What is your favorite console per generation?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

COKTOE said:

trunkswd said:

I used Wikipedia to figure out what consoles were in the first three generations. My parents had an Atari 2600, but my first generation was really gen 4 with the Genesis. 

Roger roger. I would count it as gen 2, even if I'm wrong. :)

But really, it's most prominent days as a gaming machine probably were in the Gen 3 time-frame, so it makes sense.

You are actually right, because you are old enough to remember this stuff.  Wikipedia gets Generations 2 and 3 horribly wrong, and so they put the C64 in Gen3 and Atari 5200 in Gen 2 even though the C64 launched first.  What really happened was the video game crash in North America was really its own generation, a "Lost Generation".  It should be more like this:

Gen 2, 1977-82: Atari 2600, Intellivision
Crash Generation, 1982-87: Atari 5200, Colecovision, C64, Vectrex
Gen 3, 1987-89: NES, SMS, Atari 7800

The Atari 5200 was meant to replace the Atari 2600.  It was "next gen".  But in 1983 customers decided they didn't want any Atari system, so sales plummeted.  Retailers panicked and got rid of all consoles.  This basically took Colecovision and Vetrex down with Atari even though those systems probably would have been more successful if given the chance.  In the absense of consoles, the C64 became the dominant platform during the crash.

The NES actually competed with the Amiga.  The Amiga launched in 1985 and was the successor to the C64.  The belief at the time was that consoles were a fad and computers would replace them permanently as the sole home gaming platform.  Then the NES came along and kicked its ass.  That is why the Amiga was not nearly as successful as the C64. 

I remember in the late 80's every kid on my block had an NES, but there was this one kid a block away who had an Amiga.  He showed me how pretty Marble Madness looked on his Amiga, and was trying to make it seem like Amiga was the coolest thing around.  I remember thinking, "This game looks good, but it's old.  Poor kid, his parents bought him a computer instead of a real gaming machine.  He'll never get to play all of the great NES games the rest of us are playing."  But the Amiga definitely had better graphics, so maybe that is what he really cared about.