Two thousand GAME customers were surveyed to find out what year they thought was the golden year of gaming and which video game console was the best of all-time. The customers named 1996 as the best year for video games. There were a staggering amount of quality titles released including Resident Evil, Super Mario 64, Tekken 2, Crash Bandicoot, and Tomb Raider. The Wii was voted the best console of all-time by the customers, beating the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Here’s the results:
Top Five Years for Gaming
1. 1996 (14%): Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 launched. We were singing along to Baddiel and Skinner’s Three Lions and Brit Pop was at its height
2. 2002 (13%): Halo and Elder Scrolls III on the Xbox and Grand Theft Auto Vice City. BBC 6 Music arrived on our airwaves and Arsenal won the FA Cup
3. 1991 (12%): Street Fighter II and Super Mario World on SNES and Lemmings was out on the PC. It was the start of the Iraq war and the year Bryan Adams made history when (Everything I Do) I Do It For You entered its 15th successive week at number one
4. 1985 (11%): Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt and Donkey Kong Jr on the NES and Ultima IV and Oregon Trail on the PC. It was the year Eastenders went on air and the mullet was considered the most desirable hairstyle for men and women alike
5. 1980 (10%): Pac-Man and Centipede in the arcade, Space Invaders on the Atari 2600 and Zork on the PC. It was the year John Lennon was shot dead and David Bowie was at number one with Ashes to Ashes
The Top Consoles of All Time
1. Wii (15%)
2. Xbox 360 (10%)
3. PlayStation 3 (9%)
4. PlayStation 2 (8%)
5. Sega Mega Drive (7%)
6. PlayStation 1 (6.5%)
7. Super Nintendo (6%)
8. Game Boy (5%)
9. N64 (4.5%)
Wii is number one?
Hah hah hah hah
I mean it is a good console, but not #1 worthy
I’d say either PS2, SNES, or GCN
GameCube? Are you serious?
Well that’s just personal preference, I just love Gamecube.
In terms of the console with the most quality games, probably PS2 or SNES
PS2? don’t make me laugh plz
Gamecube was amazing, it had some of the highest rated games ever
Gamecube is the only system that I HAVE PILES OF GAMES FOR! there was such a good library on that underrated system!, Possibly beats the n64 in my book!
Gamecube was great I still got a stack of about 100 games. Luigis Mansion, Star Wars, Pikmin, wave Race, and Smash were all out at launch window. PS2 was good to
I agree with him. I would choose the GameCube too. It was one of the best consoles ever made in my opinion but the general public didn’t realize it until that generation ended. It had strong 1st party support and very good 3rd party support. The problem was that key 3rd party companies didn’t support it properly (square-enix/rockstar & Konami) If they did, I think Nintendo would have either won that gen or came in 2nd place.
Gamecube has a ton of my favorite games, so it’s currently my favorite console.
Gamecube in my opinion is one of the best consoles ever made with an incredible library of games, I’d consider it underrated in terms of popularity during it’s that generation.
That’s amazing! I always thought I was the only one who believed GameCube was the best console of that generation. It certainly had a ton of quality games, which I really enjoyed!
I think the wii was the best also. Games like galaxy 1 and 2, both kirby games, dkcr, metroid prime 3, tatsunoko vs capcom, brawl, mario strikers and many more games i loved. Of course other consoles had games i loved too but i honestly had more fun with the wii than any other console. Of course snes classics cant be touched like super castlevania 4 or a link to the past.
I agree.
Lol, headline should read “BREAKING: Game customers are morons, results inside”
Well, obviously, they shop at GAME…
Someone’s not necessarily an idiot because they don’t think like you.
yea, not necessarily, but i tend to agree to the op.. at least, it seems to be a younger audience voting there. i like my xbox360 and my PS3 but them being better then SNES? C’mon…
Younger audience? Come on :S Look at the years they prefered the most. If it was a younger audience it would be 2011, 2009, 2012, 2010 that was the top years…
i have to agree.. this was obviously a very mixed audience.. 10% voted 1980.. well would ya look at that.. most of the people reading this here prolly haven’t ever played one of the games that was released then
They are entitled to their opinion and think differently from you. That does not make them a “moron”.
it does make him a moron however for even uttering such a statement
The fact that the 360 got 10% baffles me. Freaking game customers and the Wii is definitely NOT the best console of all time, that comes from a Nintendo fan too.
It just mean that only a small percentage of people took the poll. Had Game not driven the hardcore gamers away then the result would have been different.
I’m glad
:)
more people bought it, more people played it and more people loved it.
and the 64 should be in the top 5 at least
I love the Wii and its awesome selection of games , You guys are just band wagoners
N64 is best console, Wii imo didn’t appeal to me besides SSBB, Monster Hunter, and Animal Crossing.
Where is the Virtual Boy in that list?
Doesn’t exist as that mistake never got released in Europe.
the best console ever is the snes, grate games in it and the freaking console is like a nokia you can trow it from a 3rd floor and it will have just a few bruises, the mine fell off the stairs once cause my brother where taking it and just bounced all the way to the first floor, and nothing more happened, i enjoyed super mario world, top gear, f-zero, super metroid, lufia, killer instinct, mortal combat, super street fighter, sf zero, puyo puyo, final fantasy, earth worm jim, cold shadow, puch out, donkey kong country and a lot of games… still have the console….. if you want immortal console then the snes is the right one.
Heh, my N64 survived a flood. Water main burst and it sat under about 2 feet of water for about 24 hours. Let it dry out and it worked like a charm. Can’t beat Nintendo quality lol.
face it 360 is fucking trash xbox1 is 1000x better then 360. ps2 is 90% bullshit. wii opened a dying market to more its the best console sine n64 imo. tons of games unlike any other ps360 is just fps and tps and shitty ones too.
Awwww the casuals… Tsk tsk.
whats more casual then telling a friend press triangle derp! or the green button derp!
#1 Nintendo 64
#2 Game Boy
I couldn’t pick a single year to hard. I will say 2010 with galaxy 2, god of war 3,red dead and dkcr made for a pretty amazing year and 2011 had uncharted 3, littlebigplanet 2,skyward sword,skyrim,3d land,mk7 etc which also made for an amazing year. 2012 kind of sucked for me.
SNES is the greatest console of all time IMAO.
The best console is the one that YOU got the best value fro the money YOU spent on it.
My only question, where is the NES on this list? Atari 2600 deserves some love too.
So in other words we won once again…
I absolutely love my Wii because it changed the way I had been used to see games. Nunchuck and Wii Remote were the best addittion to gaming controls ever.
But, yeah… The magic lies on 16-bits era. Genesis and SNES are unforgettable. And so is Super Mario World, the best side scrolling Mario game of all time.
hope wii u ends up being the n64 2 with all online games mk fz sf waverace 1080… it would be fucking perfect!
Imo the Gamecube is the best, followed by N64 and followed by PS1.
My toplist of the more modern consoles that I own:
1. PS3
2. Wii
3. X360
4. 3DS
I’ve had the most fun on PS3 because of its immense library of exclusives as well as third-party games (that I can play online without worrying about paying for it). Second is the Wii because I grew up with so many great games like Brawl, MKWii, the Galaxy games, Zelda and many more. Even though the PS3 and Wii outshines 360 in the quantity of exclusive games, it is still a good console to play games with friends, like Halo.
I would say Xbox 360 but it spent almost a year getting sent off for rrod, no power, and broken disc trays. Plus it had a shitty launch and didn’t get good til 2008 over 2 years after launch. Cube and N64 had great games from the beginning.
LOL Dat console ranking. Having the Wii on first place says a lot about it already but the rest of the ranking is utter bullshit as well. I don’t know what kind of people they asked but I can tell that they probably know nothing about gaming. I mean, come on… The SNES on #7 or the Playstation 1 on #6 is enough to let me know to not to take those rankings/people seriously. Both consoles should be in the top 3, in my opinion. But the rest of the ranking isn’t any better either.
Really? I think that the snes was better than wii but oh well. Xbox 360 in second maks sense to me. I have enjoyed every second of owning it this long gen!
The Wii? Seriously? Sure, it has some great games such as Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 and Zelda: Skyward Sword. But I’ve played the Wii less often than any previous Nintendo console. And I DESPISE the Wii motion controls. My favorite console of all-time will always be the NES, followed by the Super NES and Gamecube. I don’t care much for the N64. It was great back in the day, but it had too many problems.
I don’t like ice cream, but that doesn’t mean isn’t popular and nearly universally loved.
Use your brain. This is a survey. Your personal preference does not trump.
n64 did 4 player gaming right out of the box goldeneye bomberman64 mk64 smash starfox duke dooms quakes hexen turok… and so on. its basically what gaming is today with more players… but the games fucking blow.
they say wii because game clientes are kids from the actual generation
then please explain to me how 1980 1985 and 1991 got voted among the top 5 gaming years and how mega drive SNES and gameboy are even in the top 10
this should be interesting.. but i’m not gonna get my hopes up for a meaningful reply from you ;)
Wii best console, what a joke. XD
The Wii is a great console but my personal top 3 systems would be:
#1- Nintendo GameCube
#2- Super Nintendo
#3- PS1
oh wow, someone doesn’t share your opinion…what a joke
The most obvious joke is Xbox 360 at nr 2…
My own
1. N64
2. Sega Megadrive
3. GCN
SNES was very good but it didn’t leave me in a blown away type of state like the games from my top 3 did…
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Perfect Dark
Metroid Prime to name a few…
man I so disagree with you when you say: “snes didn’t leave you in a blown away type of state …….” I don’t know it’s because I am older but I can tell you the SNES is a gem. I can see you put Sega megadrive… SNES was better LOL (here we go sega-nintendo war again LOL).
I meant it in a more personal opinion not in general terms…
Though I had Megadrive in those days, I wasn’t really taking part in the whole ancient war between Sega and Nintendo since both had appealing values…
I had a friend who had SNES so we would play it alot too…
But when Sega fell, I felt that joining Nintendo’s Empire would be the most likely choice considering how much I got interested in the N64 when it first was revealed…
So now I must protect our Empire to secure the true values of gaming…
While I love my Wii, I may not share the same opinion as those who were polled. However, I do respect their opinions. Also, I miss the days where we gamers could disagree with one another without berating each other.
the wii, thats down there with the satern, it sucks. nintendo lost everything, now everyone thinks and talks shit about nintendo and there is a good reason for that, if people agree with this article they must be like under 10. yes there was SOME good games, but the wii was the WORST of the successful consoles ever, and with nintendo refusing to bring anything good over and reggie being a dumb asshole, really if this happens again nintendo doesnt deserve any fans. this is why im wondering how microsoft even has fans, they rip them off them and there fucking like no they arnt, they even could be in more denial than the nintendo fanboys, no but i guess im probably wrong proving that you are in denial
your opinion
Anyone who doesn’t agree with it =/= denial
But what would you know…a fanboy calling other people fanboys. The hypocrisy of the drones never gets old
just wondering what drone am i? im stating facts, the wii sucked nintendo didnt give a shit to bring on the fatal frames like 4 and we only got xenoblade because of GAMESTOP saw the damand and funded a good amount of it to be a gamestop exclusive. the last story and pandoras tower is because of xseed, yea man whatever and what about the vc service huh, yea whatever im just a hater or a drone because im not a blind fanboy
stopped reading at “wii sucked”. Again, your opinion, which I and a ton of other reader her disagree with. Also, opinion =/= fact. I know that you drones aren’t programmed to comprehend that, so it’s okay
*readers here
yea your just afraid to accept these facts that are in front of your nose because your just dodging all of my statements, and how am i a drone, stopped reading at wii sucks my ass, your just a fanboy in denial, ask everybody that is not a real drone and like nintendo and they would say the wii sucked and i gave you real facts up above and you know it, so if your to much of a fanboy to accept that than whatever, you probably think the new series is fresh too, yea whatever
again. Opinion =/ Fact, and anyone who tries to pretend that it is, is a pretentious prick in my book. Ex. In my opinion, the PS3 was a disappointment but I never try to present that as a fact.
How on Earth did Nintendo lose everything. The seventh generation was the second rising of Nintendo. Yes, they appealed to a different audience, but unless the Wii came out, all the public popularity created by the PS2 would’ve just faded away and the gaming industry would’ve gone back to just core gamers.
GAME Customers are pretty smart!!! The Wii is my favorite console of all time too!!! The Gamecube is a close second!
how old are you, seriously, ok what were your favorite games for the wii and gamecube, make a good list if you are
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Mario Galaxy 1 and 2
Donkey Kong Country Returns
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Resident Evil 4
Okami
Xenoblade Chronicles
Kirby: Return to Dreamland
No More Heroes 1 and 2
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Metroid Prime Trilogy
Pikmin 1 and 2
Mario Kart Wii and Double Dash
The Last Story
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom
Super Paper Mario
Sonic Colors
Golden Eye 007 remake
These are mostly Wii games and there are probably more. The Wii is not a bad console, it’s decent at best. If you didn’t like it, that’s fine, you have your reasons. I enjoyed it.
yes it had some great games, the ones on your list are all good, but there is just to many reasons to hate, even over all the good games you just stated, and noa didnt help at all. if they wernt so stupid during the wii i wouldnt really hate the system, i just wouldve thought that it wasnt the best nintendo couldve done, and there is games that never left japan too that are good
The only game that I can recall that was on the Wii in Japan that didn’t come to America later, well in the form of a ps3 release, was Tales of Graces. But, yeah, your right about North America not supporting it well. The only big issue I have with the console is that it was mostly consistent with a lot of casual games. It was because of that, and the fact that it has motion controls and weaker hardware compared to the ps3 and xbox 360, was the reason why most people looked down upon it or didn’t even care later in it’s life span. The weaker hardware and the motion controls didn’t bother so much, it mostly the quantity of games that didn’t peak my interest. However, I still play it once in a while and I’m happy with my purchase; I will be looking forward to the Wii U this holiday, if I could find it on sale.
Sorry for my rambling, I tend to do that when I’m given as much free space to write. No matter what system anybody is on, we should just enjoy what we have.
There were some very good games back then, difficult to say the best year for actual games though, depends on what games a individual likes.
As for best console, i would go for;
1, Gamecube
2, PS2
3, SNES
What the hell they ddidn’t include wind waker, that was released in 2002,
After this gen ends I feel that 3ds will be my new favourite console of all time, I mean it has so much quality games at the moment and has another 4-5 left in, its had so many games come to it this year I can ply imagine they’ll be a lot more
Ok. Fine. To each his own. Personally, for me, it would be the PS2, with PS3 coming in second. My favorite Nintendo console so far is the Gamecube. Favorite handheld would have to be the Gameboy Advance or the 3ds.
NES is the Best!! Single-handily stop the video game crash and gave us Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Punch-Out.
Super Nintendo or NES for me. Graphical there are horrible by today standard But you have so much fun playing them again and again. I was playing to Burai fighter and bionic commando the other day and i had a lot of fun. Final Fantasy 4 and 6 are still great for me. What about Chrono Trigger?
PS2 should be in TOP 5, with N64, Gameboy advance SP and game cube.
Seriously, do the math. There’s no real winner in either survey. You need to be more than 1 percent above the next one and certainly higher than 14% to show any consensus.
The math is that 15% is more than 14%, therefore it wins. That’s the way it always has in any kind of vote.
GAME customers are absolutely retarded.
I completely agree with GAME customers. I mean think about it, you can play a great library of Wii games which there are many just not a whole lot of people know about them and you can play tons of your favorite classic games on the Virtual Console. It was also backwards compatible with Gamecube games. With this vast selection of everything you can do on Wii and how it redefined how we played games, I would have to say it’s the ultimate console.
Original XBOX revolutionized online multiplayer gaming with XBOX Live. That alone places it far above any other console in my mind. You wanna talk about changing how we game? That crushes everything; being able to play anyone, anywhere, any time, ON A CONSOLE (not a PC). That’s insanely huge.
XBOX 360 made it even better and easier, and also has a huge back catalogue of classic games, new indie arcade games, original XBOX games, etc.
It’s a toss up between those two for me. As much as I loved my NES and SNES back when I was a kid, or even my PS2… these two consoles did everything right (save for hardware issues with the early 360’s, but I didn’t experience any of that).
Not to mention Halo, which filled the void of GoldenEye PERFECTLY and actually improved it in every way possible & defined modern FPS games as we now know them.
First time I saw Halo 1 at a friends house, I stayed over with 3 other people and we played for 36 hours straight. Halo 2 was even bigger; week long marathon.
Super Nintendo for me. The Big 3 were AWESOME on that platform.
I completely understand why the Wii got the most votes. It was the console that took gaming from a more hidden thing to being something that almost everyone did. Yes, this was more or less started with the PS2, but the DS and Wii caused a lot more people to play games without hiding it. It was a truly revolutionary console.
Thats an interesting thought. Hmmm my list goes like this.
#1 N64 (OoT, Majora, Mario 64, Waverace, Banjo, Conker, Smash, Goldeneye, Starfox, Diddy Kong Racing, KI Gold, Blast Corps, Donkey Kong…. You get my drift)
#2 GCN
#3 Xbox 360
I am starting to appreciate ths Wii games now through my Wii U. I had a Wii but it had an output problem, so displaying it on my tv was rough. It really had amazing games which is why it is climbing my ladder. Ultimately though I see the Wii U claiming that spot after this. It is just amazing and feature rich that I think i will be passing on the others, at least for the next couple of years.