Patient Gamers

My N64 to remind myself how amazing Golden Eye, Perfect Dark, Mario Kart and Army Men: Sarges Heroes are, especially for when they were released. I also have a modded XBox which has 20+ games on it and some older films on it. Playing modded Halo is always a grand ol' time and Fuzion Frenzy is a stroll down memory lane for me.

I fired up my XBox 360 last year to get a fix of Beatles Rock Band. It's criminal that that game isn't available on modern platforms! Also regretting not having purchased more of its DLC when it was still available.

I have a Wii (hacked, old enough model to have GC ports) that I keep out.

I picked it up used and cheap with a sack of assorted accessories like 5 years ago because fussing with controllers in Dolphin was kind of a pain, and I had a lot of GC and Wii games I was interested in.

A Wii with Homebrew channel and loaders, with a USB drive full of disc images hanging out the back is very pick-up-and-play for GameCube and Wii.

I'm using it less lately because I've played through many of the things I was eager to try (and I've been too busy), but it's still a nice object.

I do have a modded OG Xbox (also bought used but closer to its time of relevance) that spent it's early life in my possession being an XBMC media player for the household more than being used for games, and a wide array of even older computers (Amigas, 68k and PPC Macs, older PCs, some workstations that aren't so relevant to gaming, etc.) stored away, but usually do that sort of thing under emulation rather than hauling the machines out unless I have a specific reason.

Lately it's mostly been 16-bit era and GBA games on an Anbernic RG351p that I can truly pick up and put down instantly, anywhere. Waiting rooms? Compiles? Sitting through some event a niece or nephew is in? Perfect idle.

I often play on the Wii with my family. The joy cons on the switch are too small and have too many buttons for my (grand)parents to push. They keep pressing the home button accidentally.

A while back I went out of my way to acquire some used Xbox 360 games and fire up the old beast. I actually played Red Dead Redemption for the first time about a year ago. Some of those games I straight up haven't touched, because I no longer have said console set up (and have been foraying into console emulation, which is constantly getting better)

Not super old, but my homebrew 3DS gets a ton of usage. A while back I installed every ROM I could want onto an SD card, which has brought years of entertainment.

My play preference generally goes: PSP or PS Vita > Switch Lite or Switch > Steam Deck > Gaming PC.

"From time to time" would be my N64, as in it is probably the console that I play the least but still have hooked up. I let a coworker borrow a few games in 2018 and it was only until I was leaving that job in mid 2022 that they realized they still had them.... which I had forgotten because I probably hadn't tried paying them in that entire 4 years.

But playing through Mario 64 or running through a few levels of Star Wars : Shadows of the Empire is a good kick of nostalgia for me.