Top 25 Game Consoles of All Time

[Publius]

It's amazing to me that there have been enough consoles released that being on the latter half of this list can even seem anywhere near noteworthy. Yeah really. It doesn't seem like a very exclusive club. About all they left off is those cheapo video game systems they sell at swap meets with built-in games.

[SRP76]

Well, they did leave off the Channel F, which is the real first system with separate game cartridges. That should have been on there instead of the Odyssey. But when you make a Top 25 systems when only 28 systems exist, how "exclusive" do you expect it to be? You can't count knockoffs of existing systems as systems in their own right, since they're just copies. Although if you did, you could probably make a Top 25 just for the Atari 2600 clones.

[MinionZombie]

I would blow on my Mega Drive cartridges as well when they got temperamental, same goes for inside the Mega Drive itself - all I'd do is swallow any spit and make sure my mouth was dry before gusting breath into the Mega Drive/cartridges and bingo - working. If only you could fix modern consoles by blowing on them...

[MikePizzoff]

I'm pretty sure dust on the connections caused the game to fail. Hence blowing helped remove dust and cause it to work. I know it worked for me: I wrote off several games as "broken" when I was a kid, only to discover the blowing trick fixed them a few months later. Negative, sir. The thing which caused games to fail was not dust; it was the connectors inside the system itself. Inside each NES there is a piece that allows the mother board to the cartridge via metal. However, Nintendo cut corners on production by using a cheap type of metal (unsure what exactly). This metal would "stretch" out of shape over time, and become so separated that it couldn't properly make contact with the cartridge. Bear in mind, it is not one long metal strip or something, it's a bunch of small "pins", like this: UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn The cartridge is slid in between U & n, obviously. Sometimes a set of U & n would be slightly separated; enough that it would cause that annoying flashing color screen . However, due to you ejecting and reinserting the game repeatedly, you'd get lucky and have it make just enough contact to work. Don't believe me? Open up your NES and bend the connectors back to form. Make sure not to blow on any of your games then try to play them; they will work. Trust me - I've fixed many NES systems. However, the best thing to do is just buy a new connector piece altogether, for like $7-10. There are companies that make them with a better grade of metal. Damn, that was the last thing I wanted to type whilst hungover at 7:30 in the morning.

[SRP76]

I never gave my NES games a blowjob. I know a lot of people did, but I didn't think it would work. The trouble I always had was the annoying on/off blinking when I inserted a game. Instead of taking the game out, I was guilty of side-slappage. I'd simply beat on the side of the NES until the game worked. Today I realize that's not the official repair method, but I was like 10 years old, what do you expect. It always did work, incredibly. The NES never did full-on shit the bed. Now that I think of it, I can't remember what happened to my NES. It didn't break, and I didn't sell it. I got a SNES soon after it came out, and my NES just disappeared.

[darth los]

All i know is that the cartridges didn't work and when you blew in them, vuala! Mario time! Attribute it to what ever you want but all I know is that it worked. You guys are making it sound like a rain dance or something.

[AcesandEights]

Ah, the NES...I still know where mine is

[krakenslayer]

Negative, sir. The thing which caused games to fail was not dust; it was the connectors inside the system itself. Inside each NES there is a piece that allows the mother board to the cartridge via metal. However, Nintendo cut corners on production by using a cheap type of metal (unsure what exactly). This metal would "stretch" out of shape over time, and become so separated that it couldn't properly make contact with the cartridge. Bear in mind, it is not one long metal strip or something, it's a bunch of small "pins", like this: UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn The cartridge is slid in between U & n, obviously. Sometimes a set of U & n would be slightly separated; enough that it would cause that annoying flashing color screen . However, due to you ejecting and reinserting the game repeatedly, you'd get lucky and have it make just enough contact to work. Don't believe me? Open up your NES and bend the connectors back to form. Make sure not to blow on any of your games then try to play them; they will work. Trust me - I've fixed many NES systems. However, the best thing to do is just buy a new connector piece altogether, for like $7-10. There are companies that make them with a better grade of metal. Damn, that was the last thing I wanted to type whilst hungover at 7:30 in the morning. I've heard about the bending of the pins, I understand that was a major weakness in the construction of the console. Wasn't the Game Genie a big contributor to the problem, due to the contorted way it fit into the slot? Anyway, I'm sure you know your stuff on this subject. My point, however, is that just because that was one major cause of a game failing to work, doesn't mean that's the only cause. Surely there is no doubt that a large accumulation of dust on the connectors would cause problems? The same goes for videocassette recorders, CD/DVD players, even serial and USB ports. When I was a kid, my bedroom used to be pretty messy and I don't find the idea of dust accumulating in my cartridges too unbelievable. What I do know is that when I blew on one of my cartridges it worked fine for days or weeks before it would mess up again, whereas others that were not blown on would continue to have problems until I did so. Also, I now keep my cartridges packed away in a sealed box (where I suppose they are not exposed to dust), as opposed to scattered around a messy bedroom, and whenever I bring them out to play with them (which is once in a blue moon), they always boot up first time. To me this suggests that the connectors in my NES never bent out of shape, and it was dust on the cartridges themselves (due to poor storage conditions) that caused my intermittent problems. Of course, that's only one person's anecdotal evidence, I guess...

[darth los]

That's a very scientific approach and it makes sense kraken. If there's a problem with something, console, car, whatever, and there's something you try that everytime it's done gets it to work what other conclusion could one come to? But we've all been gaming for like...ever so I'm not going to say any other theories arre wrong but like Kraken said, and this is a lesson for life as well, it's never just one thing but it's normally a combination of things that contribute to a problem.