As promised yesterday:
Here's the hardware in my collection. These consoles are nearly all from originally within my family. There's a few exceptions I'll explain later. There's actually already a long history of playing games in my family, since long before I was born during the very first generation when video games were still very niche in Europe.
Personally I'm quite young for someone who remembers playing consoles of the third and fourth generation back when they were still in there prime. For a time though, I had neglected my collection and stuff went missing, or got misplaced. Today I regret that, and about a year or two ago I vowed to myself to get back anything I, or a member of my immediate family, either physically owned and anything I have played. This means, I'm still looking for a certain Pong-machine, and I need to get the original XBox. There's no PS2 in this picture, but I never had one and I never even played on one.
Most of these particular consoles have a history, but I'll only share the interesting ones. So what do you see? From bottom-left to upper-right:
Handheld collection. Consists of Nintendo handhelds only. You see the clear-case GameBoy, the yellow GameBoy Pocket, the purple-clear GameBoy Color and the clear-case GameBoy Advance in the first row. That GameBoy Color was once mauled by my dog when it was still quite new, and it's screen needed to be replaced. The Pokémon Blue cartridge that was in it has a big hole in the font where his teeth sunk in. Both still work perfectly though. In the upper row you see the black DSlite, the aquablue 3DS and a sealed Zelda Collector's Edition black 3DS. I'm not in the habit of buying different models all the time, so with the exception of the GameBoy, I only have one model for each. I never played on anything else, but the PlayStation Vita is the first non-Nintendo handheld I'm actually interested in, so who knows.
1977 Nintendo Color TV-Game 15. This one doesn't really fit my criteria. This 1st Gen console by Nintendo was only released in Japan, and for the sake of owning all their consoles, I imported one. Only need the Virtual Boy and one of the Game & Watches now.
1978 Phillips G7000. This big beast is probably the first console I ever played, though I don't remember. This 2nd Gen console, which was marketed in the US as 'Magnavox Odyssey2' and was Atari's biggest competitor in Europe, belonged to my mother, though it needed some patching up. Everything in this console is hard-wired, including the controllers. One of them was broken so I had to get another of these consoles to use it's casing and a controller. The end result is I have two of these consoles, but one has a bad picture quality and a broken controller. The console is awesome, it's one of my favorites and those controllers were far beyond their time.
1982 Atari 2600. A legendary console, this is the black edition released in 1982. An Atari was in the family in those times, but sadly got lost. This one isn't the original one, but it's in prestine condition.
1985 Nintendo Entertainment System. The original in our family was played to death, literally, so like the Atari this one is a replacement. We particularly played an extremely simple football-game simply called 'Soccer', some of my most vivd gaming-memories are in that game. Also in prestine condition. I do still have most games, complete in boxes, and the Zapper that has seen hundreds of hours of use between me and my cousins.
1990 SEGA Mega Drive. Called 'Genesis' in the US, the Model 2 version. Never had one, but played one at a friend's. Got this one later.
1991 Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The Super Nintendo very valuable in our family, I was introduced to many of my favorite franchises on this system. Also, this system was the first where I consiously knew what I was doing, and as such hold many family memories. Too bad I don't have a lot of the games anymore, but I'm in the process of getting everything back.
1995 Sony PlayStation. Awaiting the next-generation we were captivated by new CD-based technology. The PlayStation is esthetically probably the ugliest console ever, but it had some of my favorite games.
1997 Nintendo 64. My favorite system of all time, so many classics. I actually have three of these systems, one here at home, one at my father's house and one at my grandmother's. I wanted to be able to play the N64 everywhere, and I got everyone to buy one for me.
1999 SEGA Dreamcast. Three of my favorite systems in a row, it was good to be a gamer in the latter part of the '90s. The Dreamcast kept and my family from ever getting a PlayStation 2, because it didn't seems like it would be something better. We actually had two of these systems, becasue we wanted to play both in the living room, as well as in the bedroom. By the time the Dreamcast went away, newer systems were already on the horizon that did show a significant improvement.
2002 Nintendo GameCube. To be sadly disappointed however, this console remains the only console that I keep in it's box as it began an era of gaming fatigue for me. There's some classic games of course, but the console doesn't really hold any memories for me. For the remainder of the 6th Gen, I turned to PC instead which was a good idea considering what was on that platform at the time.
2006 Nintendo Wii. Made me believe there was a lot of good in Nintendo still, it was a system that had games on it I could never had imagined.
2007 PlayStation 3. Rekindled my preference for console gaming over PC, so it holds a special place for achieving that. It's home to a plethora of good games and some went on to be some of my all-time favorites. Still one of my primary consoles, and I'm not yet sure if it deserves to be replaced by a PS4 just yet.
2012 Nintendo WiiU. Debunked my Wii to the secondary television, I bought it because of the premise of new big Nintendo games like I do with every Nintendo console of course but actually also because of the GamePad. The first console since the Dreamcast that I got on day one and just the third ever overall, the Nintendo 64 was the other. As of now I'm still a bit disappointed by what it has brought, but I believe good things will come and the potential is surely there.
