped it up. Similar to the WiiU, my ex wife liked it probably more than me most of the time. We played a lot of Wii Sports and Mario Galaxy. She really liked the physics of that game. She always struggled with twin sticks movement, but the wii controls made sense to her. I don't care what anyone else says, LoZ: Skyward Sword was my favorite game on that console. I never owned a gamecube either, so getting to go back and enjoy some gamecube games like Metriod Fusion was nice.

#12 - Gameboy - this was my first ever console. the whole family shared and used the heck out of it on family trips. My dad loved tetris. My sisters loved mario land. My brother and I loved pokemon and link's awakening. While my parents didn't like us kids sitting around "watching TV" at home, in the car, the gameboy was a welcome distraction that kept us quietly entertained. So the parents were much more receptive to a new gameboy game from time to time whereas i almost never got a new nintendo game. And that grey brick got beat to hell with us kids goobering it up and constantly dropping the thing. Only part that ever broke was the battery cover.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Withered Technology philosophy at its zenith.

I'm glad you mentioned this. I learned about this concept while reading the Wikipedia article on the Game Boy:

Within R&D1, [Gunpei] Yokoi championed "lateral thinking with withered technology", a design philosophy which eschewed cutting-edge technology in favor of finding innovative uses of mature technologies, which tended to be more affordable and reliable.

 

[Patrick]

Game Boy is... a good boy.

Mine got stolen from an airport when I was little (yes, I should have paid more attention!), but I played it a ton before that. I'm still catching up on new to me games to this day. I played Avenging Spirit and Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge for the first time this year. The library is just loaded with all-timers.

 

[JBear]

One Gameboy anecdote I forgot: I was convinced to sell my Gameboy and all of my games at a yard sale (along with most of the rest of my childhood :-/), thinking that the system's lifespan was at an end.

Then Pokémon happened, and I sheepishly had to go out and buy a new one.

 

[Kirin]

I didn’t have a Gameboy in its heyday - I was a total homebody as a kid so didn’t have a pressing need for portable gaming, and all the gaming money/presents I scrounged went into NES and later SNES games. But late in the system’s life I inherited an original format brick that a cousin was getting rid of. I mostly remember playing Tetris, Mario Land, and FF Legend III, which were the interesting carts he had (plus a few sports titles that I ignored). At some point I picked up a copy of Link’s Awakening, because I have a box for it on the shelf, but I must have gotten busy because I don’t remember actually beating it on original hardware.

 

[JBear]

Man, I forgot about the FFL games. FFL3 still has some of my favourite game music of all time, and my favourite FF airship.

That dumb little brick may have had more killer apps than I credited it for when I was compiling my list.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Technically, the Gameboy was my sister's. Basically it was mostly for Tetris but we also played a fair bit of the Tiny Toon Adventures game on it but mostly just that and Tetris. Later, I would use it for Pokemon after it laying dormant for years and playing it on the bus to and from Safegrad; the chaperoned no-alcohol graduation celebration.

 

[Violentvixen]

Game Boy was amazing, in addition to everything else mentioned I still have the camera and the sticker printer

 

[Torzelbaum]

The Game Boy was the first handheld console to make it on our list. But it wasn't the first* handheld console. Come with me and learn about that device in our next

Tribute to a Trailblazer: Mircrovision
​

Board game manufacturer Milton Bradley was no stranger to making games that used electricity. They would also go on to make handheld electronic games. In 1979 they attempted to branch into the world of handheld game consoles with the Microvision (aka Milton Bradley Microvision or MB Microvision). The Microvision wasn't actually what could be considered the first handheld console but it was the first that had interchangeable ROM cartridges. Well... In a sense. This is something which I feel is much easier to show you than try to explain with words.

This is the base unit of the Microvision:

Individual cartridges had a game, game-specific controls and a game-specific face plate for the console:

Here's what it looks like when a cartridge is "plugged" into the system:

I don't remember ever seeing or playing one of these but apparently the console was "featured in Friday the 13th Part 2".

After learning about this system I must admit that I have developed a deep but begrudging respect for the audacioius jankiness of the thing. But apparently the system suffered from a bunch of technical roblems which didn't bode well for it - the system was only around until 1981.

But that wasn't the end of what Milton Bradley created in this area. They also made multple handheld and electronic games, video games and other consoles - they manufactured (but didn't develop) the Vectrex (@Kazin) and another console/console-like device called the OMNI Entertainment System.