Idea shamelessly stolen from Slag.
Seriously, read that list before mine. I made this because I thought it'd be a fun experiment, but, honestly, theirs is way better than this. Just go read it.
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The list below contains all the game that broke the wallet's back, if you will. The games that convinced me that not only do I want to add a new console to my collection, but I NEED it and will buy it as soon as I have the means to. Through anecdotes about the games and how I ended up getting each console, I hope to express how much of a thrill getting a new console can be.
There are a few consequences because of that approach:
So, without further ado, here's the list of my personal system sellers in the order of purchase.
Showing 1-10 of 15 items
Nintendo 64 - 1997 - Super Mario 64 may have blown my six year old mind when I saw it on TV coverage of... I don't know... E3 probably?... but it was Mario Kart 64 that pushed my sister, my brother, and I to kick and scream about getting a Nintendo 64. We were all fans of Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 not only looked amazing, but it was four players, something that we all wanted after the memories of being left out of playing in the original. So, after enough kicking and screaming throughout 1997, and after we all chipped in $50 (a life savings for a 7 year old), we were greeted by three controllers, an N64, and Mario Kart 64 on Christmas morning. Which we couldn't play until the next day because my cousin's TV didn't have composite input and all the stores were closed. So we waited for my stepdad to run out to get an RF cable through Boxing Day crowds. And we played it pretty much nonstop until the car ride back home. Hell, it didn't stop there. We didn't get another game for the system for the better part of a year. Partly because games were $100+ back then with the bad late 90s Canadian economy (with inflation, that's TWICE as much as new game today), but also we were just satisfied with playing Mario Kart over and over and renting whatever else came out.
Gameboy - 1998 - Pokemon fever hit North America in late 1996 and I was just the right age to catch it. I had all three gen I pokemon games and routinely beat them over and over again. I had sunk several hundred hours into Pokemon Blue leveling over a dozen Pokemon to 100 to have the best, most versatile teams I could when I played against my friends. But there was one problem: I didn't have a Gameboy. I had a Super Gameboy, the cartridge like add-on that turned an SNES into a slightly better Gameboy. And the big draw of Pokemon, the trading and battling with your friends, was impossible on it. So I searched high and low for a gameboy that I, a small child with no income living in a town with no used game stores that could only save up allowance and leftover lunch money, could afford. And, in 1998, I found an old, gray, AA battery guzzling, brick-shaped Gameboy for $20 at a used game store in Red Deer, Alberta that I somehow convinced my parents to stop at as we were passing through. I even brought my games with me on that trip, somehow knowing (or wishfully thinking) that I would find a Gameboy just for me. It was the first video game console/whatever I owned completely on my own and I played the hell outta it for years to come. Going through many, many AA batteries in the process.
Gamecube - 2011 - Fortunately, the stories get shorter and sweeter as time passes and the frequency of consoles and handhelds added to my collection increases. The Gamecube was the first system launch that I was excited for that I could fully, I don't know, wrap my head around as something I could own in the near future? The little bits of Super Mario 64 I saw before release just seemed like some sort of impossible future tech in my 6 year old mind. But Luigi's Mansion? Pikmin? Super Smash Bros. Melee? I was glued to coverage from Gamespot and IGN while debating what characters were going to be in Melee on forums across the web. Probably being an insufferable twerp while I was at it (my apologies). And it was Melee that drove me to the Gamecube over the other systems, even as friends swore by Halo or I had access to the PS2 through my brother. The hours I had put into the original with friends and family made it one of my favourite games on the N64 and Melee looked to be an improvement in every way. Melee, a gamecube, and a memory card were the only things on my Christmas List that year and I was so excited and surprised to see Santa pull through. What I got was a game that I sunk hundreds of hours into, but was never quite as satisfying as the first. It was an important lesson that not every sequel will live up to the original, no matter how much you want it to.
Game Boy Advance - 2002 - I don't even know why I decided to get a Game Boy Advance or why Golden Sun was the only game I got for it when I did. I wasn't especially hyped for it when it was announced, there was barely anything out at the time that interested me, and I was obviously "too cool" to play Pokemon games anymore (a phase I think we all hit in our teens). Maybe it was just that emulation allowed me to play so many of the classic JRPG's on the SNES and Genesis that drove my interest toward Golden Sun, a new JRPG that looked like the classics that received a lot of praise from fans and critics. Maybe it was that I was actually making money by mowing grass and reffing soccer and I had the money to spend on the relatively cheap handheld. Maybe it was that I had given up on my Yu-Gi-Oh addiction and actually had money saved up instead of it constantly being funneled into my local 7-11. Maybe it was that I was heading to the East coast for the first time to visit family and knew I would be intensely bored for two weeks while I was there and was desperate for something to distract me. I don't know what exactly it was, but I bought a classic indigo GBA all the same, played so much Golden Sun that I was nigh invincible by the time I finished it, and my love for gaming handhelds continued into a new generation.
PS1 - 2003 - Speaking of emulation, Chrono Trigger became my favourite game through the lens of zSNES and I was planning on saving money for a PS2 to finally play its sequel. But a used Playstation basically fell into my lap from some relatives who already had a PS2 with its near-perfect PS1 backwards compatibility. One week and $20 later, I had Chrono Cross, a new controller, and a memory card ready to experience (and ultimately be disappointed by) Chrono Cross. To this day, I still have only a handful of PS1 games and, beyond some JRPG's that have filtered their way onto PSN, I still don't hold the PS1's catalogue in high regard. Yes, I'd even go as far as to say the N64 was a better platform, but I won't deny that my Nintendo bias was pretty thick in my childhood.
DS - 2004 - The DS was another console that I learned a valuable lesson from: never buy a console based on what was about to come out, buy it for what is released. Boxing Day 2004 might have given me a good deal on the system, but it wasn't until late 2005 when the DS became anything other than an alarm clock on my bedside. But, hey, I had an inferior version of the best Mario game to beat once and then never touch again in the meantime. Hooray.
PC - 2005 - So it's 2005. How does a 3 year old game finally convince me to get a PC? Well, I was still a teenager living with my parents. They had the family computer. They had the money to actually buy a new computer. They made the decisions of when to update our ancient 1998 computer that my brother helped them pick out to something more modern. So, while I played my fair share of Heroes of Might & Magic 2 & 3, Diablo 1 & 2, and Warcraft 2 on that dinosaur, it was Warcraft III that really pushed me to sell my parents on getting a new computer. Always with healthy enough specs to run the games I wanted on it, obviously, but spun to make it seem like a good idea for the whole family. Eventually it worked and I've been hooked on some aspect of the Warcraft universe ever since, from Warcraft 3 to World of Warcraft to Hearthstone.
Wii - 2006 - In 2006, I was hitting the middle of my high school career and experiencing what I can only describe as a massive hit by undiagnosed depression. It was negatively affecting all aspects of my life, but, as they always had with cooping with my mental health, it was video games that helped me out of it. Part of it was this unnatural powerful urge that I had to play Twilight Princess. The "blades will bleed" grittiness and "more mature" nature of the series I loved spoke directly to my idiot, naiive 16 year old heart. And, despite my huge apprehensions about the Wii as a platform, I worked hard to have the money to get one day one. Twilight Princess wasn't my favourite Zelda game (not even top 5), but it was the game I needed at that moment in my life, the game that I needed to motivate me through one of the hardest slumps in my life. And I'll always be grateful for that.
360 - 2008 - 2008. The last summer holiday. The transitional two month time between High School and University that I luxuriously did not work during as scholarships paid my first year of university. So I spent those two months with nothing but revelry with friends that would all be heading separate ways at the end of it. That and video games. Lots of video games. Including picking up the first model of the Xbox 360 to have an HDMI port, a benefit of waiting to pick one up (that and a lifespan of over 5 years). The first game I picked up is still one of the best deals in gaming: The Orange Box. Portal with its ingenious puzzles and story structure, Half-life 2 with its classic sci-fi story and amazing world building, and arguably one of the best multiplayer shooters of the past decade. Sure, it was 1.0 of TF2, but that's how I liked it (and continue to like it to this day). An excellent introduction into the world of HD games.
PS2 - 2008 - I had already put in about 150 hours into Persona 3 by the time summer had ended, borrowing my sister's PS2 for the summer. But by the time it was time to pack up and move into dorms, I was still nowhere near completion. I still vividly remember that during my first full day in my dorms, I rode the bus to a local game shop, paid $30 for a used slim PS2, and continued where I left off for the rest of the day. It was a day or two later when I got other essentials like a garbage can and extra shampoo for when I ran out. Priorities, right?