Home video gaming is turning 50 next year. Since the release of Magnavox Odyssey in 1972 the industry has seen nine console generations with over 1,000 hopeful contestants lining up in this half-century. Debate often centres on the singular, that is: which console is the greatest?
Machines like the Famicom/NES and its follow-up. PlayStation and its direct sequel. And the still-kicking PS4 are often mentioned. Sega Dreamcast is the ‘what might have been’. Musing over the relative merit, impact and legacy of generations is often an afterthought.
But the regal consoles, so often lionised, did not exist in a vacuum. The role of their competition and the context in which they existed is often overlooked, sometimes even ignored when compiling lists of machines.
Today, we examine that competition and context. Not to reach a final verdict on the generations themselves but to pose the question of how they should be judged. Or more bluntly, what makes a generation great or greater than another.
Pioneers…
Being first is no guarantee of supremacy but it does confer eternal greatness. Records may be broken, new heights reached but the title of ‘first’ remains. With the release of the Odyssey, some forty-nine years ago, an industry now worth $300bn took its first public steps
Inspired by a reputable company like Magnavox taking the lead in these transistor and diode-infested waters, many companies released their own take on the TV game. However, this raft of imitators rarely did it as well as Magnavox.
Across 900 or so first generation consoles, only a half-dozen or so are considered important enough to be ‘canon’ in the story of video games. Of these, only one other offered Odyssey’s innovative cartridge system. Even Odyssey’s follow-up lacked the potential that comes with an open board.
The hundreds of clones, so unsuccessful that they find themselves excised from common history, crashed the US market in 1977. Almost overnight, this mass of imitators of varying quality retreated to the realm of the esoteric or the memories of the few whose fate collided with Gamatic 7600 or Bang 1000 back in the day.
…But Probably Not the Greatest
That first generation of consoles crawled so CPU-powered machines playing interchangeable cartridges could toddle. Their impact as a commercial first is undeniable. The market they created grew, changed direction and otherwise developed into the what it is today. The very idea of plugging a box into a television and holding a hunk of plastic in your hands to have fun was implanted in the minds of millions by the crude but inventive consoles of the first generation.
However, few of that generation’s gameplay conventions survive fully intact to this day. Excluding Pong!, few can name a game from this home console generation. Collections of its greatest artistic achievements are not aplenty and few YouTube channels serve what nostalgia it holds.
There simply isn’t enough in the way of content to enjoy, explore or exalt, even across 900 machines. Therefore, the 1st gen. cannot be the greatest simply because gamers, as a collective, have seemingly grown to value a system’s games above all else.
Games, Games, Games…
Of course, that evaluation is natural. What is a system but a paperweight without software. Games sell consoles but more importantly, a steady stream of quality titles fosters loyalty matching fervent music fans dedicated to their favourite group. The right games cement a lasting legacy that fuels a console’s case as the ‘greatest’.
On the other end of the spectrum, capable machines have stuttered and failed through a lack of compelling games. Empires have fallen through a lack of quality or quantity.
But which generation had the greatest games? And how do we even evaluate an entire library? Do we take its best games only or do we average the output? Do we take the sheer volume and variety into account?
…But Which Had the Greatest Line-Up
The fourth generation brought us Sonic the Hedgehog 2, 3 & Knuckles, Super Mario World and Kart, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Metroid. 2D graphics had matured to a point of frequent beauty. Gameplay in the X and Y axes had been perfected. Machines of this generation even dabbled in polygons and 3D gaming though they were choppy and limited by distinctly 2D controllers.
Sega and Nintendo’s first-party offerings were supported by an expanding and improving set of developers free to publish on two popular platforms. Konami, Capcom and Midway brought arcade bangers, almost intact, to both platforms as well as developing some lasting titles and continuing franchises.
Gaming leapt to new dimension on PlayStation and Nintendo 64 while Sega Saturn is the gaming hipster’s choice. A whole new era of gaming began on fifth generation systems and these consoles serve as the starting point for what modern gamers expect in terms of visuals and controls. In addition, this new realm gave us some continuing franchises of its own.
Now or Then?
However, fourth generation games have arguably aged better. That aforementioned mastery of their realm and the maturity of the consoles themselves relative to the games typical of their time make many SNES or Mega Drive games wholly playable to this day while few titles considered ‘the greatest’ on PlayStation, N64 and Saturn can say the same.
While impact at the time and innovation should always inform judgement on the greatest games ever made, some games just don’t stand the test of time. Entire libraries can age out of playability.
More importantly is the subjectivity of judging a line-up. Aside from the questions we posed about balancing various facets of a library, one may simply prefer a generation of games for any number of reasons. Even by divorcing nostalgia from proceeding it is not possible for any number of gamers to reach a consensus on the greatest games or indeed, the greatest generation of titles.
Competition…
More recent consoles have seen larger libraries than ever before. After PlayStation’s success with optical media, it became much cheaper to publish console games. The barrier of entry has only sank further with the rise of digital downloads. Vast libraries of thousands of games are now the norm for consoles. Switch is approaching 4,000 games. PS4 has surpassed 3,000. While Xbox One, famous for having ‘no games’ somehow has over 2,000 of them.
Just how we came to be spoilt for choice is therefore an important factor in considering the greatest generation. In the beginning there was usually one console that dominated while others rushed to imitate. Odyssey, Atari VCS and Famicom/NES all took their turn to dominate the first three generations. With rise of Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, the first heavyweight system clash was underway.
Sega drove the cross-platform market to the most important source of console titles. No longer did devs have to devote an entire team to one platform. Guaranteed a large audience no matter which side won, third-party houses increased their budgets, their ambitions and their quality. Ever since Sega’s David almost slayed Nintendo’s Goliath, a smaller and smaller proportion of the biggest games are exclusive to one platform.
Sixth generation libraries are awash with cross–platform titles and fittingly some of its very best and most lasting games found themselves on multiple systems. The three Grand Theft Auto and Splinter Cell games, Metal Gear Solid 2, Resident Evil 4 and a ‘Who’s Who’ of video games history saw release across GameCube, PS2, Xbox and Dreamcast or any number of the four.
…Differentation
To differentiate systems, first-party games had to rise above the multiplat quality that huge third-party sales were funding. Hence, the seventh generation gave us some of the greatest first-party games of all-time.
Series like Halo and Forza Motorsport had their best entries on Xbox 360. Gears of War and Forza Horizon made their starts on Microsoft’s first and so far only major console success.
PlayStation 3’s exclusive offerings are probably the single greatest contribution to any ‘top 100 games of all time. Uncharted 2 and The Last of Us still represent heights of the ‘cinematic’ gaming craft.
Nintendo Wii had Super Mario Odyssey, still a benchmark for 3D Mario games. And that was supplemented with games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii.
It’s also noteworthy that the fourth and seventh generations had the closest competition in terms of hardware sales. Nintendo eventually overturned Sega Mega Drive/Genesis with their Super Famicom/SNES while PS3 and Xbox 360 battled for a respectable second in a race with something entirely different, aimed at a different group of people.
Did these two races breed the greatest generation by dint of their close competition and the experience they bred?
…Or Inclusion
The success of Nintendo Wii and, to a lesser extent Nintendo DS opened up gaming to an ever larger crowd.
Throughout the previous history of gaming, the demographic had grown a few times. The older teen market opened up by Sega. PlayStation grabbing younger twentysomethings. The seventh-generation of consoles saw this open up to distinctly non-gamers. Those ‘too old’ or ‘too busy’ to learn a control scheme didn’t need to.
The Wii’s intuitive motion controls may have proven to be mostly a fad and the technology has since fallen out of favour in consoles but it opened the door for mobile gaming to capture bored normies. Nintendo DS’s touchscreen prepared millions of then-new gamers for the taps and swipage of mobile gaming.
Gamers also didn’t grow out of games anymore. PlayStation 3’s aforementioned legendary library embraced mature themes with complex stories that stayed with a player. Even Xbox played its part in gathering a non-gaming crowd – 360’s Halo 3 and 4 excited lapsed gamers, especially those of Doom 2 deathmatch vintage. It excited so many, in fact, that it made was afforded media coverage akin to a movie, music album or book.
In the seventh generation, video games were no longer considered to be child’s play. To the public at large, gaming had evolved into a commercial artform worthy of an adult’s time. Does this explosion in acceptance, uptake and diversity make it the greatest generation?
A Changed Market
The eight generation lacked the same competition – Microsoft stuttered badly and have scarcely recovered, Nintendo ushered in the 9th gen. early when WiiU flopped. Yet, PlayStation’s momentum continued.
Despite competition faltering, scale-bustingly excellent exclusive games emerged aplenty from PS4 with a few treasures on Nintendo’s ailing WiiU. All the while multiplats for Xbox One and PS4 saw third-party titles scramble to catch up with first-party titles’ increased effort and quality, pushing standards higher still.
Our discussion ends here. With the eight generation petering out underneath new hardware, we won’t see it develop further in any meaningful way yet it seems too recent to include in our musings on the greatest generation. The eight generation may also be the last generation that consoles competed directly with each other. With Xbox pivoting to a service and Switch going hybrid, only PlayStation are occupying the same track as the generations that went before.
Which generation was your personal favourite and which do you think is the somewhat objective best? How many times have you been lucky enough to own all major platforms in a generation? Do you agree with our discussion of various metrics? Is it about the library as a whole? Was opening gaming up important? Or is it solely a case of which generation had the best five or ten games? We hope you enjoyed this article on ‘the greatest generation’ of consoles and that it gives you food for thought on the subject.
