What generation has been your favorite so far for consoles?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

d21lewis said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

Generation 3, and it was all because of the NES.  But it was really much more than that too.  I started gaming before the video game crash, and have been gaming ever since.  But Generation 3 was really a huge watershed moment in console gaming.  Generation 3 had this amazing evolution in gameplay that happened over the course of just a few years.  Early NES games are things like Kung Fu, Balloon Fight and Bubble Bobble.  Basically they are just home versions of arcade games.  But a few years later you have Super Mario Bros 3 and Mega Man 2 and Final Fantasy and so on.  These are much more complex game experiences that are made purely for the home.

Generation 3 is where you have the biggest improvements to gameplay for flagship games.  It is also where you have the creation of the more classic game series than any other generation: Super Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Mega Man, Castlevania, Tetris, Metal Gear, etc....  The big companies were taking risks.  They were experimenting with gameplay and a lot of great games resulted from that.

Honorable metions:
Generation 4 - It had two great consoles, and they perfected a lot of what was innovated in generation 3.  Generation 4 looks better in hindsight, but Generation 3 was actually better to experience if you lived through it.

Generation 6 - PS2 had a lot of great games.  I've always felt like those early 3D graphics really sucked, and I was never really excited about 3D gaming.  But PS2 figured out how to make it work and a lot of great games came out from this.

Generation 9 - Switch is only 3 years in and already has a ton of amazing games.  I also like that Nintendo is putting a lot of effort into highlighting the indies.  I get my new gameplay from indies, and I get my highly polished experiences from Nintendo and other higher budget games.  There are so many good games on the Switch that it could actually surpass Generation 3 as my favorite generation.  I just have to wait and see how the Switch plays out during the next few years, but it is doing really well so far.

There are so many posts in this thread that I want to respond to but it's all opinions and everyone's experience with gaming and what made each gen special is "in the eye of the beholder".

I guess part of it depends on how you interpret the op. Which gen would you rather experience today, by today's standards or which gen did you enjoy the most while it was still going on? I looked at it as the former.

Going by the title of the thread and the OP, it sounded like the latter, to me at least.  There was so much innovation in generation 3 that every generation since has been somewhat disappointing, especially generation 8 (PS4/XB1/Wii U).  

On the other hand, if I were to make a recommendation to a young person interested in retro gaming today, then I might recommend either generation 4 or 6.  Generation 4 games are similar to generation 3 but with better graphics.  Generation 3 games do look dated even to me (Gen 5 is even worse), and I do not care about graphics as much as a lot of posters on this forum.  Meanwhile you can compare Generation 4 games to the 2D indie games of today and the graphics still hold up pretty well.  Generation 4 games are also easier overall, which might be better for people who aren't used to high difficulty.  Generation 4 probably holds up better by today's standards, so that would be my answer according to how you interpreting things.

But what I've really been missing since Generation 3 is a large and diverse game library, especially one filled with experimental games.  Switch is doing pretty well so far, and it gets extra points for being portable while having a big screen and playing the games of a home console.  But in generation 3 the experimental games came from the leading devs: Nintendo as well as Capcom, Konami, Squaresoft, and Enix.  Now the innovation mostly comes from indies, because the bigger companies tend to play it safe.  Nintendo, today, is better about this compared to other big companies, but they are dramatically playing it safe compared to what they were doing during Generation 3.