For basically every generation it's Nintendo + one other system. Even DS + PSP makes a pretty good pairing. In Generation 3, all you really needed was a NES. But for most generations after that it's Nintendo + whatever the other big system is (e.g. SNES + Genesis).

No better pairing than SNES and Genesis, imo.

N64 and PS1 were a great combo back in the day; as I posted in another thread recently, I had an N64 and my best mate had a PS1, so between us we got to play both.

The two felt different enough in everything from their graphics/sound to their controllers to their libraries that they complemented each other really well.

For me, PS5 + Switch 2 has been incredible.

Yeah that's part of why I went Wii + 360 initially; PS3 was just too expensive and nearly all the games I wanted to play were on 360 and looked/ran better there.

Did eventually end up getting a PS3 later down the line once it dropped in price to check out the likes of Uncharted, Resistance, Killzone, etc.

Pairing Nintendo and another console is pretty much the best recipe if you can only pick two from SNES/Super Famicom and Mega Drive/Genesis onward. 

In the second generation, you'd mostly be set with Atari 2600/VCS and in the third generation just NES/Famicom. 

I'm talking home consoles or a hybrid like Switch or Switch 2 mind you. Because in the seventh generation if we count all systems then it made sense to have at least two home consoles and at least one handheld. And you could argue that for other generations too. 

From European perspective, given launch dates, NES + Amiga 500 was great pairing from 1987 to 1992 - NES provided home console experience, while Amiga not only offered continuation of home computer games (with many genres that were pretty much only on computers), but offered glimpse into 16bit era that is to come to home consoles few years later.

Yeah this is a good point, going back that far PC and console were entirely different beasts compared to today, so there was a lot less overlap.

Until around 1993-1996 as the fifth generation began, most computers were weaker than consoles. The tech had less overlap than it does now and dollar for dollar (or whatever similar exchange in other currencies) consoles were better at game performance.

PC has definitely always complimented at least one other console quite well. But the popularity of PCs as more powerful than consoles really exploded in the 2010s (though obviously the increased power had been a thing since the 1990s). 

Yeah, I liked it that way - while PCs are currently mostly viewed as "better visuals/modding" game boxes, it was all about different experiences and genres back in those days, as they were continuation of different home computers people gamed on from 70s onward.

Dollar for dollar, yes, dedicated game console were always a better deal, due to computers being not only general purpose computing devices, but also had tech that was ahead of one that was in consoles (16bit home computers started to show up already around turn of decade, 79/80, quite earlier than 16 bit consoles).

If your profile is correct, you weren't born yet, but rewind back to early 90s and my 20 something old brain is completely blown away with experiences possible only on 486 PCs (Pentium didn't launch yet) at the time - this is were I concluded that Amiga 1200, Amiga 500's successor, has no chance of being the future of home computer gaming.

But with PS1, consoles really got upper hand...well at least for brief period until '96, 3DFX Voodoo and increasing market share of Pentium (and alike) CPUs.