Daniel (@dungeondive) steps away from the tabletop for something different: a ranked countdown of all 20 home video-game consoles he’s owned, from the Atari 2600 to the PS5 (dedicated TV consoles only — no PC, no handhelds, and the Switch ruled out as a handheld). He warns Nintendo fans up front that they’ll bristle at the middle of the list before the top three win them back.
It’s a personal, memory-rich tour rather than a technical one. The bottom holds the consoles he has least nostalgia for — ColecoVision, Atari 2600, the Wii and Wii U, and a much-maligned N64 (he never forgave its controller or the JRPG drought that pushed him to Sony). Recurring loves surface throughout: developer Treasure (Gunstar Heroes, Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun), Clover Studio, the Soulsborne lineage, and Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Rez. The Sega Dreamcast lands at #3 as “peak video game creativity,” the GameCube at #2 (Eternal Darkness, Wind Waker, Metroid Prime), and the original Sony PlayStation at #1 — credited with reigniting his passion in an era of weird, undocumented shelf-discoveries and, fondly, the now-vanished store game-exchange policies that let him experiment.
A candid, opinionated wander through four decades of gaming memory.
Where would your own most-treasured console rank — and does Daniel’s #1 PlayStation pick (or his N64 dislike) match your own gaming history?