Console Gaming and Me

An account of my experiences in the Console Wars

Lately, I've been reading/watching a lot of retrospectives about different gaming platforms*, and was in the mood to write about my own experiences with the various generations of consoles; while I don't claim to be the most experienced veteran of the Console Wars, these gaming systems did play a role in shaping a major part of my youth and adolescence.  Before we begin, it's worth noting that in my family, in order to placate 3 siblings, we generally tended to have 2 consoles on 2 separate TVs at any given time, each with a fairly limited selection of titles (this was considered preferable to having 1 console with many titles that had everyone fighting over it).

And now, without further ado, a generation-by-generation breakdown of the consoles I've played:

Pre-8-Bit Era:
I was born in 1985 (the same year that the NES came out in the US!), so the early period of games, the "Golden Age of Videogames", and the crash of 1983 were all before my time.  On occasion, I'd play arcade or computer versions of games from this era, but otherwise I'm not very familiar with this period of gaming.

8-Bit/Third Generation Era:
The NES was the only console from this period that I played, and I played it quite a lot.  Although we had quite an extensive cartridge collection, the only games I remember playing extensively are Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 3, Top Gun, Burgertime, Paperboy (while playing this game, I spent most of my time deliberately throwing newspapers at windows...), and Battletoads (which I could only get past the first 2 levels of, but still really liked playing).  I guess all of the other titles either didn't interest me, or they were too difficult or advanced for me at that age.  Super Mario Brothers 3 was probably the game I played the most on this console.

16-Bit/Fourth Generation Era: 
My family had both a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis; of the 2 consoles, I tended to play the SNES a bit more often.  At this point I was old enough that I was getting really good at games.  An important milestone from this era for me was Super Mario World, which was the first game I beat.  Other games I played often from this era include:

• SNES: U.N. Squadron (which I found out years later was based on the manga and anime franchise Area 88), Metal Warriors (which I mostly played against my siblings and/or cousins on multiplayer), Desert Strike, and Krusty's Super Fun House.
• Sega Genesis: Sonic 2 was the game I played the most on this console (it came packaged with the console; to this day, I have only played the first Sonic The Hedgehog once, while at a friend's house), followed by Rocket Knight Adventures, and Zombies Ate My Neighbors.  I think we had about a dozen games for the Genesis, but these are the only games I really remember playing.

Of all the consoles we had, the Super Nintendo lasted the longest.  This was due in part to the fact that for many years we had a weekend/vacation house, and while consoles came and went in our main house the SNES was never replaced in the weekend house; even after we sold the weekend house, the SNES was still in operational condition, and after I moved out I had it in my apartment until 2009!  I think my parents might still have the SNES somewhere in their house, but I have no idea if it's still operational.

32/64-Bit/Fifth Generation:
This was probably the peak console gaming era for me, and also when I was at my most strongly partisan when it came to choosing one platform over the others; in school, there was a strong dividing line between those who had a PlayStation at home and those who had a Nintendo 64 (my family was a PlayStation family**, and I don't recall anyone ever having both consoles in their house while these were the current generation of consoles***), and the merits of one system over the other was fiercely debated in cafeterias and between classes.  Looking back, I think this was in part due to just how different both systems were, and how evenly balanced they were in terms of both advantages and drawbacks; any time those defending one console would come up with an advantage, those defending the other console would have a strong rejoinder (PlayStation player: CDs can hold so much more data than cartridges and they're cheaper and easier to make, which means more games are available for the PlayStation! N64 player: Cartridges don't get scratched and don't have load times, and the Nintendo Seal of Quality guarantees that the games that do get made are of a consistently high quality!****).  I didn't know anyone who had a Sega Saturn or its derivatives, and as a result I never played any games for that console.

• Sony PlayStation: This was probably the most extensive and varied games collection we had; whereas on previous consoles we tended to play (with a few exceptions) either 2d platformers or sidescrolling combat games, here the genres we played included survival horror (Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3), stealth-based (Metal Gear Solid, Tenchu:Stealth Assassins, Syphon Filter), racing (Gran Turismo, Micro Machines V3, Destruction Derby), 3d platforming (Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Tomb Raider, Wild 9), vehicular combat (the Twisted Metal series, Vigilante 8), and many many more (including, but by no means limited to, Soviet Strike, Descent, Treasures of the Deep, and the first 2 games in the Grand Theft Auto series, including the London:1969 expansion pack).
• Nintendo 64: While the Nintendo 64 remains the console I've probably played the least (not counting, of course, consoles I haven't played at all), I did on occasion play this console at some of my friends' or cousins' houses, and we rented it once or twice from Blockbuster.  When I played this console, the games I played the most often were Mario Kart 64, GoldenEye 007 (both games usually in 4-player split screen), Shadows of the Empire (which was probably the only N64 title I really wished would come out on other consoles), and Super Mario 64.

Sixth Generation: 
By this time, my interest in console gaming was beginning to taper off; I was now in high school, so I had far less free time, and also what time I did have for gaming was becoming increasingly dominated by the PC, as I was getting more and more interested in strategy and simulation games, two genres that were the PC's domain.  Still, I did play quite a few titles from this era, including:

• PS2: In addition to all of the original PlayStation games I played, I also played Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 (one of the most bizarre moments in gaming for me came when my science teacher asked me and 2 other students before class began how to get past a certain level in MGS2), The Getaway, Grand Theft Auto III, and Micro Machines V4.
• Xbox: In addition to Halo (which I think everybody who's had an Xbox is legally required to have played), I also played Max Payne, Knights of the Old Republic, and its sequel The Sith Lords, which have so far been the only RPGs I've played.
• GameCube: While I spent most of my console gaming time playing on the PS2 and Xbox, I sometimes played the GameCube (usually when my siblings were already playing on the other 2 consoles).  The only games I remember playing on the Game Cube are Resident Evil Zero (which is the only Resident Evil game I've played all the way through), The Twin Snakes, and Rogue Squadron III.
• Dreamcast: My sister had a Dreamcast, but I don't remember ever actually playing it myself.

Most of my console time was split relatively evenly between the PS2 (although when I was playing the PS2, about half of that time was spent playing PlayStation games) and Xbox, with the GameCube coming a very distant third.  I still have a PS2 in my apartment, but around 80-90% of the time, it's being used as a DVD player.

Seventh Generation:
By this point, I was in college, so what time I had for console gaming was limited to whenever I was home, the consoles were available, and I didn't feel like playing a PC game.

• On the Xbox 360, I played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Grand Theft Auto IV, and a few levels of Half Life 2. 
• On the Wii I played a few levels of Paper Mario and about half an hour of Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time (We didn't have the Wii for very long; my younger brother bought the Wii, and then traded it in after having had it for only a few months).

This was the first time since Sony entered the market that we didn't get a new PlayStation console.  Ultimately, this would also turn out to be the last console generation I played games from, as this generation coincided with the PC nearly completely taking over my gaming time.  In addition, at this time my 2 siblings and I moved out (with my sister ending up on the opposite coast from my brother and I), so my parents decided not to buy any new consoles (Although my brother did get them an NES: Classic Edition.).  So ended my service in the Console Wars; I now consider myself as having resigned my commission and retired from the conflict.

All in all, from a gaming point of view I'd say it was an extremely interesting time to come of age, being able to see the ways the graphics and gameplay drastically changed from generation to generation (the latter not always changing for the better; the change to 3d in particular had its share of problems, especially when it came to camera controls), and the often rapid and unexpected rise and fall of different companies and genres (if someone had told me in 1992 that in less than a decade Sega would be making games for Nintendo consoles while competing with consoles made by Sony and Microsoft, I would have probably thought that they were either making things up or completely out of their mind). 

*Mostly in the form of watching LGR videos on Youtube and reading Gamespite articles
**Apparently, we were one of the first PlayStation families, as we had one of the early models (the kind that had to be turned upside-down to work properly)
***I remember my cousins getting a Nintendo 64 after they'd had a PlayStation for about 4 or 5 years, and me telling them something to the effect of "You already have a PlayStation!  You can't have both systems in the same house!".
****Little did we realize that what the Nintendo Seal of Quality meant was that the game would work when it was placed in a console, not that it would be any good...