For me it’s the NES and N64. While they both have some great games to be sure, I feel that a lot of the games outside of their top 10 simply don’t hold up very well today. These systems were both limited by technical issues and were in eras when developers were still learning what makes a good 2d or 3d game.

I agree on the N64, and the problem with it is that everyone is nostalgic for “the system,” but in reality they’re only nostalgic for Mario 64, Goldeneye, Conker, Mario Kart, Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, Smash Bros., and Perfect Dark. It’s not that the N64 has a top ten, it’s that it basically only had ten good games total. And bangers though they may have been, everything else on it was crap.

I’m sure two or three people will pop out of the woodwork now to argue with me and insist that no, back in the day they really did love WCW Mayhem or 1080 Snowboarding or the butchered piece of shit version of THPS or Chef’s Luv Shack or whatever the fuck, but that’s the thing: It’s always back in the day, when you were a kid and only owned four cartridges, and you didn’t know any better because that’s all you had. Nobody goes back to play any of the remaining 378 games now.

Woodwork dweller here, you seem to have conveniently forgotten:

Majora’s Mask Super Smash Bros. Star Fox 64 Jet Force Gemini Donkey Kong 64 Diddy Kong Racing Excite Bike 64 Paper Mario Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door Pokémon Stadium Yoshi’s Story Pokémon Snap Mario Party

Felt at the time that there was always a high quality “AAA” release on the horizon interspersed with some of the greatest games ever made.

Obviously a lot of them don’t stand the test of time a quarter of a century on but we haven’t had a system with the same consistent quality of games for a long time IMO.