A different approach to ranking gaming consoles

[fcgamer | 4,723]

So we've been voting on game consoles based on our knee-jerk reactions basically, as seen in the poll threads. I don't like SNES/SFC, and see it as a "pretty" Famicom/NES; @OptOut has a personal vendetta against the PS, and the list goes on.

I'd be curious to examine consoles in a slightly less knee-jerk reaction sort of way though.

For example: Console A has a library of three games, and each of them is deemed to be mediocre. Console B has a library of three games, one is great, one mediocre, one is bad. Both consoles should be considered equal, when their libraries are averaged, though though if console A was a Nintendo machine with a popular Mario game, and console B was the Super A'can with no popular franchises, most would automatically rank console A higher.

i think it would be interesting to actually delve further into this to see how consoles actually stack up against each other, more objectively.

[Tanooki | 4,932]

I think your metric on three is grossly flawed.  Sure take the name out, you still have to rate it on the games, and let's be fair, one 10/10 quality game will make any system seem more viable than 3 games that rank 5/10 because they exist but neither are good or suck.  That would just seem like wasting more money on more mediocrity at best, vs wasting money on one excellent experience to return to.

Sure you can remove opinion and feelings out of a review, I used to do it all the time when I was in the media because I got sick of the fanboy shlong sucking behavior from fanboy media press.  I got praise from it by readers back in the day (late GBA/DS period) because if I did inject feeling, I mentioned it outright up front, then dropped it cold after so it could be skipped.

You're asking someone to remove feeling not from a game by the system by maker, but that in the end doesn't matter.  IT would matter if Dandy, Watara, Game King, Sega, or whoever make Super Mario World in a parallel dimension where Miyamoto went there instead... the game we're assuming still was made, still had the same standards, and still gushed over 30 years later.  A good game is good, a great game is a legend, and it counts for more than quite a few games when the others are average or crap.

[JamesRobot | 5,798]

Console A: 10

Condole B: No interest but I'd give it a go of it was in the room.  And it already hooked up.  And there was no console A in the room.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

I see what you are saying, but I don't necessarily agree with it.

My brother and I had applied the technique towards both if the Chip n Dale games on the NES. We got the first one for Christmas, the same Christmas we got our NES. Needless to say, it is steeped in tons of nostalgia.

Part two, we got from Funcoland around 2000. We were disappointed with it, but to be honest, no matter what they did, we would have been disappointed, unless they had made a sequel that was sort of like SMB2 (J) is to the first game.

Years later we went back through and tried to play the second game objectively, and we ultimately decided that it might actually be better than the first game. There's a wider variety of music, the plot is slightly more engaging, more characters appear from the tv show, and the list goes on.

While I personally prefer the first game, and a portion of that is tied to nostalgia, the second game does have so things that make it better, and for someone playing both games for the first time, he or she may actually prefer the second one.

And I think bit would be interesting to rank consoles in a similar way, taking out the emotion.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

2 hours ago, fcgamer said:

I don't like SNES/SFC, and see it as a "pretty" Famicom/NES; @OptOut has a personal vendetta against the PS, and the list goes on.

Nope.  That's the entire list.  Two silly, silly people.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

4 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Nope.  That's the entire list.  Two silly, silly people.

I actually had considered tagging you in the list, as the guy who is so biased that although he sees the mounds of shit, he refuses to recognise them for anything but quality fertilizer for his crops, but decided against it lest I accidentally offend you...

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

I'm aware of what I wrote.  I've had years to think about it.  I'll give you the cliffs note version of the library:

714-650: truly wretched

650-601: barely any redeeming qualities

600-501: fun is starting to show up, but the games are still very flawed

500-451: games that are okay, but still have major issues

450-351: games that are okay, but still have minor issues holding them back

350-251: games that are good

250-151 : games that are very good

150-51: games that are great

50-1: a top 50 that might be the greatest in gaming history

And yet I still gave the SNES a mere 9 instead of the 10 it probably deserved.  You are a silly, silly man.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

8 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I'm aware of what I wrote.  I've had years to think about it.  I'll give you the cliffs note version of the library:

714-650: truly wretched

650-601: barely any redeeming qualities

600-501: fun is starting to show up, but the games are still very flawed

500-451: games that are okay, but still have major issues

450-351: games that are okay, but still have minor issues holding them back

350-251: games that are good

250-151 : games that are very good

150-51: games that are great

50-1: a top 50 that might be the greatest in gaming history

And yet I still gave the SNES a mere 9 instead of the 10 it probably deserved.  You are a silly, silly man.

See, I can appreciate this much, much more than anything else you posted in response to my opinion of the machine.

If you don't mind me asking, was most of your childhood gaming on a SNES or a NES, or something else entirely?

Although the number of games differ, I can recognise the descriptions as fitting quite well with my experience of the NES / Famicom library, which would be my GOAT machine. Likely because the NES was perfect in my mind, that's why I always felt underwhelmed by the SNES. Compare Mega Man 7 to Mega Man 1-6, i much preferred the earlier adventure island games, final fight the same way, etc etc.

Even Marios I prefer 3 to world, and I rarely if ever see a need to play Mario All-Stars.

Then 1700 games for a full set, and tons of garbage titles , it was just the final nail in the coffin imo. Even now, there's a shop near me that is selling legit SFC titles, for $3 each, and no one wants them..

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

@fcgamer Just give it up dude.  No amount of mental gymnastic makes a SNES a 1/10.  The poll results speak for themselves.

7/10?  Go for it.  6/10?  Sure, James did it and he's a Genny fanboy.  1/10?  You're trolling.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

9 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

@fcgamer Just give it up dude.  No amount of mental gymnastic makes a SNES a 1/10.  The poll results speak for themselves.

7/10?  Go for it.  6/10?  Sure, James did it and he's a Genny fanboy.  1/10?  You're trolling.

Nope, not gonna give it up.

You are a SNES fanboy and you admitted yourself that a large portion of the library sucked. Throw in all the shitty exclusives from abroad and you got a shitty console.

Cherry picking the good 25% doesn't make it a good machine. And of that 25% of "good" material, a lot had been done better bon Genny or NES, tbh.

Give it up, you got personal bias towards your love of the machine, but if we look at it objectively, Pune for pound there is more crap than good stuff.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

You're a clown dude.  Zero self awareness.  None.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

1 minute ago, Reed Rothchild said:

You're a clown dude.  Zero self awareness.  None.

Lol. Ad hominem.

Go spend the rest of your weekend playing all the shitty Pachinko games and mediocre to substandard Japanese exclusives, then if you haven't killed yourself at that point to end the SNES suffering, get back to us on how you rate the machine.

Beforehand though I'll throw you a bone, I move the system's rank from a "1" to a "2", thanks to the porno mahjong games and Gamars Chinese Chess

 

[Khromak | 768]

IDK @fcgamer if you're going to rate a system based on the number of shitty games it has you can't really say NES/Famicom is the GOAT. While it has a lot of amazing games, there are a metric fuckton of shitty games on that platform. I'd say there are less than 100 standout titles for NES/Famicom, out of...over a thousand? The overall numbers depend how many genres you generally enjoy, but for my money it's around 10%. I'd say if you're looking for a system to have 50% amazing games you're deluded and you'll never find a system like that.

[Tanooki | 4,932]

48 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

7/10?  Go for it.  6/10?  Sure, James did it and he's a Genny fanboy.  1/10?  You're trolling.

Bingo  Like you said, mental gymnastics.  I mean, let's stop the bickering and look at it this way... what *IS* a 1 on the polling here.

Now with pure honesty, and a straight face methaphorically speaking since we're not in the same room.  How could anyone ever dare throw the SNES let alone a majority of systems a 1?!  1 basically says the only redeeming value, if you can call it one, is that it well...exists, not because of the games, the designs, anything...it's a participation trophy for the easily triggered so they feel included.

[fox | 1,666]

One bad apple spoils the barrel, but video games are covered in plastic so a bad game doesn't ruin all the good ones.  

Edited May 10, 2021 by fox

[MegaMan52 | 2,442]

Somebody's probably gonna run over me with a Steamroller for saying this...but even though I like the SNES and would give it an 8/10 (well, 9/10 actually), I'm glad there's someone here that hates it. It's like Mega Man 2 and Mega Man X. Both are great games, but dang they're praised and talked about way too much. I like it when someone finally shows up and criticizes them (Mega Man 2 especially). Same goes for the SNES.

Now that I've said that, I'll happily live the rest of my life in two dimensional form...

Edited May 9, 2021 by MegaMan52

[Sumez | 2,941]

This is hilarious 

[fcgamer | 4,723]

4 hours ago, Khromak said:

If you're going to rate a system based on the number of shitty games it has you can't really say NES/Famicom is the GOAT. While it has a lot of amazing games, there are a metric fuckton of shitty games on that platform. I'd say there are less than 100 standout titles for NES/Famicom, out of...over a thousand? 

This sort of proves my point. If I sat down and made a list to guy now, I'd easily reach 400+ games that I really, really enjoyed on that machine, and then if we extended the list to include others that are fun, or "good", despite not being my genre (Gradius, etc) then we'd easily get up to probably 2/3rds or 3/4ths of the software for the system. A lot of the older releases would fall into the good, yet not my personal cup of tea sort of games, Donkey Kong jr, pac-land, dig dug, etc. 

For SNES/SFC, there's possibly 50 games for it that I'd personally consider good, the rest being mediocre to me, at best. That's just how it is for me, being serious here, not trolling.

That brings things around full circle a bit to this particular thread. If we rated consoles based on software entirely, under the scale of three terms good, mediocre, and bad, I think it would be interesting to see how consoles actually matched up.

For NES, given the limitations of those three choices, I'd rank Donkey Kong mediocre, SMB good, etc. I'd like to see SNES software rated under similar choices, as if one is forced to decide "Does this game fall in the same league as DKC and Mario World, or not?", suddenly the stuff that is currently and artificially being considered good would end up where it should reside.

[Gloves | 11,776]

Let's all remember that Dave is totally entitled to being wrong. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

6 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Let's all remember that Dave is totally entitled to being wrong. 

But it's more fun to pile on!

[fcgamer | 4,723]

7 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

But it's more fun to pile on!

Aye, so many sheep here .

 

[Gloves | 11,776]

Just now, fcgamer said:

Aye, so many sheep here .

 

And one contrarian!

[fcgamer | 4,723]

Just now, Gloves said:

And one contrarian!

Not being a contrarian, nor trolling, it's honestly how I view the SNES / SFC library. 

[fcgamer | 4,723]

Anyone interested in buying these? Let's start the bidding

[Gloves | 11,776]

Just now, fcgamer said:

Not being a contrarian, nor trolling, it's honestly how I view the SNES / SFC library. 

So I'd repeat:

17 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Let's all remember that Dave is totally entitled to being wrong.