GRChats - Your favourite console/computer, but that you never actually owned?

I always liked the BBC Micro. We had them at school of course, but a friend (from a different school) owned one and I loved it. Played on it for hours at a time, in particular a Robin Hood game, (which I can't find a recognisable screen grab for unfortunately). Nevertheless, between that, a handful of other games and of course Elite I had a blast on the BBC Micro, but never owned one myself.

Over to you.

I was a huge Mega Drive nerd but never owned the Saturn nor the 32X. But looking at how they ended I think I dodged a bullet. (Or rather my dad did as he refused to get 'em for me :lol:

)

As a Speccy owner I always wanted an Amiga and Amstrad.

I also always secretly coveted the Game Boy and SNES but I was able to buy those for myself eventually.

Bluesky

I think the only console I played on which I've never gone on to own is the 360. Two of my siblings had one separately for a time through their partners. Had a blast playing through Halo 3, which was the first and still only Halo game I've played. Also played a fair bit of New Vegas, Oblivion and the Orange Box through it as well as the arcade stuff. I didn't have a laptop or computer that was remotely good for gaming at that point, so it was nice.

Oh, and a SNES, but only really played one game on it in the brief time I got to play on my housemates'. That said there are a fair few SNES games I enjoyed a lot, unsurprisingly, through VC or other forms of emulation.

Last edited by Rex Kramer on Tue Jan 14, 2020 8:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There are two for me. The first is a FM Towns Marty, purely because they were just so exotic sounding back in the 90s.

The other is an Amiga CD32. I had an Atari ST during the great Amiga ST Wars of the 90s but my favourite game of that period was Captive. And the CD32 was one of the few places you could play the sequel. I wanted one so bad but was just coming out of uni and had absolutely no money at all. There was a period a few years ago when the ebay price was actually quite reasonable but now its climbing again due to scarcity in the market so my time has probably passed.

Probably the Commodore Amiga, I had an Atari ST and could always kid myself that it was just as good but I always suspected I got the bum deal. Having err ‘acquired’ a nigh complete collection of Amiga games I can confirm my suspicion was correct.

Proberbly the PC Engine, played one a decent bit never ever owned one. I have owned lots of stuff I no longer have like a CD32 a Neo Geo a Commadore CDTV I wish I had some of that stuff back.

Snes. A few of my mates half one and I was missing out on some great games.

This ones easy. I have been fortunate enough to own many consoles and computers over the years (and still have most of them), but the one i used to love playing around my friends house was the Vectrex. I played one at a retro gaming convention about 4 years ago and it was still brilliantly vibrant and otherworldly as it was all those years ago when it was still somewhat current.

We never had an N64 at home but I played it a lot round friends' houses. In fact, I must've played Mario Kart and Goldeneye with them just as much as I played my own games as I remember them just as vividly. We had a gaming PC at home during that console generation.

The Wii. I never actually owned one but played Wii Sports plenty as they were everywhere weren't they? We even got our auntie into Wii Sports one Christmas despite her never ever playing videogames.

Also, had many Mario Kart and Smash sessions round my mate's house as well as borrowing my brother's console to play Galaxy 1 & 2, and played through Skyward Sword on the Wii U when I got that.

Ultimately, lots and lots of fond memories without ever owning one.

Corazon de Leon

Err, I’ve had the good fortune of picking up nearly every console that I’ve played on at some point so I don’t actually know. Probably the PS4, which I have on extended loan off a mate at the moment but don’t actually own.

I had a PS2, my best friend at the time had an Xbox. I was more than happy with my PS2 but did have pangs of jealousy at not being able to play Halo without him back-seat gaming the whole time.

I was quite lucky in pretty much having what I wanted when I was a kid. I was never interested in the SNES or N64 so was always just delighted to have my Mega Drive and PS1, and whilst I'd love to have a modified Game Boy Advance these days, at the time they weren't on my radar so didn't know what I was missing.

I care less about gooseberry fool like that these days though, I've come to accept that I can't play everything on every platform, so just enjoy what I have available to me.

I was always very jealous of friends who owned a SNES back in the day. Almost everyone I knew was on the Mega Drive so to see the Nintendo console was a rarity and I always really wanted one of my own when I got the chance to play on it!

Before that I had a Spectrum and so would have been envious of the Commodore 64. Both computers were great but even the most die hard Speccy fan had to admit that the 64 just had more going on than Clive's baby, especially when it came to the musical capabilities.

I would have loved to have owned a BBC B micro. I used them at school and college but the price was just too expensive for me at that time. Game-wise some of my favourites were Gorilla, Repton and - of course! - Elite, but I mainly enjoyed the wonderful BBC version of BASIC; it was great to learn and quite powerful.

My best mate and I somehow contrived to never own the same computers; when I had the VIC he had the C16 and when I had the C64 he had the Amstrad CPC. The good thing is that this broadened the variety of games that we both saw and, consequently, I am very fond of much of the stuff on the C16 and Amstrad. Great machines! My pal also owned a nice array of 1980s LCD games (Jack and the Beanstalk, Frankenstein, Airport Panic, Scramble and more; mainly Bandai and Grandstand brands) and we spent loads of time enjoying them :-) .

Commodore Amiga - I got a few rare shots of one as a kid, but computer wise we went straight from a BBC Model B (Suck it Jawa

) to a PC, which was quite the leap.

As such I've coveted one for a few years now.

I've got my Raspberry Pi set up to essentially "be" an Amiga, but there's something about the real hardware and disks that I just want.

Dreamcast. I was so close to buying one several times, even after it was killed I still wanted to check it out. As recently as 18 months ago I was looking at one in a retro shop and genuninely was weighing it up, theres something wonderfully appealing about the whole system to me.

jawa4 wrote:I would have loved to have owned a BBC B micro. I used them at school and college but the price was just too expensive for me at that time. Game-wise some of my favourites were Gorilla, Repton and - of course! - Elite, but I mainly enjoyed the wonderful BBC version of BASIC; it was great to learn and quite powerful.

My best mate and I somehow contrived to never own the same computers; when I had the VIC he had the C16 and when I had the C64 he had the Amstrad CPC. The good thing is that this broadened the variety of games that we both saw and, consequently, I am very fond of much of the stuff on the C16 and Amstrad. Great machines! My pal also owned a nice array of 1980s LCD games (Jack and the Beanstalk, Frankenstein, Airport Panic, Scramble and more; mainly Bandai and Grandstand brands) and we spent loads of time enjoying them .

Growing up there were about 5 of us who were super close friends and when I had a spectrum one lad had a commadore 64, the other had an amstrad and my older brother had a BBC so I got on a fair few diffrent machines. It kind of carried on like this for years with some getting Megadrives while some got SNES's some getting Amigas others getting ST's and I am really happy we didnt all always get the same thing as in the long run it means I got to try more things.

Gotta be a Neo Geo. The thing was a strawberry floating beast from what little I could garner about it in the pre-Internet, magazine-buying world of the mid-1990s.

kerr9000 wrote:...I am really happy we didnt all always get the same thing as in the long run it means I got to try more things.

Yeah, it sure was cool to use the differing systems and try out a broad range of games, kerr.

absolutely not, stop asking this wrote:Gotta be a Neo Geo. The thing was a strawberry floating beast from what little I could garner about it in the pre-Internet, magazine-buying world of the mid-1990s.

Ooh, that's a good shout, ansat! I, too, read about the system in 90s gaming mags and would love to have seen one in person. I was similarly enthusiastic about the PC Engine and the upcoming Mini version is sorely tempting... I'd like to check out crazy stuff like "JJ and Jeff" :-) .

brucewilliams20 wrote:PS4

There's still time! I'd expect to start seeing the price of the PS4 (And the Pro) start to drop once PS5 launches.

GRChats - Your favourite console/computer, but that you never actually owned?

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