I love me some N64. I can still kick your ass at Goldeneye! Nintendo has some great franchises, Zelda=Awesome, Metroid=Badass, Mario Kart=f'ing fantastic. I grew up with the NES, and the SNES, and mostly play my Wii now, but my FAVORITE console was the Playstation One that I bought when I was 14. I spent at least 1000 hours just on FF7/8/9/Tactics/Anthology and everything else Squaresoft made. Then came the PS2 and countless more hours on the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts franchises. Good Times.

My wife is unbeatable at Mario Kart 64.

I ALSO ENJOY SHOES. THIS IS THE BOLG FOR ME.

Eh. I never really got a lot out of the N64.

Right now I'm not running any of the new systems except for the Wii, mostly because they cost too much for the play time I have. I'm very pro PC gaming.

I'm a Nintendo girl...never got a N64, but still dig the SNES and have a Wii as well.

I think N64 was the last console (until wii) that was marketed for everyone, not just dedicated gamers. The good games for consoles like xbox360 are really unfriendly to someone who hasn't spent much time with a controller.

I didn't care for the N64 at all, it's Super Nintendo and the PS2 and PC for me. And handhelds, I did love my game boys.

Sega master system, genesis, Gameboy, PS2, PS3.

That's a pretty solid idea Yourmom, but I bet you'd get arguments that Nintendo markets the Wii "for everyone."

@Earnest: I do believe she said "until wii"...?

Female gamer here. I hate the 360, too. I liked the N64 okay, but I wouldn't call it my favorite system (I don't really have a specific favorite). I do like what it represents, though--games that were easy to access for everyone. Old-school games were better because anybody could pick up a controller (or joystick) and go for it. Newer games mostly have a learning curve for the controls.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying Scrum. The N64 was marketed for "everyone" simply because back then there weren't adult games and kids games. They were all just games.

Now that we have a stratification, most gamers would argue that the Wii is marketed squarely at the younger audience, as opposed to all audiences. Or, at least, that seems to be the chorus explaining the Wii's horrible third party support and recent precipitous sales dive.

Original Nintendo, Sega Genesis, PS2, PS3, but mostly a PC girl :)

Would the Nintendo DS count? If so, it gets my vote. I love my DS Lite. The only big console I currently own is XBOX 360, which I like very well but only play a few games on - chiefly Rock Band and Portal. And I have lots of love for the original NES, and always will. I liked Super Mario Bros 3 so much that I learned to play it with the controller held backward just to add some challenge. Harder to do that with the 360 controller...

N64 was/is my favorite system, with the DS a close second. I think it has to do with my age...I was 10 in 1996 so that was a fond memory. I had played the shit out of the SNES and NES so when we got the 64 it seemed revolutionary. Super Mario 64, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, Harvest Moon, Ocarina of Time...some of my favorites of classic series were on that system.

I visited a lady friend last weekend, and she had a N64. And she reminisced about slaying Ocarina of Time. Then we played Mario Kart for a while.

@yourmom: Gamecube was geared toward dedicated gamers? I felt like it wasn't a giant step forward from the N64... it seemed like it was marketed for everyone.

Perfect Dark on N64 was by far the best videogame I have played. Ever. I mean, besides NBA Hangtime for N64, which was also a blast, but was more of a game that I didn't take seriously. It was the game I played (and enjoyed) with those who weren't so familiar with the system, meaning it was accessible, but also so ridiculously fun. There is something so pleasing about the way the controller is arranged. That's basically all I can say for now. Learning to use those little yellow arrows made me a fucking goddess at that shit, plus I liked the little dance with the cartridge when it refused to work: does anyone else remember frantically blowing dust out of that slot?

The last game I played was Pong.

my fav system of all time is still the nintendo entertainment system (aka NES aka famacon). But n64 was the last system i ever really invested myself into. after that, video games required too much money and time for me to devote my adult self into them

@ Nex (and ROM), I'd say that Wii (and gamecube, and the DS) is marketed to everyone, not just younger audiences. Somehow I dont think the option to download really old games was aimed at kids, or crap like Wii fit. Nintendo systems in general are marketed to a wider audience.

Also, ebag has a really good point about investment. Approx. the time of gamecube/xbox the cost to start with a new console went way up.

@ Yourmom:
True, the VC was a retro-fan-aimed marketing vector, but Nintendo seems to be slowly phasing that out (at least, based on the number of titles made available on a weekly basis) in favor of, well nothing actually.

The simple truth is that Nintendo (and esp. its third parties) realized that if they can get non-traditional gamers (read: women, the elderly, etc) excited about gaming, they can literally foist mountains of shit on them in disc form and they won't know any better than to buy it all up.

At least, until they learn better and stop buying, leaving the Wii in its current sales hell.

But this is all getting a bit off topic.

I think the reason is that the N64 was big at a time when the other systems (Playstation and Sega Saturn) were only 32-bit and used optical discs as opposed to cartriges. At the time, the N64 had a major advantage in terms of graphical ability and the fact that its games didn't require even one second of loading time before you could start playing a game.

It lacked in other areas, like full-motion-video and third-party development, but maybe those developers made games that appealed more to guys than girls. I know Capcom held out for a long time, but they made very male-oriented games, like the Street Fighter II and Resident Evil series.

I'm a guy, so I don't know really know about the gender issue. I still consider the N64 controller to be the best of all systems, past and present.

SNES is my favorite. Mario kart appeared, street fighter three was great, and I spent a lot of time playing it in my brother's room as a kid. Growing up on Nintendo, I never liked the X, circle, square business with playstations.

I'd consider myself a female gamer, and I prefer the tabletop. Other than that, the best game I ever played (Machinarium) was for PC, but I don't have a ton of personal experience with console gaming. I do love the fucking shit out of my DS, though. And there are some fantastically fun Xbox Live Arcade games.

personally i would say Xbox 360 because it is the peoples console meaning: it has games of every genre for any person it has awesome graphics, internet play and it is affordable.