Tricky one really. Nintendo is the clear winner for consistent machinery with varied ideas and good reliability. Hardware choices though was mixed as the SNES needed a touch more in the CPU department, N64 wasn't great, the Cube lacked DVD support and the Wii was sort of underpowered. Only the VB is crap hardware. Portables have all been good with a mix of quality, battery life and price.

Sega did great with the MS and MD but the Saturn was certainly a bit of a mess though still good, the MCD and 32X were complete rip offs, The Game Gear was toilet and the DC was just a touch too soon, and hugely unreliable.

Sony made a great PS1 despite early issues, PS2 was wonderfully interesting with the multi core approach and saw the greatest improvements in the quality of the titles and PS3 is packed with power and good media features. All are perhaps a beat weak in terms of reliability. PSP was fantastic and Vita is stunning in terms of the machine.

I think Nintendo win, a little unfair though because they have been around so long. Sega come second because their machines have good build quality generally. Pity they dropped out really. A market with them, Sony and Nintendo would have been great.

Hmm don't agree at all with Nintendo being consistent and reliable! Maybe consistent in churning out underspecced equipment and the same old ip with little changes! And my GBA stopped working and my Wii too so not with you on the reliable front!
The Master System beat the NES hands down on graphics and sound, and the arcade conversions at the time.
Megadrive wins easy against the snes, again for the arcade games and original/Amiga ports, the lower resolution of the snes didn't help esp with the vomit enducing mode7 games that at one time every developer had to put somewhere in their game if the gamer wanted it or not!
The original Gameboy was great at the time, but aged badly now, great choice of games, many blurry, at least gb pocket screen helped.
GBC...the devils handheld and Nintendos worst by a country mile....lack of real decent games and badly outdated, should have been released few years earlier, but the worst thing is the god damn awful screen!! You need to sit under a 60w bulb to play the bloody thing! Wonderswan and neogeo pocket colour much better imo.
Gba Nintendos best handheld, great selection of games, ok original screen not the best but improved on later models.
Virtual boy, owned one a while back, is quite fun to play, but awkward stand and dropped like a stone after 6 months, means hardly anything to play on it.
N64 - few great games it must be said, but selection of games was really lacking against ps1 and Saturn, weird controller badly designed, analogue stick good but should have been like GC controller from start...worst thing about n64 is shitty low snes resolution..come on 64 bit with 8bit type resolutions! Really hurt your eyes after playing along muddy textures made for some bad experiences, at least waverace64 cured me for a while!
N64 dd - oh dear oh dear...makes the mega cd look like pure gold from sega!
GC , nice little console, but lack of developer support against ps2 and Xbox soon made shops drop the format.
DS again nice handheld that I got most hours from MarioKart from..best version imo touch screen just a gimmick though and most games best with dpad.
3ds - hardly used mine for a year, 3d again is really a gimmick and soon novelty wears off, not a massive influx of games, shame when latest games of puzzle and girly games continues where DS left off.
Wii - fun..in moderation, as a pure games console it's pretty naff tbh the ps3 and xb360 piss on it from a great height games wise, but for keeping fit and party games it's the best machine...make of that what you will!
Wii u - more gimmicks from Nintendo, casual gamers want phone games, real gamers want normal control pads...Nintendo go for the tablet controller for upto 2 players.....the rest can just use wii remotes! Lack of games currently, no real exclusives bar a couple, no doubt wii u fit and Mario kart u and Kirby Wii u will sell millions but nothing to warrant buying one by a long shot currently .

That's nintendo... More later!

Ok, so who voted other but didn't actually post to say who?

On the whole Amiga Jay, Nintendo have given the most reliable hardware time and time again. Sure not everything is perfect, nothing is but few have put out the quality of physical product like them. Everything else you said boils down to what games you like.

I put my views across in a way that looks at the topic title, best manufacturer. Like I said before, for 30 odd years Nintendo have generally made decent and reliable hardware. The Xbox 360 might be more powerful than a SNES, but no good if you have to keep replacing it.

Otherwise this topic should have been called who makes the best consoles or which console has the best games.

This thread is just about personal opinion, who was your favourite based on the systems that they made. That simple really.

Nintendo or Atari would have been my second choice.

I just lost a GameBoy Color. It no longer will hold a charge.

The Super Nes has been one of the most dependable systems I have ever owned and Nintendo Entertainment System controllers have my respect for being simple but tough. Never had a bad Nes controller. Maybe a few teeth marks like somebody's dog was chewing on it, but it still worked.

Atari 2600 systems tend to hold up well. Wish I could say the same of the joysticks. I have had good luck with 7800 controllers.

I went with Sega because of the add-ons. I enjoy the Master System adaptor, 32X and Sega CD.

On the whole Amiga Jay, Nintendo have given the most reliable hardware time and time again. Sure not everything is perfect, nothing is but few have put out the quality of physical product like them. Everything else you said boils down to what games you like.

I put my views across in a way that looks at the topic title, best manufacturer. Like I said before, for 30 odd years Nintendo have generally made decent and reliable hardware. The Xbox 360 might be more powerful than a SNES, but no good if you have to keep replacing it.

Otherwise this topic should have been called who makes the best consoles or which console has the best games.

Again as you say most reliable in your opinion and experience, I don't think there's any official statistics to say otherwise! Just because you think so doesn't make it true.

And yes just as you put your views across so have I by going through one by one, its not just the quality of the machine, it's how it's supported and how the company's get 3rd party support, which some of the time nintendo have been sadly lacking.

I'm not voting on who makes the finest grade a plastic, but as a company as a whole, I went for Sega.

Ok, so who voted other but didn't actually post to say who?

ME! As there is'nt a 'none of the above' or 'Don't have 1, i just buy what suits as and when' option.

My 1st Game Cube would over heat and reset after 30 mins, plus Wii had the laser issue, so Nintendo and optical based systems seemed to have been hit by same issues others have suffered, nature of the hardware i guess.

As for Mode 7-As i've said earlier, it often seems that games that do feature Mode 7, need an extra chip on board the cart (DSP of some nature) to pull it off as SNES CPU is so slow, so never really been that sure personally IF it's a key feature of the stock SNES hardware as if your using on-board math chips in carts, it's an enhancement is it not?Md might have relied on clever coding to increase colours on screen or do sprite scaling etc, but in fairness to it, it was using the Megadrive hardware itself, so i can see where Amiga Jay is coming from here.

🙂 But i don't agree regarding the original Gameboy....

F-Zero uses no DSP as do quite a few others. The DSP was added to a few games where scaling was needed on top of Mode 7.

Street Racer did 4 player Mode 7 with no DSP. That was impressive.

F-Zero uses no DSP as do quite a few others. The DSP was added to a few games where scaling was needed on top of Mode 7.

Street Racer did 4 player Mode 7 with no DSP. That was impressive.

I just really struggle to see the SNES as the powerhouse it was claimed (when i was a MD owner) by friends and lot of the press at the time when some 60 ? games use enhancement chips of some form and there are so many:

Cx4 (Capcom), DSP-1 (15 games ? used this), DSP-2 (used i gather to convert Dungeon Master from the Atari ST, where it converts ST bitmap data to SNES bitplane data, but also helps out with transparency effects), DSP-3, DSP-4, OBC-1, S-RTC, SA-1, SPC7110, ST010, ST011, ST018,Super FX Mk 1 and Super FX Mk 2.

This is why, for myself what coders got from a stock MD, just using a faster CPU and clever coding routines for 2D games and the MD CPU+Z80+clever coding routines for early 3D games will also make the MD the far more impressive machine for myself.

The MCD might well have been an expensive failure, it's potential squandered by Sega themselves, but when the hardware was used (Thunderhawk, Battlecorps, soulstar, Driving sections of Batman Returns etc), it was far more impressive than SNES Mode 7.

Standard cart games like:Red Zone, Gunstar Heroes, Contra Hard Corps, Adventures Of Batman+Robin, 3D section on Jurrasic Park:Lost World etc just showed what MD was capable of in right hands.

For a newer piece of kit, very surprised just how much help SNES needed at times, all because Nintendo put in such a poor CPU for the time.

PS2 and PS3 take flak (rightly so) for Sony throttling system with not enough Ram etc and Saturn for going the twin CPU route rather than single chip design, but seems SNES really was'nt all that in terms of design, if Nintendo knew it was going to need extra chips on board to get best from it at times.

Carl Mey who did MD Road Rashclaimed SNES was 'Far less powerful than than the MD.The MD had a 16-Bit data bus, while the SNES had an 8-Bit data bus.On the SNES, all data access was around half the speed of the MD'

whilst the SNES clearly had more colours and a newer, better quality sound chip and i loved things like the music+3D sections of Lawnmower Man, music on Plok! and the look of Alien 3, i've personally never found the SNES to be the machine it was made out to be.

Street Racer coders came up with impressive code for SNES version, of that there's no doubt.MD version was a different game and had some impressive coding routines in there as well, as did the Saturn version, which made great use of the hardware and looked better in places than the PSone version (something coders themselves admit) and had great A.I routines-something sadly missing from todays games.

I bought my first Genesis/Mega Drive new in 1990. I still have it and it works fine. I remember buying extra controllers because the one that came with it was junk. Cheers to the big N for packing two controllers with the Super Nintendo.

Also have never had very good luck with the model II or III Sega Genesis/Mega Drive systems. The model II Super Nes works as well as the model I.

I was a big fan of Sega till they released the Saturn and left me hanging with the 32X and Sega CD. If you had asked me in 1992 when I owned both systems, it would be tough to say which was my favorite.

Always will be a big Sega fan because age has clouded my memoires on how bad they treated their customers and of the quality of their systems/controllers. In the end it is my memories of playing Sega games more than Nintendo ones that made my choice.

I just really struggle to see the SNES as the powerhouse it was claimed (when i was a MD owner) by friends and lot of the press at the time when some 60 ? games use enhancement chips of some form and there are so many:

Cx4 (Capcom), DSP-1 (15 games ? used this), DSP-2 (used i gather to convert Dungeon Master from the Atari ST, where it converts ST bitmap data to SNES bitplane data, but also helps out with transparency effects), DSP-3, DSP-4, OBC-1, S-RTC, SA-1, SPC7110, ST010, ST011, ST018,Super FX Mk 1 and Super FX Mk 2.

This is why, for myself what coders got from a stock MD, just using a faster CPU and clever coding routines for 2D games and the MD CPU+Z80+clever coding routines for early 3D games will also make the MD the far more impressive machine for myself.

The MCD might well have been an expensive failure, it's potential squandered by Sega themselves, but when the hardware was used (Thunderhawk, Battlecorps, soulstar, Driving sections of Batman Returns etc), it was far more impressive than SNES Mode 7.

Carl Mey who did MD Road Rashclaimed SNES was 'Far less powerful than than the MD.The MD had a 16-Bit data bus, while the SNES had an 8-Bit data bus.On the SNES, all data access was around half the speed of the MD'

I like the way you moan about the SNES and its supposed lack of power then throw in that the MCD was more impressive. I should hope it was, it was another £200 on top.

I also wouldn't take the word of anyone who worked for EA seriously. They absolutely hated Nintendo, their policies and the control they had over their market. They also gave a load of shite ports to the machine in the early days. The MD was certainly better at pushing sprites, but there is no doubt in my mind EA could have given the SNES a great road rash.

There are roughly 70 games with enhancement chips in on the SNES. Some are Super FX, which even the MD would probably need to run them at a good frame rate. The Capcom stuff in rather pointless as it is for pointless stuff like a 3D background on the final boss on Megaman X.
Also some of the chips are used for extreme data compression like in Street Fighter Alpha 2. Another chip was used to load a 4 minute fully voiced song in a game intro.

Not all the chips are used to cheaply get around programming and the relatively slow CPU. Also plenty of games got around that, though it's still not as fast as the MD.

The first Madden for the Super Nintendo was rubbish. Leads me to believe that Electronic Arts, later on saw a gold mine and fixed it. By the time of Madden 94 the differences between Sega and Nintendo on the 16-Bit level were trivial.

To this day I still prefer the Super Nintendo for Desert, Jungle and Urban Strike. Again I believe EA saw a cash cow and ported good games.

The first Madden for the Super Nintendo was rubbish. Leads me to believe that Electronic Arts, later on saw a gold mine and fixed it. By the time of Madden 94 the differences between Sega and Nintendo on the 16-Bit level were trivial.

To this day I still prefer the Super Nintendo for Desert, Jungle and Urban Strike. Again I believe EA saw a cash cow and ported good games.

I posted a quote from Michael Lubuguin (Who worked on all the 'Strike' games) on differences between MD+SNES versions of Desert Stike (he thinks the Genesis version is superior) but it's down to hardware differences, not just a port.

It's on:Page 4 of the '3D Polygon games on 8/16-Bit Consoles' thread.

I'm sure he does. I just don't take anything from EA seriously. They are a cancer on gaming and will cuddle up to whoever will make them the most money. They always have been.

Made some great games mind.