Sep 30, 2026, 8:39 AMOutside of Win/DOS, Amiga, and the Nintendo, Sega, and Sony consoles, which systems had the best catalog of games that made them worth having in the 80s and 90s?
From 1990 an onward, there seem to be very few famous games that were originally developed for those other systems rather than being ports.
Sep 30, 2026, 8:53 AM
Sep 30, 2026, 9:05 AM@yora "Outside of Win/DOS, Amiga, and the Nintendo, Sega, and Sony consoles"
I take it you're lumping home computers in with consoles here? And Commodore's other home computers, like the C64 and VIC20, in with the Amiga?
"which systems had the best catalog of games that made them worth having in the 80s and 90s?"
In the '80s, too many to mention. The ZX Spectrum, MSX, Videopac/Odyssey 2, ColecoVision, Atari ST/7800/8bits, the BBC Micro, the Apple ][ series...
There were even a decent number of games on the Mac.
"From 1990 an onward, there seem to be very few famous games that were originally developed for those other systems rather than being ports."
I'd put the date closer to about 1995 rather than 1990.
In the early half of the decade, the Atari ST was still seeing new releases. The Lynx had a whole bunch. NEC TurboGrafx and its progeny. From memory, Need For Speed and other titles were originally released on 3DO.
After about '95, the computer world basically consolidated around the Windows PC, with the Mac holding on by its fingernails.
And likewise, PlayStation crushed everything else in its path including eventually Sega, with Nintendo holding on.
Sep 30, 2026, 5:23 PM@aj In the 90s, rather late for the console market, the 3DO seems to have produced several games that became somewhat famous on other consoles.
Need for Speed, Gex, Space Hulk Vengenace, and D I know about.
And it appears to have had a good amount of ports from DOS, Playstation, and Saturn as well.
And then there's the Neo Geo AES quietly chugging along with Samurai Showdown, Metal Slug, and King of Fighters well into the 2000s. Somehow.
Oct 1, 2026, 9:57 AM@yora The Atari Lynx was released for Christmas 1989, but we can basically class it as a 1990s console. It had a number of great original games (Batman Returns, Blue Lightning, Xybots, Pinball Jam, Kung Food) on top of many great arcade ports.
And Chips Challenge was a Lynx original that got ported elsewhere...
@yora Well, PC-Engine (TurboGrafx-16) comes to mind as pretty ok. Especially for some sidescrollers and SHMUPs. The Super CD-ROM² addon (or Turbo Duo — I think in the West we didn't get a separate addon for the TG16?) had some real goodies. I probably don't have to bring up Dracula X: Rondo of Blood... (Castlevania X — the real one, not the less than stellar SNES game that in no way resembled it, though this one was Japan exclusive, requiring a specific card.) There were quite a few original games exclusive to the PCE/TG16 or the later CD-ROM addon.
I can't think of a whole lot else. There were quite a few things out there at the time. PC-98, Atari Jaguar, Sharp X68000, etc etc. But outside of the big ones you've mentioned, PCE/TG16 was the only major one I knew.
Sep 30, 2026, 5:18 PM@nazokiyoubinbou I've seen FM Towns come up a lot when looking at early 90s games. A lot of games seem to have been ported to that. (Though I'm not aware of any that were developed for it.)
Might be a mostly Japanese thing, though.
@yora FM Towns is a Japanese PC, yeah. From what I can tell it was slightly less weird than the PC-98. They also apparently made a console, the FM Towns Marty which actually used a 386! That's not something you see every day. Uh, well it wasn't back then. Now every console but the Switch is a generic PC in a custom case...
You'll probably see a lot of PC-98 stuff too (and if you're going to the 80s, PC-88 too.) It's most famous these days for Touhou probably. 🤣 Though I'm not sure how much you're asking about consoles specifically (it was an actual PC, not pretending to be a console.) There's a LOT of original content on the PC-98... Most of it Japanese only that most of us will never get to see. (But I do see some fan translation efforts for some.)
Oct 1, 2026, 9:57 AM@yora NEO-GEO is the major one.
MSX is where Metal Gear premiered.
But after 1990... I don't think there's much. The 3DO and the Atari Jaguar had nothing I really liked.
The arcade was still a vibrant place for a while outside the consoles, at least until the PS1 launched.
Oct 1, 2026, 10:03 AM@troberts @yora Really, Windows 95, PlayStation and the N64 were basically the end of real competition in the home computer and console market.
In the '80s, the gap between what a $300 home machine and a $10,000 arcade cabinet was massive at times. By the mid-to-late '90s, the gap had closed to the point it wasn't really worth paying $1 a turn for an arcade game.
Oct 1, 2026, 10:26 AM