If You Could Choose One System

[ncf1]

Another Unfair Question (tm) here but I like to torture myself with these sorts of things : Lets go back in time and its Christmas again and you're a kid/teen again and you can choose ONE system with the lot; fully expanded, a ton of games, your favourite joystick, disk drives, as much memory as it can take, best monitor you can get for the system - the lot, which system would it be? C64? Spectrum? Amiga? We'll keep it to any 8- or 16- bit system.

Now I have to think what I would choose..

[RodimusPrime]

Super nintendo without even having to think.

[The Laird]

Atari Lynx without even having to think.

[SJ_Sathanas]

If I had to choose from one of my previous, then SNES, but given the choice of any I'd go Amiga - I saw the odd hint from SNES conversions but the originals were superior I'm told.

[RodimusPrime]

If I had to choose from one of my previous, then SNES, but given the choice of any I'd go Amiga - I saw the odd hint from SNES conversions but the originals were superior I'm told.

Depends on what games you are talking about.

Stuff like Lemmings, cannon fodder etc were far better on amiga. Plus of course things like Monkey island, beneath a steel sky, hired guns, and of course it had many many great isometric and overhead racing games, which is a genre I have a fondness for.

However what is given on one hand is taken away with the other. Arcade conversions were pitiful and any original Fighting games, platformers, shooters, beat em ups etc were painfully average at best.

[kiwimike]

I would probably go Amiga for the versatility and massive range of titles. I was a console gamer at that stage of history, MD, but if you're being spoilt with the works the Amiga gives you so much.

Any era...? If we're stretching beyond this era limit my one system would be PS1.

[ncf1]

I think I would go Amiga after thinking about it for a while. I initially surprised myself by realising I'd probably want an Apple II with everything, all the expansions and printers and expensive bits seen in InCider magazine and whatnot but since firing up the emulator and playing a bit I realise those games have not dated well... so the Amiga it is. They had so much stuff for graphics and desktop publishing, so many music programs I never had a chance to play with, so I'd get an Amiga With The Lot.

[English Invader]

My problem with this question is that I go through periods of a couple of weeks to three months where I focus solely on one system, think about nothing else and then think "If this was the only system I had, I'd still be the happiest man alive" and then I'll move on and start the process again with another system.

So, for me, this question is impossible to answer because the answer is always changing. For now, it's the Nintendo Gameboy but in a couple of weeks it'll probably be something else.

[Ferret Oxide]

Probably the Amiga for me. As much as I love some of the console exclusives from the time, the presence of so many good strategy games swings this for me.

[ZXSabreman]

Super Nintendo would just get the nod over the ZX Spectrum for me but only just

[Negative Creep]

SNES, if it was one I never owned when young it would have to be the Mega Drive

[Matt_B]

I'll go for the Apple II. It's not a fantastic machine judged against ones you could get in the mid to late 80s, but for 1977 it was bleeding edge tech, and for a good four or five years from then would have held its own against the competition. The fact that it was still getting games like Wasteland and Prince of Persia a decade later, when a lot of other hardware had come and gone, speaks volumes for its longevity too. Mainly though, it'd mean a lot more to me to have a computer in the late 70s, when I didn't have one at all, than to merely get a better one some time during the 80s.

So far as consoles go, I'd go for the Atari VCS for similar reasons. It was great for its time, kept getting good games for much longer than its contemporaries; and besides, none of the 16-bit consoles (Intellivision excepted) arrived in the UK during my teenage years anyway, so I'd have to rule them out.

[AceGrace]

Neo Geo.

[learnedrobb]

Mega Drive.

[Antiriad2097]

Speccy for me. There's something about the palette and its colour clash that I find endearing, and if I ever ran out of games there's half a chance I could write new ones.