All right Anthony we have a task to get done here. Okay as noted retro game
enthusiast I guess this one's gonna be a little bit heavy on the retro for me huh.
Well I mean I've got mixed feelings about the Atari 2600. This thing is an
important console but it also caused the video game crash because bad games and
I mean I don't have any nostalgia for it so I'm just gonna put it down here. I know
that's gonna rub some people the wrong way. Oh man so you're putting in F tier
then. Well maybe not F tier. Okay. It's better than the Wii U was. Let's let's
throw the Wii U and F tier because Nintendo tried but not very hard. The
Atari 2600 it's gonna go there. It's an important console but I don't like it
very much. NES also an important console in the North American region. It is
credited with rekindling the gaming market. I'm gonna put it in A. Oh the
reason I'm gonna put it in A is I didn't really have an NES until like way
later but also like I feel like it's overrated. I do feel like the NES is
overrated a little bit because the Japanese version of it the Famicom is
actually a lot better. You have expansion chips and stuff like that which you just
can't get with well outside of the MFCs but you can't get like expansion audio
or anything like that on the North American NES. Super NES though I'll put
in S tier. That's a console that I didn't really have growing up either but it
also is a very important console and yeah its library is legendary. A lot of big
name titles came out on that for the first time. What's your favorite? Oh man
favorite... I don't know. I think my favorite SNES game was probably
Seiken Densetsu 3 which was recently re-released and finally translated in
the West as was it Trials of Mana? Yeah I think so. Master System is the console
that I grew up with surprisingly enough. However as good as it is I recognize
that it has its faults and the game library isn't super strong. Now there
are some really good games on there but it's not super strong. I'm gonna put it
in B. I think it deserves more credit than people give it but it's it's
deservedly failed against the NES. That being said Nintendo had some hand in
that. It's just a flow plane exclusive I'm not getting into that. Sega Genesis
that I'm gonna put up next to the SNES. These two butted heads and they both
have amazing libraries depending on what kind of games you want to play. So yeah
I mean Sega Genesis I again grew up with that and yeah there's a lot of games
that I feel are highly rated for good reason and underrated for no reason.
Also there's a version of Duke Nukem 3D on it. Best game? Best game? My favorite
game is Fantasy Star 4. It's the last of the Fantasy Star series before they did
the online thing. Shining Force 2 is also really good. Thunder Force 4 is
really good. I'm not sure what the best rated game would be. I want to say like
Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Still a lot of consoles left here. Still a lot of consoles. Oh yeah.
N64. Let's go with this. I'm gonna throw this in the B tier and I'll tell you why.
N64 is a console that has a lot of great games but let's just say that it's rare
for third-party titles to come out on it that are any good. The only people who
put out third-party titles that were any good were rare. Factor 5 did a
couple of things with the Star Wars series but yeah the N64 had kind of a
limited library because of Nintendo's insistence on cartridges over CDs.
Speaking of which, the PS1. This is a console that I didn't have a huge amount
of experience with when I was a kid but I'm gonna throw that next to the NES. Again
a lot of big titles came out on that. In fact I probably should put it in S tier
but I don't have as much nostalgia for it than does I have for the other ones.
PS2 though. I feel like this is when gaming really hit its stride. PS1 was kind of the
ramp up but the PS2 is when things kind of really took off like a lot of major
franchises became big franchises on the PS2. So I'm gonna throw this up in S tier
just because. Also one of the best-selling of all time. It is one of the
best-selling of all time yeah. I'm not sure if it's still the best-selling of all time. I feel like the Switch surpassed it. Probably. Yeah. Speaking of which,
Switch is there. But the next one I'm gonna grab is the GameCube. It was a
competitor with the PS2. Again Nintendo kind of did this thing where they did
their own media and that kind of hurt them a little bit. Especially after the
N64 when all the third-party developers jumped ship. And yeah that kind of hurt
the library a little bit. That being said the GameCube is a really good
console and it was the basis of the Wii. The Wii is basically just a GameCube
with extra clock. So I'm gonna throw this in. I'm gonna throw it up next to the N64.
I feel like it's just as flawed. But it has a pretty good library. The Xbox.
Ooh first Microsoft. The first Microsoft console. The Xbox was a thing. This is
a Pentium 3 laptop basically. I remember being super excited for this like oh
it's running at 800 megahertz. It's gonna have a hard drive. I was too hyped
about it I think. The problem with it was that Microsoft didn't have a huge
stable of developers lining up for it and Japan just never accepted it. They
still don't really like Xbox. So I'm gonna throw that. I'm gonna throw it in B.
We got Halo out of it at least. We did get Halo out of it. And Project Gotham Racing
was also there. Basically any cross-platform title was usually best on
Xbox. Usually. That doesn't always hold true but you know anytime the developer
made an attempt to utilize the full functions of the hardware the Xbox was
usually the best in terms of like graphics and performance. I guess we're
through that generation. Oh yeah. Let's start the next one with the Wii. The Wii
was Nintendo's lightning in a bottle. This was how do I put this? The beginning
of a very big stint of hubris that led to the Wii U which I put an F tier. The Wii
U was Nintendo's vain attempt to get people who bought the Wii to buy a new
console but the problem is most of the people who bought the Wii were casual
gamers. People who might have only ever bought the Wii. And yeah that didn't go
out so well. So I mean there's there is some good software on the Wii. The Wii is
very hackable and that's good because I spent so much time playing like emulating
games on the Wii. I'm gonna throw it. This is gonna be controversial but I'm
gonna throw it in the C tier. Oh wow. Because it started Nintendo off in a
pretty bad direction and honestly it didn't keep up with the rest of the
competition. It's kept Nintendo out of the HD age which is part of the reason
why the Wii U failed. Yeah I mean it was just it was entirely marketed around
its motion control gimmick and they even cut that before it was released. They
had Wii Motion Plus later. So I think Nintendo the way they handled that, the
way the library worked out, yeah they they dropped the ball at the Wii. It was
super successful but I think they dropped the ball with it. The Xbox 360. This
was my first console of this generation. I got an Xbox 360 Elite. I really liked
it. I got it for Ace Combat 6 for some reason. I don't know why but like it was
an exclusive on the console and sure. But I also played stuff like Call of Duty
Modern Warfare, Halo 3 and a bunch of other games like Game of Gears of War and
pretty much the big titles of the day. I think it was probably Microsoft's
biggest success to date and it put Xbox on the map like where Xbox Xbox kind of
made push Microsoft into the market. The Xbox 360 made Xbox basically
synonymous with video games just like back in the day when Nintendo used to be
synonymous with video games. So given its importance to gaming history, I'm
gonna have to put it in S tier. I like how you have like one from each brand up
at S tier. I didn't plan that. I literally just decided just then to put it in S
tier. It's gonna probably A but no. It's important. The PS3 on the other hand, this
too was a good console but it was marked by its very expensive launch price and a
lot of failures early on. Actually the failures of the Xbox 360 were also a
thing but Microsoft kind of dealt with that sooner rather than later. The PS3
has some interesting ideas but it also launched without rumble. I don't know how
many people remember that but there was a lawsuit going on over rumbling
controllers. So the 6-axis was originally marketed as oh well we put so much
advanced technology in this controller that we can't possibly put rumble in it.
Rumble is a last-gen feature. Then they came out with DualShock 3 because the
lawsuit ended. The PS3 became a contender later on in its life. So whereas the
Xbox 360 came out swinging early on, the PS3 kind of was a slow burn. I'm gonna
put it under the Xbox 360 not because I don't like it as much but because I
think that Sony's mishandling of the early launch really hurt it and hurt Sony
as a company. Also the PSN hack. I forgot about that. Yeah. The Xbox One. I never
bought one of these. Actually that's a lie. I got one at auction recently but I've
never actually like powered it up or anything. I don't have any love for the
Xbox One. It is hackable I think. That's really all that's going for it. I
skipped this entire generation because maybe I fell off the wagon but the Xbox
One was such a debacle when it launched with the always-on DRM Kinect. What
were they thinking? And they were talking about how oh well the Kinect is important because it improves the GPU performance. No it doesn't. What would you
think would how could it possibly do that over USB? Anyway, Xbox One. I'm gonna
put that in seat here. They tried. They tried to do something very different.
They tried to be ahead of the time for the time. They wanted the Xbox to be
the one thing in your living room and that's pretty much it. That's why they
had the HDMI input and all the controls for your speaker systems and stuff like
that. So like I get what they were going for but no. PS4 was actually pretty
decent. The DualShock 4 actually overtook the DualShock 3 as my favorite
controller despite the fact that they changed the form factor. The games
themselves though. I don't know. Like there wasn't that much that wasn't also on
PC and that's kind of because this and the Xbox One were PCs. Just like the
current gen consoles are PCs. I guess that's why I fell off the wagon for this
because like my PC can do pretty much everything that these consoles can do.
The PS4 though. I don't know that it really helped Sony that much. It kept
them in the game but I think towards the end Microsoft's Xbox One overtook it.
That's just going off my gut though. But I'm gonna put it above the Xbox One
just because it was handled so much better than Microsoft's attempt. Alright
we're coming to the last three here. The last three. The current gen consoles.
What do I think? They're all trash. We'll leave them there. No. The Switch is
everything that I thought the Wii U should have been. Like a controller that is
the console that you can then plug into the TV and have TV scale experiences.
The Wii U's main problem was that nobody used the second screen for anything
because you couldn't guarantee that the second screen was going to be usable.
So that tablet controller was dead weight. This turns that concept into the
entire console which means that you always have this. So yeah it just works.
Now that being said it is based on a NVIDIA Tegra platform. Basically it's a
shield but I like it. It's just too bad that Nintendo has to keep locking it
down. Do I think it's as important or likeable as either of the ones in the
A tier? Do I think it's as bad as any of the ones in the C tier? I think it's
got to go in the B tier. The PS5 and Xbox Series X. This is difficult because
these haven't been available. Series X has been more available recently but I
think the PS5 is still having supply issues. I don't like the fact that
Microsoft has a Series S and a Series X. That splits the ecosystem. That basically
means that developers have to focus in on two different hardware levels. Whereas
the PS5 only has the digital and disc editions and as far as I know there's
no other hardware variation between them. So that being said the Xbox Series X is
a much nicer form factor and it has in my opinion the better game library
thanks to Game Pass. For me I'll probably put this in A. And the reason I'm
doing that is because you can also enable developer mode. Now I think that's
less possible than it used to be but it's still a thing you can do. So you can
basically use it as a PC. In fact you still have Chromium even if you can't
enable developer mode. So you can use in-app emulators or games or whatever. So
I think there's a lot of potential there that I don't think is available on Sony.
But do you like the Series X more than the Nintendo Switch here? Yes. The reason
for that is the Nintendo Switch isn't as versatile. You can carry it around, you
can plug it into a TV, etc. But the problem with it is that Nintendo has
locked it down to the point where aside from playing Nintendo games there's very
little you can do with it. So it makes it kind of tough to justify packing.
Whereas the Xbox Series X is arguably a PC. The PS5 also a PC. Also a PC.
I haven't tried the DualSense controller yet. In fact I don't really have a
whole lot of context for what the PS5 experience is like. But I do know that
Sony is being kind of dicks about their intellectual property over the
the popped cuff of the PS5. This one's a tough one, huh? It's another tough one.
You know what? I think I'm just gonna throw it like right there. Right in
between. So right in between. It's a B plus. It'd be an A if Sony weren't dicks.
Basically. Yeah, that's about it. I feel like as far as that goes I wish the
Master System were higher but I can't justify it. But I think I put the most
influential consoles at the top. I think it was pretty solid. It was pretty balanced.
I don't think there were too many truly bad consoles. Yeah, I mean the Wii U was a
bad console. Now that being said there are good games on the Wii U. And I wish the
Wii U was better. But it was a bad console. If you had put the Atari 5200 on
there, I would have said that it was a technically interesting console. But it
was a bad console. And so was the 7800, I think. Because that had a... it was
released like two or three years after it was supposed to release because of the
video game crash. And basically nothing came out for it. And it was spec-trumped
by the NES and Master System at that point. TurboGrafx 16, I probably would
have put a little bit higher. But it was kind of a bad console because it didn't
perform well here. So there weren't that many games. There you go. There's Anthony's
tier list. Now what does the rest of the office think about this?