PSP, followed by Gameboy Color, followed by Advance SP.
I recently got a Retroid4, and took an amazing trip down memory lane with Mana Khemia, MG:AC!D, FF Tactics Advanced/A2, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, and a bunch of pkmn ROM hacks. All of them easily held up today.
Unless SteamDeck counts, in which case it wins hands-down.
Portable: my black Gameboy Advance SP, playing my original Gameboy games on it (Donkey Kong Country and pokemon Blue)
TV: this is gonna sound weird, but I absolutely love my PS5, it's just so sleek and I love the controller haptics and finally having most games running at 60 fps. Again I mostly play older games on it, but a lot of them got PS5 updates like Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon, Spider Man, Days Gone...
While I really like the Genesis/Megadrive, and PS1, I have to say the SNES is an almost perfect console. It had everything that made the NES great, but with beautiful 16 bit graphics.
I quite agree. The SNES was a part of my childhood. Some of my favorite games to this day were on that platform. Donkey Kong Country 2, Mega Man X 1-3, Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, to name a few.
Nintendo 3DS. Extremely hackable, not too shabby selection of games, and... I swear I must be the only person on Earth who likes the 3D feature, but I love the 3D feature
PSP, hands down. So many incredible games, it was a RPG powerhouse, that screen was great for the time and for me it was an "everything" device (I remember browsing the web and reading mangas on the PSP... Janky but incredible all the same).
The Vita comes close - nigh "home console" games on the go and the OLED screen to make those shine.
If this is some kind of question like "you can only play this in your lifetime" I'd pick up a DSi XL or closely a 3DS, I enjoy the DS library more, so it would be a downgrade doing it there, unless things have changed since the last time I checked.
The reasons are simple, it has tons of great titles and many of them have a high replayability value.
You and I would have been enemies in the 16-bit era, but I adore the Sega Genesis. (However, I'm also a sleepy bisexual, so I'm gonna say we're probably nowhere close to enemies.)
It was an arcade monster and got a ton of amazing games from the arcades and purpose-built for the machine — many the SNES also got, but some exclusives that really took advantage of what the Genesis could do well. I'd argue that the gritty FM sound chip was better for certain types of game music as well, though that's not to say that the SNES wasn't largely superior on that front.
At the end of the day… yeah 16 bit stuff looks amazing
I have no idea if they hold up today, but I really enjoyed Zombies ate my neighbors, Mickey Mania, World of Illusion (another mickey mouse game), and Taz Mania.
The challenge with this question is that not everyone has played in every console, so like, for me, I can only comment on the Atari 2600, the Wii and the XBOX 360.
From that small sample, the wii wins hands down. I loved the motion controllers a lot.
The Wii brought gaming to the general public in a way nothing else had. Like most modern Nintendo consoles it was under powered and gimmicky but the gimmick worked so well for people new to gaming, point at the TV or wiggle the controller as you would to do the thing in real life was a huge step to making an abstract concept make sense to people.
For longer gaming sessions or more "serious" games the Wii controls were generally lacking but damn if Wii sports wasn't good fun.
I get what @berttheduck said about long games / serious gamers but can you imagine your grandma trying to play most Switch or PS5 or other new console games now?
GameCube. Lots of fun with that console, and Skies of Arcadia Legends is a highlight.
Close second would be N64. The games were really unique, partly because designers had to work with limited hardware and a really bizarre controller. Mischief Makers is my all-time favorite for that one.
The lazy answer for me is PS2, since that's how I was able to play all the PS1/re-released games I missed out on. Pretty much all the Final Fantasy games, Chronl Trigger, Chrono Cross, Star Ocean.. And then there was also FFX and Twisted Metal Black, some of the PS2 highlights for me.
I think SNES still has my heart though. I feel like most of the major titles were better (more perfected) than their N64 counterparts. The Legend of Zelda LttP absolutely consumed me growing up and is still my favourite game of all time. Many years later I find I'm still interested in games that look like they could have been released on SNES.
It's obviously pc for me because that's pretty much all i use for 30 years. But i always liked the nes because it's pretty satisfying to put in a cartridge and pushing it down.
The VCS is an old console, not a POS. When it was new it was state-of-the-art.
About the Lynx, the catalog is not long. You can get all the games (76 in total and the max size is 2 MB) and try some. I'd say California Games, Klax, Batman Returns, Toki, just to name a few.
This is a really hard question for me to answer.
So I'm going to go with a bit of a catch-all.
I really like the GBA. But the DS can play DS and GBA titles.
But the 3DS is great too and can play all 3 and then some.
I guess the 3DS. There's just so much that can be packed into it. I haven't played mine in a while. I wish it was easier to install a capture card in them. There was something special about the games from the GBA to 3DS. The limitations of the hardware had developers experimenting, and we ended up with so many interesting titles. If you factor in the couple n64 games ported over to the 3DS, it's just so much nostalgia in one handheld.
If I had to go with a runner-up, I think it would be my series X. Being able to play so many backward compatible games is also super nice.
If I truly had to pick single consoles only, with only the games designed for that specific console. I would probably go with the 3ds and the xbox 360.
The 3DO or Dreamcast would come after as they had so many unique titles.
I never got to play the ps1, ps2, or psp and vita. So I've been curious what I've been missing out on over the years.
PS3 is my favorite too. I love that era of gaming. I emulated some I missed out on like Asura's Wrath, Shadows of the Damned, and Lollipop Chainsaw and they really hold up well still with the art style chosen being more cartoon than realiatic for its time. And I've hopped in for short sessions in Red Dead Redemption.