Just to share some experience here, I would not be able to elaborate a top 3 personaly.
But if I consider both my past feelings and my actual knowledge and appreciation, N64 is my favorite console. Let’s get back in time !
A Pong console was in my house as a very young child and introduce me to this fabulous concept of a toy which allows me to control the TV. Then some electronic games, arcade games (Donkey Kong as a revelation), then I could command for christmas my first personal home console at 7, the Atari 2600, with Vanguard <3
And as a memory it’s one of my favorite console ever, the dream that I imagined while experimenting Pong and seeing those arcade machines came true and this 70’s console has very charming esthetics in all departments.
Then at 10 I’ve got my first micro computer and start a journey on this path, abandoning consoles for a while. As a french guy, it was an Amstrad CPC 6128. So good memories with this one for two years, what an age. In school all my friends had that (with a beret and a baguette of course) and we copied games without even knowing that it was bad, it was so fun to exchange all this floppy disks of experimental games (someone here spoke about french touch with Another World, there was a lot on this french micro).
Then Amiga 500, the pinnacle of this era, I’ll never forget the atmosphere of this games that sucked me, like Shadow of the Beast, it was like being teleported in an another dimension, so beautiful (thanks to the incredible quality of the sound and graphics, and the european art styles).
But something was missing. There was this NES console that I played sometimes in toyshops. The graphics at that time weren’t impressive anymore for me but the smooth feelings, this elaborate design of the fun factor, those deep gameplays impressed me. During an evening show at the swimming pool I’ve listened to some teenagers who spoke about this famous game named « Zelda ». The way they exchanged informations and secrets, the fun around that, the happiness they shared about this game shocked me, this was on an other level, I knew I was missing something huge. Just like in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I was like “This is important, it means something”. And as a long time fan of japanese arcade games I had a good idea of what it was.
At 14 I red in the magazines about the incredible Megadrive, released only in japan, with those arcade graphics and this amazing three boutons pad (like in arcade !). But some month later the SFC japan release stole the show for me. It was the occasion for me to get into that cyclopean Nintendo universe, and there was SIX boutons ! The SFC is a good pretender in my memories for the best system, I had such a blast with it discovering the Nintendo titles on a next gen level. But retrospectively I don’t have so much BGE on this platform, primely due to the slowness of the processor, as a fan of action games. Now I tend to assign more quality in the NES area, yet Super Metroid is still a serious pretender for my all time favorite game, and I love F-Zero so much.
Today I greatly appreciate the Megadrive and its arcade catalog, Thunder Force 3&4 on top of that <3
Then I decided to stop video games at 17 and sold my SFC (come on I was a big boy now). But the fast 3D area catched me at the throat, precede by the whisper of the first CD games on PC, and I bought a Playstation at 19. What a strange period, videogames suddenly touched people who never were into it, like my eight years older brother and his friends, and that bugged me a bit cause it was often done idiotically… My best memory with this system is Resident Evil, well that was the first true Playstation masterpiece for me and my ultimate experience with this console. I bought it at the release and went in holiday with my parents in the Austrian Tyrol where I played Resident Evil each night in this little wood chalet at the dawn of the mountain forest, perfection.
Then I’ve got the N64, this is for me the best Nintendo ever had to offer, not as massively good as the NES but in a bigger experimental and acrobatic way, and I loved it. Today it’s the console I’d like to play the more with its unique pad, simu-like analog stick (placed on the same vertical axe as the center of gravity of the pad, brilliant), dreamy and tangible 3D perspective and of course unique creative games with so much inspiration and very responsive controls (yes I’m looking at you « 2-3 frames input lag » SFC, tell me if I’m the only one who feel that). By the way I tested my RGB N64 jap with my new Gamecube Pal RGB cable, it works like a dream (on CRT of course) and I’m sold (over RCA that I usely prefered), the benefits are too strong now.
After that all the later consoles were less and less interesting for me, and I honestly think actual video games are overall bad… As long as I can play on CRT that’s not a problem.
Man, even the local game store owner who held up Night Warriors next to Street Fighter Alpha 2 and said, “See, it’s like you’re buying the same game!” couldn’t wipe away the luster for me back then.