Ooh, that’s a tough call… I really can’t say I have a single favorite, best I can do is say a favorite per generation:
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Pong - the one that started it all. Also taught everyone about screen burn in.
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Atari 2600 - Hands down, one of the all time greats.
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NES - Hard to beat Super Mario 3, but my favorite game of this generation was Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System.
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Sega Genesis - Sorry, the SNES never grabbed me, although Super Star Wars was a great game. Best home version of Street Fighter II was on the Turbo Grafx/Duo of all things.
- I’m going to add an “unofficial” generation here. You will never see this on any official list. Call it 4.5. There was a weird period of time where everyone and their cousin was doing a CD based machine. Sega CD, Turbo CD, Pioneer LaserActive, a whole bunch of crappy “set top boxes” like the Phillips CDi and Tandy Viz. The best of the bunch, with the most games and the best games was the Sega CD.
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Playstation - Another all time great.
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As much as I love the Dreamcast, it was murdered pre-maturely by Sega. Xbox and Halo just demolished everything else. I don’t know that we ever got an official “Halo Killer” until it suicided with Halo Infinite.
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Xbox 360 - Sony handicapped itself with the overly complex cell processor. Games just weren’t as good as the 360.
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PS4 - In this case, Microsoft handicapped itself by fundamentally misunderstanding why people buy consoles. It’s to play games, not “tv, tv, tv, tv, tv, sports, tv, tv, tv.”
- Another unofficial generation, call it 8.5, where you had the PS4 Pro, Xbox One S and Xbox One X - The One X was the clear winner with more power, 4K enhancements and a 4K Blu Ray player.
- Playstation 5 - Microsoft is losing the plot with Gamepass, to the detriment of the entire industry.
That’s a hardware problem, not software, and fixable. PS3 had a similar issue:
