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The SNES launch lineup really is hard to beat:

Super Mario World, F-Zero, Pilotwings.....

F-Zero and Pilotwings might be showing their age now but they were jaw dropping back in the day and are still pretty playable - though if ever a game needed an update its Pilotwings....the N64 game was nice but it didn't capture the feel of the original for me.

The original F-Zero still has lots of charm and I really like the updates - F-Zero X and GX are among my favourite racers - though GX is too hard for its own good but what a great effort by Sega.

Mario World still sets the standard - wonderful game.

close for me - NES is great old workhorse - but the 2600 gets my vote. I got rid of the NES when I got nesterDC but  I still have a woody despite Stella being around.

Some old pics - have a few more than shown here - really will have to update this at some point.....

I love the Saturn - I have a model 1 PAL and a white Japanese model. Have quite a few decent import games - some of the biggies -Radiant Silvergun, Soukyuagarentai, Layer Section, Parodius Series etc. I've also double dipped on the big games such as Sega Rally and VF2 so I have both PAL and NTSC versions and I don't have to use the AR cart to play them on my white Saturn.

I have a decent PAL collection too which I picked up in the late 90's out of bargain bins and places like Ca$h Converters when people either jumped to the PS1 or Dreamcast - all the better for me.

The controller is a thing of beauty - the dpad is to die for and I cannot figure out how the DC ended up with such a poor one. Have a couple of Virtua sticks and analogue controllers too - will post some pics of my collection..

My setup is quite nice - or at least it would be if I could get the room its in cleared out - an awful lot of crap dumped in there by my 2 daughters and wife at the minute - we need to do a serious declutter so I can get my gaming room as I would really like it....

My N64 collection is a pain point for me - I have a really nice CIB collection - but all in PAL. My plan is to get an NTSC model and get those games that got butchered in PAL (esp the earlier stuff like Waverace) and keep those PAL games that seem OK - like F-Zero or Doom64.

I will probably trade some of my PAL stuff in to finance it as I believe in having a working collection - not something that sits on the shelf....had heard of the French N64s (and the French Atari 7800s that have composite out?) - but maybe a US model will be cheaper to get my hands on?

My Panasonic 28" CRT has a powered Thor SCART switch connected to the RGB SCART socket for handy gaming. It means my PS2, GC, Megadrive and Saturn are permanently connected - but my 2600 is the oldest machine I have connected up to the Panasonic.

No SCART connection with the old woody obviously - so I run it through an old Sony VCR so I connect to the TV via composite which means I can run NTSC or PAL60 ROMS on the 2600 using my Harmony cartridge without the Panasonic throwing a fit.

You cannot believe how much harder Kaboom! is when played at full speed.......a big deal for us shmucks living in PAL land.

Incidentally - if you have a PAL N64 - you need to get an s-video lead - makes a big difference - PAL N64s can't push out RGB - not even modded ones apparently.

Hi folks....

I'm been around for some time (mid 40s) so remember the rise of the arcades and the arrival of pong machines in the home.

Had a 2600 (still do!) and had an Oric-1 and an Amstrad 464 (with green screen!) in the 8 bit micro days. Then I kind of got a bit disillusioned with gaming because I believe that while the 8bit era was a great incubator for talent - the dodgy difficulty curves and tape loading of the day kind of put me off.

The NES got me back into gaming - then had s SNES, then an N64 (was bit of a Nintard for a while) - then a Saturn (wanted to play some shmups) - then my world opened up - also have a PS1, PS2, Atari 7800, Megadrive, Dreamcast, Gamecube and Wii. Have around 600 titles all boxed and complete - not a collector - more of a hoarder.

Have been a programmer (not games) for 20 odd years - wrote my first "app" on an Apple II in school when I was 14 and have never looked back. Don't get to code in work any more but I dabble with Java, PHP and Blitzbasic in my spare time.

Love gaming - especially retro and "retro style" games like puzzlers & shmups and not really into narrative led games. FPS games I think have kind of ruined the market - they suck in too much resource and talent that could be better used in other genres. Still will play the FPS but not all that much -I think they are opiate of the gaming masses I am afraid.

Used to be a Ninty fanboy - but i'm still quite a fan - still believe they are the only real big inventor now that the likes of Sega, Namco, Konami and Capcom seem to fallen into oblivion or a rut. Still ever hopeful for the future though even though the HD remake seems to be de rigour with everyone now.

I had one and loved it - despite the small catalogue of games released for it. It never really stood a chance against the Spectrum which it was priced to compete with.

I wrote loads of BASIC programs for it and got great value out of it as I played the simple games I created (Video Poker, Poker Squares, Hangman, Reaction Tester) with my brother and cousins for hours.

Ocean did a decent port of Hunchback for it and I also remember playing The Ultra and Centipede on it - two decent shmups - but it was all abut the programming for me.

It was a 6502 machine which I believe is a really nice instruction set to start with if you want to get into assembler. I dipped into a bit of that with the Oric - bought a copy of "Oric Mon" and a 6502 book and was soon messing about moving things around the screen at super fast pace...

Never had any issues with saving and loading - though I always saved 2 copies - just to be sure - never needed it though.

Dropped it one day and it just stopped working - was probably a simple fix back then but I'm afraid it ended up in the bin. Will always remember it fondly though.

The only noticeable bug its BASIC interpreter had was that if you converted an integer to a string it added the display attribute for green onto the start of the string - so you had to strip that off using MID$ or RIGHT$ if you wanted to display it in any other colour than green!! Was no big deal once you knew how to work around it. It had some great sound commands that let you create custom sound envelopes etc. - good times.