PS Vita or PS2.

PS2 mainly for the games, so many fantastic ones I still play and replay decades later. Keeping track per platform the owned-played ratio and how many liked games in absolute numbers each has for me, the PS2 is still king in both. Even lesser known games I generally have a blast with.

On the Vita, its library isn't as strong as the PS2's, even if many of my favorite games were found through the Vita. But it compensates at being a fantastic console to mod. While I know people modding consoles do it for playing ilegitimate copies of games, if you ignore that, its mods still give you a lot to use the console for, possibly risking seeing the console dying in your hands while you read an ebook on it, try some homebrew ROM from Itchio, play with PSP homebrews, etc. Also it's a bit of a learning curve and technical information on it is sparse, but learning how it ticks makes tinkering second nature (...unlike the PS3 =.=").

I would have to go with either the Steam Deck or the Oculus Quest. But realistically I've spent orders of magnitude more time on the Steam Deck so I'll go with that. But both were revolutionary in a way that no other console approached. Sure, the PS2 was great, but it was just a PlayStation with better graphics, and the PlayStation was AMAZING, but in my mind it was a Nintendo with better graphics.

I have to give it to the Nintendo DS. Absolutely incredible library, much of it too unique to play anywhere else.

Looking at it just purely because of the console capabilities itself, the Wii was the best console.

Most of what the Wii did, no other system console or PC replicates well even to this day. They did this while undercutting other consoles on price, still putting out solid entries to their core IPs, and broadening gaming to new gamers.

All of the other consoles I would want to put at number 1 really are only great because of the library of games they had. Most of those libraries would have been better off if they were not forced to be on proprietary hardware.

N64. Such a solid lineup of games.

Sega Saturn and PlayStation Vita are honestly my favorites

Steam deck. Does it count? Plays everything you see here and more.

Consoles are kinda meh. Can't do much with them.

That said I think the ps2 with network and hardrive, then the ps3, then the wii. I like them all for what they could be made to do and have one of each.

But really: all superceded by the steam deck.

PC

The OG Xbox was so good.

Modding it was surprisingly easy, all you needed was a memory card (or a DIY adapter for plugging in a USB drive into a controller port) and a copy of Splinter Cell.

Not only would this allow you to rip games and play them directly from your hard drive, but it also opened up the world of emulators and homebrew apps & games. Shoutout to the xbins IRC channel.

XBMC was amazing, it allowed me to watch all my legally obtained media without having to burn DVDs. Crazy to think that would eventually lead to Plex, which I still use to this day.

I also played around with Damn Small Linux on the Xbox, which is what got me interested in Linux in the first place.

Now that I think about it, tinkering around with that console ultimately led to my love of homelabbing and Linux - I now run 9 servers in my utility room, and only use Linux on all my machines.

Thanks Microslop!

Poor N64 and its fucked up joystick get no love

In no particular order: and NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, PS3.

Real hard to beat the Sega in my book. Not only was it an amazing console on its own, but you could attach other consoles to it. Slap that 32x on top. Slide the Sega CD on the side. Who could beat that? Plus the Sega Channel? I mean come on.

The SNES. Hands down.

ps2.

I loved the ps3 don't take me wrong, but the ps2 just had that nostolgia and legacy aspects of it. The splash screen, the menu design, the simplicity. It was so nice.

My favorite is SNES, very closely followed by the Playstation. I never owned a Gamecube and Playstation 2 and missed some of the greatest games ever made of its time.

PS2. Due to it's game library.

The SNES will always be my favorite console. It's got some stinkers in the library, but the best games of the console still frequently rank among the best games ever made

I recently modded a Wii and I must say it's starting to become one of my favorite.

Not a console but the psp, it was so hackable and customizable and one of the first handhelds that did 3d and emulation well.

As a console, probably the n64, mostly cause the game changing factor compared to its predecessors and sick ass titles. Nintendo sucks balls now and I dont buy any of their shit but it was cool back then.

Wii hands down! I had twilight princess on release so it was soft modded early. I got to play super Nintendo super scope games on an lcd, and any Wii game I wanted. Dreamcast being a close second.

Playstation 2

Nintendo DS

That era was so good that Nintendo didn't even know what they had until they screwed it up and lost to modern smartphones.

I mean. in some ways its the odyssey because it has games that were so much better than other systems at the time despite it being black and white

Gamecube probably holds the most special place in my heart. More for the games that released for it than for the console itself.

The Wii was the only system me and my husband bought. It was delightful because it was the only system he could play with his cerebral palsy! (Some older systems like pong worked, but I'm only mentioning slightly modern) He was really good at the bowling! I wish ours still worked. Alas!

Steam Deck?

Playstation 1

Over 4000 games, many of which are weirdly experimental because "how to make 3D games" wasn't codified yet, and CDs gave developers about 200 times more space than they had on the biggest cartridges from the previous gen - not to mention the lower cost of production.

Also, most of the soundtracks are absolute bangers.

Edit: another point - growing up poor, I still got to experience a lot of the PS1's library because of the abundance of demo discs.

The Dreamcast and Wii are what comes to my mind.

The DC was ahead of its time and has a kick ass library. It also had a sweet gimmick with the VMUs. If SEGA had supported the fuckin' thing, it could have been even better. Perhaps even gotten further iterations. And if the VMUs came with it, they possibly could have figured out a console/handheld hybrid like the WiiU and Switch before Nintendo.

The Wii is really just for its gimmick and Miis and the music. The motion controls were super well done, especially after Wii Motion Plus. Even tho the only games these days I would go back and play are all the Wii Sports games and maybe uh... Forgot the name, but the samurai FPS game. Just the first one tho. The second one kinda sucked.

I played the absolute crap out of my Genesis more than anything else, i was obsessed with SF:2 CE and the six button controller was a game changer. But for every other genre the SNES has more of my favorite games compared to any system I have. There’s just a charm and feeling of care put into some its games that is just leaps and bounds above everything. Hard to describe.

For pure slickness of the hardware and user experience—the Gamecube, NeoGeo Pocket Color and Dreamcast mesmerized me upon purchase from that alone. Of course they all have some bangers. Also the joystick on the NGPC is amazing.

I haven't played many, more of PC gamer. But, of the Atari 2600, Radio Shack TV Scoreboard, Atari 5200, Sega Genesis, GameCube, and Wii, I'll pick the Sega Genesis. Yes, I was around for the launch of all of these, including the original Pong, which was the first video game I played. I'm fucking old.

360 for me. All my friends had one and spent soooo much time playing halo 3 and GoW online. Good times

Dreamcast.