Should be GBA-DS like equally because people overwhelmed positive for superbly 1st and 3rd party were games released, ahhh too many good games to mention lol

Sad to see GB not doing well. I am guessing most people here are younger. IMO, it was a significantly stronger generation for Nintendo than either the GBA or 3DS, and it's comparable to the DS. Despite its monochrome screen, it revolutionized gaming in its early period by introducing RPGs to handheld (and I played a lot). Commercially, it's also a bit of a sleeper hit console, while it did have a success in its earlier years, its real explosion in commercial success came a full decade after it launched.

But those latecomers probably weren't able to appreciate games like Mystic Quest, Tetris, Final Fantasy Legend games (Especially FFL2), Battletoads, Bionic Commando, Super RC Pro-Am, Metroid 2, Kirby's Dreamland 1 and 2, which were revolutionary in their time, but wouldn't have seemed as such 10 years later. It's like discovering Dragon Quest 3 and Super Mario Bros 3 when Final Fantasy X and Grand Theft Auto 3 are being released... that's the amount of time that had passed.

Yeah I was surprised to see a mere 2 votes for the original Gameboy given its iconic status.

It could be that the audience here started gaming in later generations and never owned one, or simply that some folks feel it hasn't aged well. I'm not a handheld guy but NES for example I rate fairly low as despite it revolutionizing gaming I feel it's aged poorly.

I voted 3DS because all of the ones before it felt pretty underpowered. I mean we expect handhelds to be a gen behind (give or take) but the 3DS had a wow factor for me.

I mean, your perception of it is totally valid, but 3DS was pretty underpowered for a system launching in 2011; compare the contemporaneous Vita and it's virtually a generation behind, and two gens behind home consoles for most of its life.

Not much different from DS or GBA in that regard.

a modded 3ds literally makes everything that came before it fully obsolete. plus it has OoT

I felt the 3DS could have been a DS Pro to be honest... It was even able to run the entire DS library on top of it.

It was a solid device that felt indestructible, but Nintendo could have pushed the technology a little harder, overall, I ended up selling it due to lack of interest/use.

It still had a "wow factor", though. Even though I had a Vita, the 3DS held its own. I guess, even though it was around GameCube level in power, it felt fairly modern. 

-The original Gameboy offered crappy 2D at a time when we were used to great 2D games at home.

-The GBA offered great 2D at as time when we were playing good 3D games at home.

-The DS offered crappy/good pixelated 2D/3D at a time when we had great 3D at home.

-The 3DS offered great 3D experiences at a time when we had great 3D experiences at home.

I enjoyed all of them but 3DS just made me feel like we'd finally arrived.

Well, for most of 3DS's life we were playing 8th gen games at home while 3DS essentially offered 6th gen graphics on the go.

Game & Watch