GRcade

For me, without a doubt, Dreamcast.

I've always loved Sega's arcade games, especially the Saturn era, and in 1997, the year we got N64, Sega unleashed Model 3. Virtua Fighter 3 and Scud Race were mind blowing. These games looked next-gen, 2 years early , and I must have spent a fortune in Blackpool's arcades pumping coins into them.



So when the likes of CVG and Edge started talking up Dural/Blackbelt, I was hyped. The following year it was unveiled along with Virtua Fighter 3, Sega Rally 2 and Sonic Adventure, the latter of which, in magazines at least, looked as good as Pixar.


How excited was I? This excited!

Launch was incredible, next-gen was here with no competition in sight. I bought every magazine for months leading up to it for every screenshot I could find. With a stroke of luck I was given £150 for work experience and with the money from selling my PlayStation I bought one a week after with the 3 games mentioned above closely followed by SoulCalibur.

I barely left the house that winter.

Yep, probably the Dreamcast. Although, playing Tekken Tag Tournament on the PS2 for the first time did make me do a sex wee.

GameCube for me, absolutely amazing console launch, on the day of launch I picked up Super Monkey Ball, Luigi's Mansion and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. Shortly after I got Rogue Squadron and Wave Race Bluestorm

What a launch and what a console

ITSMILNER wrote:GameCube for me, absolutely amazing console launch, on the day of launch I picked up Super Monkey Ball, Luigi's Mansion and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. Shortly after I got Rogue Squadron and Wave Race Bluestorm

What a launch and what a console

The GC was the last console I ever bought at launch. With Rogue Squadron if I remember correctly.

Gotta be the GameCube for me. Within the first few months I had Luigi's Mansion, Rogue Squadron and Super Monkey Ball with Mario Sunshine not soon after. It was part of the last generation of consoles that I actually cared about with very little since really hooking me.

Only the Switch has had me as hyped for a new piece of hardware since.

ITSMILNER wrote:GameCube for me

Great launch, but the blow was softened by...

N64 for me. I worked at future publishing a year before release and Edge magazine had one which all the different magazine companies used throughout the day. We would play Mario 64 and than at the end of the work day we would all have a tournament on Mario Kart. Great days

When I left Inwas excited for the UK release which I bought with Mario and Killer Instinct on the day of release

The PS2. PSM2 magazine had a preview VHS tape on its inaugural issue, which had The Bouncer, GT3, Fantavision, SSX and I think MGS 2 on it. The visuals just blew me away.

Master System. Going from late Spectrum games to Out Run on the Master System was just ridiculous.

Coming from the glorious Snes, it had to be the N64 with Mario. Bought it shortly after the release date; the weekend after my birthday with my birthday money. What a great present!

GameCube. There was just nothing wrong with that console or its library. And it still works perfectly, controls perfectly and holds up today thanks to 60FPS standards, RGB support and Component support via a Wii that costs just £20 and functions exactly the same. Has support for all of Nintendo's major franchises, doubly so for Metroid. Not to mention Capcom, Konami and Silcone Knight's support with Resident Evil 4 definitive version and one of the greatest remakes ever (not just an "HD Remaster"), Twin Snakes, Viewtiful Joe 1 & 2 and Eternal Darkness that vindicated the idea the console had no hard or "mature" games. It also had the best FPS - Timesplitters 2, a spritual successor to Goldeneye 64 right down to the aiming mechanism with the addition of dual analogue, and the identical health/armour system and HUD. Rogue Squadron 2 at launch followed shortly by Pikmin and Smash Bros Melee, Metroid Prime and Wind Waker around the corner, along with ReMake. Burnout 1 and 2 ran at a flawless 60FPS with better texture filtering. Amazing stuff.

I don't think a single month or two passed without something to look forward to that held such high standards consistently and my collection of 25 or so games still shines today. There are just no bad games in it, no filler whatsoever, and I'm missing some titles.

It was also the quietest, smallest, most energy efficient hardware design with 4 controller ports, a broadband modem with only 1 game but that was fantastic (Phantasy Star Online 2.0), and even way ahead of the curve with things like SD card support that should have become a non-proprietary standard to replace memory cards before hard disks became more viable. And the WaveBird. It was an innovative console design, although credit is due to MS for Xbox Live, local multiplayer appealed to me a lot more. The loading times were also much shorter than any other disk based system - even today.

"GameCube - And it still works perfectly, controls perfectly and holds up today thanks"

No argument from this corner. I still have my purple launch GC as well as a platinum one and they're both in as good working order as the day I bought them. The Tonka Truck* of game consoles.


*Granted chucking a GC off of a cliff might not do it any good, but you get the point.

I know it's not a console but for me the Atari ST 520FM will always be my most anticipated.

GameCube is the only console I've ever really been excited about. A small shop in Sunderland had a Japanese machine on import before it launched here and I loved watching them play Luigi's Mansion.

Either the Dreamcast or PS3. I was still very much in my Sonic phase back when the DC was due, and became mildly obsessed with following all the Sonic Adventure news. I was not disappointed (somehow, youthful eyes I suppose). Also, I thought the LCD memory cards were like something from Star Trek.

I was jazzed about the PS3 as I was living in Japan at the time and had an opportunity to get one before anyone back home. Got bored waiting and bought a 360, which ended up being my favourite console ever. Never did buy a PS3...

Peter Crisp wrote:I know it's not a console but for me the Atari ST 520FM will always be my most anticipated.

That is a good call, but were you excited about getting one or the launch? I very much doubt I knew about it prior to launch but I had hyped myself up in preparation for purchase.

Based on consoles I knew about before launch I would go with the N64. Coming off the back of the SNES my expectations were enormous. Unfortunately the N64 didn't deliver on what the SNES started IMO and probably was when I started to realise that it wasn't Nintendo that made the SNES special, but the combination of Nintendo and 3rd party titles.

Probably project mars, or as it became known, megadrive 32X

I never got a mega CD when that came out and always saw it as a massive power boost, so when project mars was announced I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. The promise of arcade games in my home, when I had an Amstrad and was used to playing sonic on the megadrvie, was amazing to me.

I think I read every article on it over and over, plus showed themall to my dad so he could get hyped to buy it for me

And when I got it, oh man

Then it was discontinued

SNES mini .

I don’t think I have ever really been that excited about a console launch. Consoles yes, but not for the actual launch day.

I did go to a midnight opening for the Xbox 360, so I guess that one counts as the most excited I have been. The videos and images that came out before release were amazing, such a step up from the PS2/GC/Xbox. I remember seeing footage of PGR3 and thinking “wow, visuals will never get better than that!”.