Lesser Known Consoles - What if You Got One Growing Up

[bretthorror]

I've often thought of what my gaming life would have been like if my cousin told my parents not to get me a Sega Master System in 1990 when I was 5 and told them to get me a NES instead. I really liked playing his Sega Master System, but the lifespan was at its end, not that I had a clue, so the right decision was made to get me a Nintendo.

 

Think of this thread of a 'Back to the Future' of your video game life and how different consoles/games would alter or render your timeline of gaming the same. Maybe you had a NES, SNES, N64 and GC, but want to theorize what would have happened if you had a Genesis in between.

 

But it's got me to thinking, what if somehow you had the lesser known console growing up or even later on in life? What if instead of a 2600, you had the Odyssey 2 or Intellivision. How would your opinion of gaming change and do you think you would have been satisfied with your system? The reason I ask this is I hate fanboys and hindsight is always 20/20. I grew up with a Sega Genesis and not a SNES and there is video after video about why the Genesis is inferior, from the tech (obviously, it's older) to the library. But that's crazy because the Genesis had an amazing library anyways, so I'll play devil's advocate and give the SNES the edge - if the SNES is The Beatles and the Genesis is Led Zeppelin, awesome is awesome no matter how you cut it. Plus, let's be real, as kids, marketing played a huge role in what we bought. So all those fancy ass AAA RPGs could have been of no interest to you compared to a well marketed game like NHL Stanley Cup. For the sake of argument, I'm going to pick titles I actually would have bought or played as a kid and not hindsight games that are considered classics now but I had no idea what the fuck they were then - or in the case of RPGs - no idea how to play them. And lest we forget, we probably never owned 50 games per system as a kid, so I'm gonna be realistic in my theories. My era had a lot of crossover games, so my examples won't be nearly as interesting as some of the generation before me who will compare Intellivision to a Vectrex, etc. I really do think a kid would just make due with what he had, though. Like if by some strange chance little Johnny liked games and only had a Jaguar and his family couldn't afford anything else later, I think he would have had a good run with his 12 games or so, if only for Doom, AVP and Wolfenstein 3D.

 

----

 

I had fun NES games, Ninja Turtles, Mario/Duck Hunt, Double Dragon, Ironsword, WWF Wrestlemania and Steel Cage Challenge, Trick Shooting, Batman and Punch-Out and a couple others Later on, I got more games in a couple lots because of a broken Nintendo, but I don't really wanna include those because by the time I had 35 games, the system was passe. So I didn't have the best games or the worst. I think I got my NES/GB/Genesis/SNES/Saturn all in a 7 year span, so my collections got spread a little thin. But if I'd have gotten my SMS, I think I'd have fared just fine. On the SMS I would have in theory wanted Double Dragon, Altered Beast, Rampage, Golden Axe, California Games, Safari Hunt and I played Hang-On enough, too. This core would have inevitably coincided with sports or wrestling games, so I think I'd have been well off with the SMS if the games I wanted were available to me.

 

For my Genesis (I never got SNES until later, basically just for Mario All-Stars), I had NHL '95, Streets of Rage 2, Mortal Kombat 2, Sonic 2, NBA Jam, Joe Montana Football, Sub-Terranea, Streets of Rage, Arcade Classics, Batman Returns, Soccer (dunno which, fun though), Super High Impact, WWF Royal Rumble & Super Wrestlemania. Obviously I like my sports games. If I had a SNES the saving grace would have been Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Stars, Sim City and F-Zero, probably Donkey Kong Country and NHL Stanley Cup (which I don't really like). I could still have got a lot the other games, but NHL '95 is way worse on SNES.Not having Streets of Rage 2 and Sonic 2 would have really sucked. I'm calling this one a wash, but I think I'd stay with my Genesis to be on the safe side. I still got to play Super Mario World at my cousin's all the time.

 

I had a Game Boy with Tetris, Ninja Turtles Fall of the Foot Clan, Super Mario Land, Motocross Maniacs, Metroid II, Game & Watch Gallery, Play Action Football, Wheel of Fortune, Killer Instinct and another one or two. If I'd have had a Game Gear, I think I would have been totally fucked, I don't recall as many games being sold for it here and I wouldn't have known where to start. I know I wanted one from Magazines, but I think I would have had an ultra shitty collection. So I'm sticking with the Game Boy and saying my Game Gear would have been played, I don't think I had much of a concept of what was a good or bad game as long as I was interested, but I think it would have collected dust.

 

I got a Saturn when I really wasn't into games because it was cheap. I always liked trying different consoles since I was young, so I got it for Christmas. Mistake because the library had dried up. I ended up with NHL All Star Hockey, Mystaria, Virtua Fighter, Magic Johnson Basketball and Battle Arena Toshinden. Bad, bad mistake. 3D wasn't very good, I didn't really like fighting games, Mystaria was a mystery to me. I barely played it and never got a console again until the PS2 when it was well into its lifespan. If I'd have been smart and got a PS1 or N64, I would have been better off and maybe not have lost touch with gaming. It took Vice City and just being able to dick around in the game to cool tunes to bring me back into gaming along with the NHL 05-06, when the graphics didn't hurt my eyes anymore like they did in the PS1 days.

 

I also had a Vic-20 for a brief period. It would have never cut it, but I had some fun with it.

 

Hypothetically, if I'd have had an Intellivision or 2600 had I been born earlier, I would have been happy, I think. I don't know enough about the Colecovision. I do love my Vectrex, but I also have trouble viewing it in the same breath as the 2600. I know that's not fair just because it's a b & w vector console that's a lot of fun, but I'd still severely lean towards the 2600 because it's more standard to what I view a video game system to be. I basically discovered Atari by the Activision Anthology, Atari Anthology and a plug n' play and can remember when I was about 18 that I really could dig these games and if it was just these in my collection, I could rack up a lot of hours playing them. This is all heavily based on the Activision games, though. If I'd have discovered Atari through other means, I don't know if I'd have been so shit hot on the console. Atari Anthology barely got any play. It seemed like the Activision games suited Atari better than the arcade ports and the games with graphics I couldn't decipher. If I had Activision Anthology games on a real 2600 at 12, they'd have got just as much play as my Genesis and Nintendo games. When I was 6 or so, I wasn't yet able to grasp Atari's primitive ways.

[mbd30]

I had an Atari 7800 instead of a NES for awhile. We already had a big pile of 2600 cartridges so the backwards compatibility was a big selling point for my mom. I really wanted a NES until I finally got one for Christmas (this was either in 1988 or 1989).

 

As a kid, my next door neighbor had an Intellivision and I had an Atari 2600. I recall we each being happy with what we had, and we could just go to each others' houses and play the other system. No console envy or rivalry of any sort.

[MotoRacer]

I grew up with Nintendo. NES, then SNES, and then N64. I didn't know about the Sega Master System (nor did anyone else, ZING!), but I have to say I was always extremely jealous of Sega growing up. I always wanted their systems, but my parents only would never buy me Nintendo products. I had a best friend at the time who was the direct opposite. I remember going to his house, and it was like another dimension. He had a Game Gear... I had a regular Game Boy... his was color and had a backlight. I remember thinking it was like holding the future. I remember playing his Genesis and playing Mortal Kombat 2, and seeing the movie-like visuals. I had an NES. I almost hated the thing when I went back home and saw what it was only able to produce, graphically. And then the Saturn. I remember drooling over screenshots in magazines while on the bus. My mom thought she had someone who was willing to sell me a used one... I was like, BUY BUY BUY! She did... ended up being a Genesis.. and it was broken.

 

Sigh.

 

Had I gotten Sega systems, honestly... I think I would have missed out. I loved, but didn't fully appreciate the games on Nintendo systems. Don't get me wrong, played them any chance I could and still love them till today. But I always thought I was missing out not having Sega hardware at the time. In a way I was, but now that I've had all those systems, I can honestly say I think Nintendo consoles had the better library (for my tastes). I still have an unnatural love affair with the Saturn, just because it was that illussive piece of kit that I never could own, then got taken off the market. And I still think it's Sega's better systems. But past that, I think my parents made the right choice, and I'm glad I wasn't able to convince them otherwise.

 

They obviously knew best. When I got to college, I bought a Dreamcast, and we all know how that ended. Haha

Edited November 29, 2015 by MotoRacer

[fdr4prez]

I grew up with Channel F and Intellivision. My buddy across the street had 2600, so we spent a lot of time at each other's house.

 

I never moved on to newer console systems. I've actually never played on any other consoles. Not even the current generation.

[MotoRacer]

I grew up with Channel F and Intellivision. My buddy across the street had 2600, so we spent a lot of time at each other's house.

 

I never moved on to newer console systems. I've actually never played on any other consoles. Not even the current generation.

 

You've missed out on so much. If you're used to a Channel F, a SNES might just blow your mind.

[frank_c]

As a kid whose family got a Betamax in 1983 instead of a VHS...I feel some others' pain.

[fdr4prez]

 

You've missed out on so much. If you're used to a Channel F, a SNES might just blow your mind.

 

My kids started with a Gamebube. They had a lot of fun with Mario Cart.

 

and they have the newer, current, consoles. I just ain't into 'em. None of the games that they play have any appeal to me.

[jfitzenr]

This is a really interesting topic! I ended up with primarily the 'big ones' for most of my life... not for lack of trying though! I remember the three systems I really begged for were the Turbo Grafx, Lynx, and Virtual Boy. Didn't get any of them. I wanted to beg for Neo Geo but even back then I knew it was ludicrously expensive.

 

My earliest video game memories were a bit different than the norm... even though we had an NES very early in my life, it was my brother's and in his room so while I played it a good bit, I spent an awful lot of time on our Colecovision and a decent amount putzing around on our old TRS-80 CoCo.

 

I have a bit of a benefit that most didn't though. Across the street from us (though it was a busy as hell street!) was a video store. We were obviously crazy frequent regulars, and our family iirc was actually member number 1. They rented consoles, and also had a TV setup in the corner where you could pay by the hour, they'd hook up a console, and you could just tell them a game you wanted to play and they'd grab it for you. They'd always cut deals for us, sometimes we'd pay for an hour and my brother and I would stay there all day, etc... so I got to experience most facets of stuff that way... I'm just now realizing how much of a lucky bastid I was for this. I mean I remember walking over there to rent a game and telling the employee that I had asked for Mortal Kombat 2 for Christmas, and he just brought me in back and we played MK2 for like 2 hours and he handed me a xeroxed complete special move list. Loved that place!

 

I think the one that would've really changed my trajectory would've been if I had Genesis instead of SNES growing up. In retrospect I love the Genesis library and even then I really liked the system... and I used to play entire seasons of Madden, NHL, etc. on SNES so I probably would've been even more obsessed with a Genesis! However, missing out on FF4, FF6, Chrono Trigger, DKC, Mario World... because of my age when those were coming out, those were really the games that made me absolutely fall in love with gaming and I honestly dunno how my tastes and experiences would've differed with the Gen library. Most of my best friends had SNES as well, and that shared experience of playing through games together, showing each other the secrets we had found, etc. are some brilliant memories. I have vivid memories of coming into school every day and spending what seemed like hours bouncing ideas and advice off each other on how to beat Link to the Past because none of us had any chance of beating it on our own. Lots of inviting friends over simply so we could show off some of the hidden goals and tricks we had found in SMW... etc.

 

I even had 'that one friend' that was a compulsive liar but only when it came to video games - he always had some ridiculous urban legend about an SNES game to share, and sometimes we even were gullible enough to try them. "Well, I mean I'm SURE that Sonya doesn't take her clothes off in Mortal Kombat, but.... what if she does?? Might as well spend the next six hours playing through Mortal Kombat only using low punch."

 

I'm wondering now if maybe I would've been drawn to different friends. Like ya know, I loved baseball and football so I ended up hanging out with the kids who also loved baseball and football. I loved SNES so I hung out with SNES kids. Would I have hung out with "genesis kids?" I'm way overthinking this now obviously but it's interesting. I imagine if I owned the Sega systems I would've probably not developed quite the love of JRPGs that I did during that era, at least.

Edited November 29, 2015 by jfitzenr

[7800fan]

Long before I could save enough and started buying used consoles, my family often had the main stuff. I got Atari 2600 because most of my family tree had it, only one relative got Intellivision.

 

I also got NES and SMS. SMS could probably be considered lesser known even though it was superior to NES in many area. NES never had those 3D glasses that allowed full color 3D games, NES only had those cheesey red/blue or green/purple paper glasses, SMS light gun produced far less annoying flash and seemed a lot more accurate to within a pixed while NES needed a few frames to flash each target boxes and was accurate only within the large white box. Oh yeah SMS had Ys and NES didn't have anything close to Ys.

 

There's also TG-16 when it was fighting with more popular SNES and Genesis. TG16 had some good games but it never quite came close to the library that SNES and Genesis could do.

 

By then I was old enough with paying job that I could get whatever I wanted and I generally didn't let people's popular opinion influence me. I did skip Sega Pico, what the hell was it supposed to be? Game.com and N-Gage were also left off my list.

 

One less common system that I never got that I would have liked is Neo Geo. It was fucking expensive back then and still is fucking expensive today.

 

 

You've missed out on so much. If you're used to a Channel F, a SNES might just blow your mind.

 

Nintendo 3DS with good quality 3D games would probably kill him. If he's never gone past Channel F, he should start slow. Get NES or SMS first and play with it to get used with high res graphic and more than 50 colors on screen at once.

[Reaperman]

If you want to find the most extreme example of the 'what if, how would I have turned out' poke your head into a jag forum sometime.

Good luck in there, you'll need it... Atariage actually has one of the more civil jag forums out there (thanks to selective banning, I'm sure), but even it's still largely rage and drama.

 

I also wonder if the Neo Geo community got how it is, because the odd niche of their system happened to be largely populated by odd people from the beginning, or if the main website for their community just scared all the 'normals' off with pics of turgid man-parts.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Reaperman

[fdr4prez]

Nintendo 3DS with good quality 3D games would probably kill him. If he's never gone past Channel F, he should start slow. Get NES or SMS first and play with it to get used with high res graphic and more than 50 colors on screen at once.

 

I did get past Channel F...we got an Intellivision...

 

3D doesn't quite work for me.

 

I recall back in 1982 when Friday the 13th Part 3 came out in 3D, my friend and I were too busy laughing at the scared girls sitting in front of us that we didn't notice the movie too much.

 

Even these days whenever I splurge on a 3D movie I am sadly disappointed that there wasn't much of anything 3D about it.

[zylon]

Hmmm....

 

My first was a used sears 2600 (still have it) from a flea market. Next up I remember wanting an NES after playing one at a friend's house. It didn't happen. Parents bought a new 2600 Jr and I got SMS (still have that too) from grandparents for Christmas that same year. About 5 years later I had a chance to get another system and still wanted an NES. I saw ads all the time for the top loading model being $50. Every store I went to was always sold out or just didn't carry it. Gave up the end of that summer and bought a Genesis 2.Still have the games bought then, but the console died a few years later. never got that NES until around 1995 when people were giving them away. I was given 3 of them in one month that fall. After playing it, I realized that I enjoyed the other systems I had much more than this jewel I had sought after for so long and still do. In hindsight, if I had gotten that NES, I might never have bought the other systems and would have missed out on so much more.

Afterwards, I bought a Goldstar 3do, then Saturn, and even Jaguar. Still have the 3DO and Saturn, but the Jag died in less than a month. After then, Dreamcast, Xbox, GC, and now 360 which is my final system I believe.

No regrets other than wasted hoping in 80's-90's.

Edited November 29, 2015 by zylon

[HoshiChiri]

The biggest 'what if' for me is at the dawn of the 5th generation. I was saving up to buy a Sega Saturn with my Christmas money, because there was a special where you got 3 games free (virtua fighter and a racer, I forget the third.) Plus, my subscription to Game Players promised me a copy of the Christmas Nights demo. The appropriate issue arrived- and I was greeted with a torn cover and a missing disc. Someone stole it before it ever arrived at my house. I was so upset, I scrapped the whole plan.

 

On the one hand, it technically worked out for me. I ended up getting a PlayStation a couple Christmases later, which led to me rediscovering the Final Fantasy series I'd played so briefly on my brother's SNES, getting super into RPGs which greatly affected my gaming choices throughout high school. Doubly so since most kids had the PS1, so there was a lot of shared gaming experiences with it. It also means that there's a nice list of Saturn games I want to own, but can't afford (part of why I don't have the console.)

 

I've often wondered how things would have gone if I'd gotten that demo, or just bought the system anyway- would I still have fallen for its RPGs, resulting in a valuable collection and me happily gathering a less costly PS1 collection later? Would I have bought a Dreamcast on graduation instead of a PS2, and missed those games instead? Or, would the lack of same-game talk amongst my classmates driven me from the hobby over time? It's an odd thought.

 

I don't think Genesis vs. SNES is as big a deal as other system comparisons... at least where I grew up, it was generally considered that the two systems were par for each other. I wonder if there's a difference in game preference (like Genny gamers prefer action titles now or such), but I don't know anyone else who grew up with a Genesis to try and figure out that one.

[Austin]

Well, I think it's been proven that anyone who got a Jaguar when it was new grew up to be clinically insane. So, be thankful that wasn't your actual reality.

[bretthorror]

The biggest 'what if' for me is at the dawn of the 5th generation. I was saving up to buy a Sega Saturn with my Christmas money, because there was a special where you got 3 games free (virtua fighter and a racer, I forget the third.) Plus, my subscription to Game Players promised me a copy of the Christmas Nights demo. The appropriate issue arrived- and I was greeted with a torn cover and a missing disc. Someone stole it before it ever arrived at my house. I was so upset, I scrapped the whole plan.

 

On the one hand, it technically worked out for me. I ended up getting a PlayStation a couple Christmases later, which led to me rediscovering the Final Fantasy series I'd played so briefly on my brother's SNES, getting super into RPGs which greatly affected my gaming choices throughout high school. Doubly so since most kids had the PS1, so there was a lot of shared gaming experiences with it. It also means that there's a nice list of Saturn games I want to own, but can't afford (part of why I don't have the console.)

 

I've often wondered how things would have gone if I'd gotten that demo, or just bought the system anyway- would I still have fallen for its RPGs, resulting in a valuable collection and me happily gathering a less costly PS1 collection later? Would I have bought a Dreamcast on graduation instead of a PS2, and missed those games instead? Or, would the lack of same-game talk amongst my classmates driven me from the hobby over time? It's an odd thought.

 

I don't think Genesis vs. SNES is as big a deal as other system comparisons... at least where I grew up, it was generally considered that the two systems were par for each other. I wonder if there's a difference in game preference (like Genny gamers prefer action titles now or such), but I don't know anyone else who grew up with a Genesis to try and figure out that one.

 

It's a possibility the Saturn killed gaming for me (I have no idea how I lost interest for around 8 years) because I couldn't get any games for it and the ones I had didn't impress, but you actually had a plan to go with your Saturn, I didn't.

 

I also don't have any recollections of Sega Vs. Nintendo with other children either, nor did I have recollections of people liking WWF and not WCW for wrestling, everyone I knew liked them both and obviously wanted both consoles even if they couldn't have them. But it seems so many people on the internet talk about Sega fans Vs. Nintendo fans, but they also talk about the ET landfill thing when they didn't even know it happened until they were adults, so who knows who is talking out of their asses and who is just writing up stories to be a halfhearted journalist/historian. I have no doubts that it happened, but where the hell all the Sega fans went is beyond me. Maybe it's just because the NES crowd seems to dominate the retro gaming world and the SMS obviously couldn't compete. At some point, perhaps a 16 bit heyday will hit and things will come full circle? It doesn't seem likely, though because NES was huge a decade ago, so SNES/Genesis should have rose to the spotlight by now.

[BassGuitari]

I grew up with Channel F and Intellivision. My buddy across the street had 2600, so we spent a lot of time at each other's house.

 

I never moved on to newer console systems. I've actually never played on any other consoles. Not even the current generation.

Are you saying the Channel F, Atari VCS, and Intellivision are the only consoles you've ever played? After ~35 years, how is that even possible?

 

I grew up with the NES and Genesis, as did all of my friends (some of whom alternately had SNES); if I'd had something like an Atari XEGS or 7800, I probably would have been pretty happy with it...until I saw my friends' Nintendo and Sega systems. Which isn't to say I would no longer appreciate or enjoy the Atari (in this example), just that I'd want both.

[fiddlepaddle]

I started with the Colecovision, but I was on the leading edge of the Vectrex, which I liked SO much. I thought it was really revolutionary and would take over the industry and everybody everywhere would be playing Vectrex games. I told all my friends to get one. I even bought stock in Milton Bradley. But I was abondoned...

 

I knew the Atari VCS was the most popular, but always thought of it as "old tech". Eventually, though, once I found out I could buy games really (REALLY) cheap if I waited until everybody else was finished with them, I started pulling in every game for every system I could find at "Get it out of my space!" prices. So I've tried most every system out there, at least the ones everybody knows about. A few I passed on, like the 3DO.

 

When it comes to video games, I've been living in a 5 year time warp ever since.

[fdr4prez]

Are you saying the Channel F, Atari VCS, and Intellivision are the only consoles you've ever played? After ~35 years, how is that even possible?

 

As far as consoles, yes, that is all I've played.

 

Lack of money played a part, and my other friends at the time, after the crash, didn't have any consoles either. Even my buddy that lived across the street didn't get anything newer. He grew more into arcade games and now has quite a small collection of arcade games at home.

 

I didn't even have spare change to play arcade games when they were all the rage.

[7800fan]

Are you saying the Channel F, Atari VCS, and Intellivision are the only consoles you've ever played? After ~35 years, how is that even possible?

 

I grew up with the NES and Genesis, as did all of my friends (some of whom alternately had SNES); if I'd had something like an Atari XEGS or 7800, I probably would have been pretty happy with it...until I saw my friends' Nintendo and Sega systems. Which isn't to say I would no longer appreciate or enjoy the Atari (in this example), just that I'd want both.

Beside money, there can be other factors. I knew a guy who is currently in 50's and has never watched any of Star Wars. He lives in Michigan and knowing someone who lives in USA, is old enough to remember 70's, and never once saw Star Wars is about as rare as a genuine CIB Air Raid.

 

He said he didn't like sci-fi at all.

[leods]

I Had an NES as a kid, but the neighbour had an atari 2600. We would Play the 2600 together and although the graphics were clearly inferior I liked it a lot. The games were fun, and very different to the games I had on the NES. I liked that. Growing up I was always a Nintendo kid, and I did like the Nintendo consoles better. They had the games I liked more. Now I have a Mega Drive, because I like shooters and oldschool arcade games, and the Mega Drive actually does that better than the SNES. The Controller is actually more comfortable too, and even though that's arguable I like the d-pad on the Mega Drive better.

 

After that (a lot after) I got a PSOne. Yes, the actual PSOne, smaller model. I loved that Thing, even though the loading times were irritating. But Just for Gran Turismo2, THPS2 and CSoTN that console was already worth the purchase. I also liked Silent Hill, and some other games there.

 

But as I grew up and started caring more about gameplay and less about Gimmicks I jst go for the best bang for the buck. I don't care about brand. I have consoles from Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sega, Like them all for what they offer. The only reason I don't have an Atari is because it's easy to Play those games on other Systems nowadays. Not all of them, but a ton of the better ones are in PS2 collections, or available for the game Boy and other Systems.

 

I'd love to have a track ball to Play milipede and such games, but again, the bang for the buck isn't there for me right now.

 

Do I think it would be different having a Mega drive instead of an SNES back then? Definitely. Back then the libraries were very different, and the games I played the most were Super Mario World and Secret of MAna, and neither really have an equivalent on the Mega Drive. But if I was lucky to get some of the better Mega Drive games it would have been great anyway.

Edited November 30, 2015 by leods

[HoshiChiri]

 

I also don't have any recollections of Sega Vs. Nintendo with other children either, nor did I have recollections of people liking WWF and not WCW for wrestling, everyone I knew liked them both and obviously wanted both consoles even if they couldn't have them. But it seems so many people on the internet talk about Sega fans Vs. Nintendo fans, but they also talk about the ET landfill thing when they didn't even know it happened until they were adults, so who knows who is talking out of their asses and who is just writing up stories to be a halfhearted journalist/historian. I have no doubts that it happened, but where the hell all the Sega fans went is beyond me. Maybe it's just because the NES crowd seems to dominate the retro gaming world and the SMS obviously couldn't compete. At some point, perhaps a 16 bit heyday will hit and things will come full circle? It doesn't seem likely, though because NES was huge a decade ago, so SNES/Genesis should have rose to the spotlight by now.

 

I'm watching the whole 8-bit retro craze with great interest about now... since, as you said, you'd expect at this point for it to be dying down in favor of a 16-bit rush. The overwhelming popularity of the 8-bit NES, coupled with clone systems & the wii virtual console keeping the games playable and relevant has propped up the nostalgia. I'm curious to see if they'll be a sudden turnover at some point, or will we gloss over 16 bit entirely and move on to PS1 retro-worship in another decade? Or will it never go away at all?

 

I also enjoy laughing a bit people describing what the early days were like, if they weren't there for it (or even if they were, sometimes). The one that always gets me is guys with a persecution complex talking about how they had to hide their NES, because having one got them beat up. Right... because Nintendo was popular enough to have McDonald's toys and breakfast cereal, but not popular enough for any kids to admit they liked it?

[BassGuitari]

Beside money, there can be other factors. I knew a guy who is currently in 50's and has never watched any of Star Wars. He lives in Michigan and knowing someone who lives in USA, is old enough to remember 70's, and never once saw Star Wars is about as rare as a genuine CIB Air Raid.

 

He said he didn't like sci-fi at all.

I could see someone avoiding Star Wars if they hated sci-fi movies (I'd almost put it more in the "fantasy" genre, but that's another topic). I don't mean to put words in anyone's mouths but I'm going to assume fdr4prez had at least a passing interest in video games in the decades since the Crash, and it's just interesting to me that, based on that assumption, he never played another system in that time. But I get it, real life happens and when it does, video games usually aren't a priority.

 

(Apologies to fdr4prez, for talking about you like you aren't here. And FWIW Channel F, Intellivision, and Atari VCS are some of the systems I find most interesting. )

[carlsson]

He explicitly wrote about never have touched a console past the Intellivision. That isn't to say he didn't spend the second half the 80's playing C64 for all he could muster, in order to later upgrade to either an Atari ST or Amiga and eventually get into strategy games on the PC platform. It seems easy to forget that you can play games on other devices than consoles, and in particular at the time of the "crash", it was natural to get into home computers anyway. Once you're settled in with a C64, why get a NES? Once you have disk boxes full of Amiga games, what does a Genesis add to your gaming experience?

 

Besides, I find most of the consoles mentioned in this thread to be rather mainstream for their time period. I was expecting to read horror stories about people who got "stuck" with Arcadia 2001, Creativision, Super Cassette Vision, or in newer days a Playdia, Pippin etc.

Edited November 30, 2015 by carlsson

[G-type]

I had a TI-99/4a up until the 1990 when we got a 286 PC... never had a NES as a kid, and didn't get my 2600 until around 88/89. I just spent a lot of time gaming at my friends houses. Sometimes I wished I had one of my own, but honestly, I got to play plenty so I was far from deprived. Plus, I had a lot of fun with the games I did have. So no reason to complain.

[G-type]

Although, now that've I gotten bit by the retro gaming bug, the first thing I did was go out and by a NES and a Genesis! (the two consoles I played the most when visiting friends)