Grab your bucket of popcorn and buckle your sit belt, here we go!
5th Place: REAL 3DO
Ok, you guys might wanna know why I put this one on the list because the 3DO wasn't really know for his games or capabilities, but for his high prices and the big list of announced games that was never released on the console but the 3DO has some sentimental value to my childhood. Back in 1994, I still own my Sega Master System Super Compact with World Cup '90 on the memory and a Desert Speedtrap cartridge and it doesn't need an expert to know that both this game sucks A LOT but I really didn't have money to buy a better system, so I sticked to the game magazines to know what's out there.
I remember like it was yesterday: I bought the Super Game Power magazine (I can't remember the issue number, sorry) and inside was a review for The Need for Speed, that was just released on the 3DO and some images of Gex, Slam 'N Jam '95 and Road Rash and it just blew my mind. I look at it and I was like "OH MY GOD! LOOK AT THIS CAR, IT'S REAL!!" and for a kid who plays Top Gear on a SNES it was mind blowing!
Even though I was only able to play on a actual 3DO in 2006, every new magazine at the time showing that amazing pictures and the TV shows with some gameplay footage from the console just grow up my hype. Too bad it was a too expensive console and I would never get one back in 1994, but the console itself is pretty good, it served as a "base" of all 32-bit consoles yet to be released, like the Sega Saturn and the PlayStation.
Too bad the idea was too ambicious: 12 companies sharing the rights of a "format" that any other company of the world could procude the console, but to pay 12 times the copyrights was too expensive and with different companies manufacturing the main pieces of the console turned out to be impossible to put it out with a good price on the shelves.
4th Place: SNK Neo Geo (Cartridge or CD)
It's not from today that everybody know that I am a huge fan of the work that SNK made through time with their own system and franchises. I much prefer 2D sprites to 3D poligons on most of the cases (fighting games are one of them) and as SNK had a representative office here in Brazil from 1994 to 1998, every arcade house you would go that time there was at least 2 or 3 games from them - and sometimes, the game was even with the portuguese language turned on.
Thanks to SNK, nowadays I still much prefer fighting games to anything else when it come to gaming stuff and even though the company is not in the best of it's days they still can surprise us with some nice games produced in 2D, like The King of Fighters XIII.
3rd Place: Nintendo 64
If I just said to you that I prefer 2D games to 3D ones, Nintendo was one of the first companies (alongside with Namco) that made me look to a 3D game and not find it ugly. Even though half of me at 1999 was focused on arcade fighting games, I often sticked to some 3D platformers on the N64 like Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64 and had a lot of fun with them.
It was around this time that I was beginning to understand a little bit of english so I could do the tasks that are given to me in the games, but I still can't play a RPG because of the huge quantity of dialogues to read and understand.
The N64 is the only console on this list that I still own.
2nd Place: Microsoft Xbox
While most of the people was really looking to get an PlayStation 2 back in 2001/2002, one of the things that really caught my attention was the Microsoft's Xbox. Right here I have to clarify something to you: like I said before, I'm a fan of GAMES, a few companies and that's it. Even though a lot of companies pretty much ignored the Xbox's existence, it's true potential at the time was almost endless.
When I first played one, on a friend's house, he only have 2 games: the first Splinter Cell and Capcom vs SNK 2: EO, but just playing this two games I saw that the console was much better than it's competitors and every new game that my friend bought at the time just confirmed more and more this. Too bad that the most powerful console never sells the most on it's generation, but it still selled more copies than the Nintendo's Gamecube and you can't ignore that!
I love Otogi, Halo, Dead or Alive, Ninja Gaiden and both Capcom/SNK fighting games that was released on the console, but in 2011 I had to sold my Xbox to pay some debts. I hope I get another one soon.
1st Place: Sega Dreamcast
Let's do some justice here with Sega: besides they never end up a generation on the top sales, they always tried a lot to do so and in exchange we end up with some of the most addicted games of all time: Out Run, After Burner, Hang On, Space Harrier, Alex Kidd, Sonic, ECCO, NiGHTS, Shenmue and so on...
With the Sega Saturn they made a wrong choice and manufactured a really compelx hardware that was difficult to other companies to adapt it's game to the console and the almost total failure on the American and European market, Sega wasn't ready to give up yet and that was were the Dreamcast was born: the last attempt to make things right.
On the time of the release, the console coasted 900 reais (aprox. 450 dollars) and even with this high price, Tec Toy managed to sold 300.000 units by the Christmas. I bought mine in January 2001, two months before Sega announced that they would stop manufacturing consoles and even that didn't let me down to play and discover new stuff in the console.
The Dreamcast was the last console that I played and I had that same feeling that I had when I saw that 3DO stuff: the amazing graphics, the almost inexistent loading times and the soberb games that I end up playing like Grandia II, Phantasy Star Online Version 2 and Capcom vs SNK only consolided what would be the best time of my life playing games.
I never played a game online before, and with PSO V.2 it was so simple that even a newbie like me that never hooked up the telephone to a computer before was able to connect to a brazilian server and have amazing times with some strangers on the internet. Other fact that helped with my experience with the Dreamcast was that in 2001, I was able to read english much better and I finished Grandia II, my first RPG that I understood all the history behind it.
That was a amazing time indeed. Some of the best fighting games of all time were all released to the Dreamcast as well and the fact that 4 people could play Bomberman Online and Quake III Arena splitscreen ... I can spent a whole post here just telling you guys great stories about me and my friend playing with my Dreamcast.
Unfortunally, it has a sad ending: a "friend" of mine that I always lend my console when I was not playing it, asked me, just like always, to take it for a weekend on his grandmother house and I lended it... And I never saw my console again. He moved to another state, very far away from my house and I only knew about that 2 weeks later. Well, it might be a sad ending but the good memories always stayed with me!
That's it for today, mates! And now I ask you: "what's your 5 favorite consoles of all time?"
