Stuff that, back when you were in the economic clutches of your parents, you could but dream of having.
For me, there were several. The Dreamcast was the first, then the PS2, back in the early 2000s
More recently, I’ve been completely enthralled by the Amiga and what it offered back in the late 80s. That’s a system that was never available around my parts (Brazil), even as a clone product or contraband
Only rich kids had a Neo Geo or Turbo Grfx-16.
We were far from rich.
We asked for a SNES and our parents got us a turbo Grfx-16 because it was cheaper. After we went to a game swapper shop and they had a bunch of the games for like 2 or 3 bucks a piece. Still to this day it’s one of my favorite systems and it was dirt cheap.
We occasionally rented a Neo-Geo and those times felt like I was actual royalty.
That’s odd, I thought the TurboGrafx was cheaper than the snes and Genesis.
I guess it was around the same price although it released in a different year. I guess I equated rarity to price. I think they were late to the game and had a small game catalog.
A friend of mine had the Turbo Grfx-16 and I was extremely envious. At the time it was probably the only one in our tiny town and I would go over to his house and play it. Years later he was extremely jealous when I snatched up a Neo Geo Pocket. Everyone was playing Gameboy but Neo Geo Pocket had some amazing games but no marketing. Luckily I managed to snag a bunch of game sfor cheap at a used game store so I ended up playing it well into 2010 when it was finally destroyed by accident.
Ah I coveted the Neo Geo. I would gaze longingly at screenshots in CVG magazine and dream of having one.
Now I have a multicart for my Jamma cab and I can play pretty much any Neo Geo game I want. Turns out, apart from Viewpoint, metal slug and a few others I tend to prefer other systems.
I had a Commodore 64 and really really wanted an Amiga. Saw all the games for the Amiga and Atari ST in magazines and wept. It wasn’t really available in my country so I didn’t know anyone with one but even if it was available we wouldn’t have been able to afford it.
I was in the UK last month and went to the computer history museum in Cambridge. They have working versions of every single computer and console ever and you can play with them.
It was great nostalgia to use a ZX Spectrum, my trusty VIC-20 and C64 again. But there it was… An Amiga 500. I played a bit and the graphics and sounds still blew me away now in 2023 as a late 40s middle aged man. It was everything I dreamed it would be.
100% recommend.
I had an Amiga 500. It was great and I felt very fortunate to have one when I was a teenager. At some point, you could either buy the Amiga 500 mini or get a refurbished one. There is a nice community of Amiga enthusiasts who buy and sell hardware and also share software online, along with sharing emulators. This year for my birthday I might buy myself an Amiga 500 mini. I miss my old one, which is long dead and never coming back.
The Sega CDX. I had a Genesis, I had a Sega CD, but the thought of having both of those systems combined into one compact unit that also could be used as a discman (a really bad one, even I knew that at the time) was so appealing to me. There was one at the local game store for some absurd price ($350 I think) for literally years, and I would salivate over it every time I went in the store.
Ultimately I never got one, but at least I didn’t miss out on any games or anything.
Had the cdx, it was amazing.
Terrible discman, but it played genesis games and lunar so whatever.
Kids growing up today will never know the pure awe of going in a Blockbuster Video and playing Mario64 on a Nintendo 64 store demo for the first time. It was absolutely amazing.
I’m an older millennial and I’ve played a lot of cool games. Nothing comes close to that, though.
So true. I got chills all over again just reading your perfect description of that moment.
The Steel Battalion sim controller setup for the original Xbox.
Definitely PS2. My cousin had God of War and I was insanely jealous. I remember thinking that it looked just like real life. Funny to see it now and compare it to the PS5 games.
I distinctly remember playing my friend’s PS2 and thinking “there’s no way video game graphics can get any better than this. This is the endgame” lol
Now we have massively better graphics but in many ways the experience and gameplay have gotten worse.
As laughable as it sounds, the Sega 32X. I was a Genesis kid and one birthday my parents bought me Star Wars Arcade not understanding that it required the 32X to play. I kept telling them that the game wouldn’t work without it (even showing them that it wouldn’t fit in the regular Genesis slot) and they kept insisting that I must be doing something wrong or that I could just cut the corners off the cartridge to make it fit. So I wanted the 32X to play Star Wars, as well as this strange Knuckles game I kept hearing about (which I know is Knuckles’ Chaotix). Never ended up getting one. Got an N64 soon after, much better decision.
Good news and bad news for you:
- Chaotix was so buggy it was unplayable.
- Star Wars 32X was everything you probably dreamed it was, and more. What a fantastic port. I’m so sorry your parents didn’t understand.
I remember seeing Stunt Car Racer and Shadow of the Beast running on an Amiga for the first time, and being absolutely blown away. They were so far above anything my trusty Speccy could do, it was almost funny.
Of course, both these games would eventually come to the Spectrum (with varying degrees of success) but to say that it wasn’t really the same would be a grotesque understatement.
PS2 in the early 2000s. I thought the graphics were something else. Up until 2005-2006-ish all I had was a bootleg NES clone with a shoebox full of unlicensed cartridges. I grew up with 80s games in the 21st century.
I finally got my hands one one off the flea market for 30$. Some modding later and it plays like a charm!
PSP. I remember seeing, playing and enjoying games (particularly LittleBigPlanet and Burnout Dominator) on my then-friends’ consoles multiple times in a few years, before finally getting my own in 2015.
I consider myself lucky. Sometime after I got a paid internship, I saved enough money to buy a PSP, sometime in 2012. The good boy is still alive and kicking, though hardly getting any attention from me.
We were pretty poor growing up, so whatever systems I had needed to also have bargain bin games or I wouldn’t be able to get them. I had a small allowance so a 10 or 20 dollar game was attainable with a little planning.
As a kid, I only had a Sega Genesis and Game Boy Color until I was a teenager. Skipped the 5th generation entirely, but I’d play friends and family’s Playstations and N64s any chance I could.
Years later I got a PS2 for Christmas, and some of the first games I got were bargain bin PS1 games. By that time, 20 bucks could get me Spyro the Dragon, Syphon Filter, FF7, Medievil, or whatever weird unknown quantity had the right price tag on it. Some of them were even great games I still have (S/O to Nuclear Strike and The Phantom Menace)
Dreamcast and both PSP and PSVita. I was a Sonic fan, and in the case of Sony’s portables, they were mini powerhouses.
ColecoVision with their perfect-looking Donkey Kong, and later Neo-Geo with the same graphics on the very expensive home console as the arcade games.
Collecovision achieved what we all wanted when I was a kid, arcade games at home. When you compare donkey Kong on the Colleco to Pac Man on the 2600, it is night and day.
Not necessarily a game console but I really, really wanted an OQO sooooo bad in the early 2000s
Looks like the spiritual acenstor of OpenPandora and Steam Deck, neat
When I was young I wanted one of these handheld pc’s. I always thought it would be fun to play pc games on the go. Now I’ve got my steam deck and I really wish I could have had that then.
This was it for me too. This model of UX and the OQO model 02 were the coolest things I’d ever seen at the time (and kinda still to this day).
