Which console has the most defined aesthetic?

Hey gang,

So, I'm kind of officially an old man when it comes to games now. Over my 20+ years of playing games, I've kinda seen most of the consoles. I'd probably say that most of them have a very specific aesthetic to them. Like, the SNES was very soft edges, and a bright colour palette. The 360 was...for want of a better phrase "Brown and bloom".

However, for me, it's ALL about the Sega Mega Drive. The colour scheme was SO RADICALLY different, and the sound chip was revolutionary. If you've played Crue Ball or Rock and Roll Racing (and if you haven't, I encourage them), you'll know how good it can sound.

So what about you friends? Be it visuals or audio, what stands out for you most, and why?

The og megadrive looked like a serious piece of home entertainment equiptment in a word full of toys and boxy computers

I have always been the most fond of the sleek simplicity of the PS2 Slim.

I never owned one but I also really love the look of the Famicom. Maybe it's just the stark red and white and works for me.

The Gamecube is probably my fav. Looks cool from the outside and is well designed on the inside.
The cube format also feels quite unique.

Gallery

GBA for me. The colors were so vibrant and the pixels so un-smoothed and crisp.

Early 2000's PC gaming, "high resolutions", sharp edges, coloured lighting, detailed textures.

N-Gage. You know what you're getting when you see it.

Nintendo 64. The relatively unique design of the console screams 'mid to late 90's' to me compared to the relatively modest Blu-ray players that we have these days.

Maybe this is cheating, but i'll go for the Vectrex with it's bright monochrome vecter graphics.

The Super Nintendo really cemented colorful, cartooney, pixelly graphics as "the look" for all video games, to the extent that people still thought of video games that way years after 3D became the norm. To this day games like Super Metroid or Link to the Past still look impeccable while games in later generations seemed to have aged more.

I think the original Playstation was super compelling in shape and color. The grey with a touch of purple housing with the rectangle w/ circular motifs made PSX distinctive in 1995. That shape and use of motifs came to defined the iconography for 1990s video games.

The think the XB 360s "breath in" shape was also very well done, so ist earns a second place. Of all the console for that generation, I think Microsoft did the best job with at least the outside case. I'm actually a little shocked that replaceable faceplates didn't take off, but they were price just a bit too high in my opinion.

For me it will always be Commodore 64. Fixed font, unique sound chip, and loading screens that would cause a seizure.

Sega Master System

PS1 and N64 are both extremely well defined in my mind - mostly due to their weaknesses at doing early 3D that ultimately defined their "look". The PS1 with its affine texture mapping (shifting textures) and lack of subpixel rasterization (swimming vertices) and N64 with it's bilinear filtering coupled with severe texture memory limitations resulting in blurry textures and reliance on distance fog to cut down draw distance.

When you see an N64 game there's pretty much no mistaking it for a game from another console. Largely the same thing with PS1 although on casual observation, you could mix it up with a Saturn game.

I feel this post. The N64 stands out in my mind, probably the most defined aesthetic of all time. It's that SHITE 3D, awful texture mapping, and INFINITE FOG that gives it away.

But Goddamn if it didn't DEFINE my childhood

N64 is well defined both the console itself and its games. Also the greatest console of all time :D

My favorite consoles have been the SNES, the Gameboy Advance, the PS1, and now the Switch. For me it's not so much a specific aesthetic, it's the games themselves that define how much I end up loving a console.