Sorry Nintenbros, but I picked
N64.
Now, the N64's a great system...but the way a lot of people talk about it, you'd think it was lightyears ahead of PS1 and Saturn, or even the only 5th-gen console that released. Neither of these takes are anywhere near true.
It's hard to claim a single game on PS1 or Saturn that had as much of an impact on game design or the industry as Super Mario 64...but how many Super Mario 64s did the N64 actually have? Versus how many FF VIIs, GTs, Parappas, NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoons, Crash, Tekken 3s, etc. that PS1 & Saturn had? What I'm saying is, N64 might have a small handful of legendary-status games, but PS1 & Saturn have a much
wider variety of outright great & cool titles, including cult classics.
Also, it's annoying when people only point to Mario 64 as "setting the standard" for 3D gaming, as if Virtua Fighter, Tomb Raider, or even games like System Shock & DOOM (to include DOS gaming here) didn't have wide-reaching impact, because they definitely did. 3D gaming was evolving fast in the '90s so it doesn't make sense to think only one game suddenly showed up and laid down every single foundational framework for how to make a 3D game.
N64 did help establish a lot of things, like 4-player couch co-op and analog controls for 3D movement as standard, but the amount of people who glaze it to the point of diminishing other 5th-gen systems is just too much, even if stuff like Saturn have gotten more recognition over the years (though, some fanboys there push it a bit
too much when comparing to PS1, even claiming it was better at 3D than PS1 which is factually not true).
I think the runner-up I'd pick is, unfortunately, the
Dreamcast, because a lot of people today (both just retro gamers and also homebrew devs in the scene) almost feel like they're trying to "right the wrongs" of history when talking about Dreamcast relative to PS2 in particular. Yes the Dreamcast deserved a whole lot more success, but people glazing JSR or Space Channel 5 today didn't buy those games when they were new, and Dreamcast's early library wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. It had quite a few duds in there too for as much as people like to say PS2's early library pre-mid 2001 was terrible. Also worth noting a good chunk of the early library relied on ports of PS1 titles; the Dreamcast versions were the definitive versions for their time, but they were still ports at the end of the day.
A lot of the big exclusives started hitting in 2000, which was just a few months after the American launch. I think that makes people forget about the late '98/most of '99 slate for Dreamcast software, but for whatever reason no one forgets about the mediocre state of early PS2 titles, I guess for a multitude of factors.
I voted Xbox series.
Series S just gimped the gen for devs having to design with it in mind.
Series X touted as most powerful console and it never outshined the ps5 by a significant margin once on any game I recall. Plus it's got no exclusives lol.
There was no reason for the Series S/X to exist.
Hmm...you know, I might put Series S & X after Dreamcast, but for very different reasons. Xbox gets glazing by the media the likes of which NO other console ever has, especially combined with all the Game Pass worship we've seen over the years.
Yet time and again, actual results like sales and whatnot show that those praises are coming from a very vocal minority. If more people agreed with the talking points, Xbox consoles would be in a far better spot than they are today.
Between N64 and DC. Chose DC. Good system if you like Sega games, but missing a ton of third party games, system only lasted maybe 3 years, no DVD drive either. Also, Sega's last system as it killed the company making them go third party.
Even so, Dreamcast still had one of the best final runs software-wise of any ill-fated console (or console period) ever. 2000 was a beastly year for it software-wise, and they did start gaining more 3P support (particularly among Western studios) during that period.
It just simply wasn't enough. Not only in relation to PS2 hype, but also the big releases PS1 & N64 still had that year, and making up for their mistakes between 32X and Saturn (especially in the West).
Saturn (more of a recent phenomenon), Dreamcast, PS2 (fantastic console, but showing up at those GOAT lists with the same tired shit like GTA and Silent Hill? Fuck off), PS3 and Switch are all up there.
Xbox 360 definitely takes the crown, lol forever at that thing.
Also, the Wii is underrated these days. Anyone thinking that the Switch is better than the Wii is someone to simply ignore.
But Wii had Brawl, the most hated Smash game of all time.
Also I personally disliked MK Wii compared to Double Dash.
I can see the DC being overrated, its lifespan was way too short, Sega's best 6th gen games were not on the DC IMO (outrun 2, Virtua Fighter 4, PD orta, JSRF, supermonkey ball 1/2, I don't play sports games but nfl2k5 etc)
The Saturn, no, it is objectively the most underrated game system of all time, 1200 games, the highest attachment rate of any home console ever, and it completely tanked in the west, many of its games were not ported to anything else the saturn also had a far superior library to the n64
Genesis fairly rated, I think most people consider it a great console but not quite as good as the SNES which I agree with
SMS, Dont know what the common consensus about this machine is tbh
Saturn most underrated? Hmm....I dunno. I think in relation to popular opinion, I'd actually pick the 3DO these days. Most people still think it's utter shit, like Jaguar or 32X levels of bad. But 3DO actually has quite a few cool games like Road Rash, Need For Speed, the original version of D, and quite a few fun oddities as well. There are some really creative games on 3DO that even if they weren't perfect (or even had some critical design flaws), had an energy to them rarely seen even across PS1 or Saturn's most obscure titles.
At this point I think Saturn is fairly rated. There was a time in the '00s and early 2010s' where it was popular to hate on and shit over the Saturn, but that started changing roughly a decade ago. Nowadays most people acknowledge it as a worthy & great system; the ones who still consider it a POS are in a minority. But there are some who try claiming it was more powerful than PS1 in 3D, yet in many cases this power wasn't actually there for 3D games or they're conflating MIPs for power (similar to people conflating TFs as the end-all-be-all metric for games performance today).
en.wikipedia.org
