I would say Atari but that’s just low-hanging fruit because it’s a generation I never really got to play as it was before my time. But I am starting to fall out of nostalgia for the NES which is held dearly in a lot of hearts of retro gamers and gamers that have enjoyed what that system had to offer for a few decades.
I know it had offered a lot of classics and gave so many games their start, most of which are still with us today like Final Fantasy for example.
The best guess I can give about why I don’t care as much about that generation is because it is very oversaturated when you start entering the world of retro gaming. For retro gaming I prefer SNES and Genesis, because I technically did start playing those when I was born and they were first released. So I have more favorability towards those than the NES and generations before and during it.
Honestly, all of it. Not a video game fan even having been raised through its development. I have zero nostalgia for any of it.
Weirdly enough, Sega Genesis games for some reason. Except for Sonic. They weren’t as good as SNES games, I find.
They just feel like they were trying too hard to be ‘cool’. Often the graphics and music also didn’t appear as refined as the SNES. And the controller layout sucked. I hated the D-pad and 3 buttons wasn’t enough. Additionally, there was no standard for which button was for jumping attacking and third function. Whereas in the SNES it was pretty standard.
The generation where I did not have adult responsibilities to prioritize
The ps3/xbox360 era - despite it being during my most “formative” gaming years, I feel like there was a lot of “samey” game design. Theres a similar issue at the moment, to be honest, at least in the AAA space, but indie titles might make me look back with nostalgia on this era when its old enough to be nostalgic.
Early always-online consoles and their multiplayer-as-main-mode bullshit.
