Which consoles have the highest/lowest concentrations of good games?

[Orion Pimpdaddy]

There are good games on every console and handheld, but as a percentage, which consoles/handhelds do you believe have the highest and lowest concentrations?

A better way to think of it is, if you had a complete collection of every console/handheld and every game, and you were to draw a random game from each of the system's libraries, which ones would most likely net you a good (or bad) game?

Rule: The console/handheld must have at least 10 game releases.

Here's my thinking, in no particular order:

Highest:
SNES
Dreamcast
Colecovision

Lowest:
Jaguar
CD-i
Wii

[tom]

Highest:
VCS
game.com (21 games, 11 bad games, 10 good games (the puzzle games))
N-Gage (overall an excellent library of games)
Lynx (99% of Lynx games rock)

Lowest:
NES
N64


.

[savageone]

Highest:
Neo Geo

Lowest:
Wii

[ButtonMasher123]

I think the Turbografx-16 has a pretty good ratio of good to bad games. Their library has lots of action games which usually age well and hardly any sports games which usually age poorly.

[Leo_A]

The Jaguar's percentages aren't so bad.

The problem was the amount of software, not the ratio of good vs bad games. There's easily 8 or 9 A titles in just the 60 or so titles licensed by Atari and released commerically. And quite a few titles that most would rate in the B range. Only perhaps a dozen or so of the releases are disasters.

And most of the cancelled projects resurrected by publishers like Telegames and Songbird were solid releases. And there are several nice homebrews like Battlesphere/Battlesphere Gold and Gorf.

The percentages are good or perhaps even better than average for consoles that saw far more support. There are far worse offenders out there that were far larger successes. The Atari 2600, the NES, the Wii all come to mind as easy examples where I'd say the ratio was far worse.

[Informationator]

Man... Normally I'd say NES or SNES, but concentration-wise... There are a LOT of horrible sports games on SNES. So many friggin basketball, football, soccer, hockey, racing, etc. etc. games that are so mediocre. Probably the same for NES.

I do feel that the Gamecube and Wii have a significantly lower percentage of good games as compared to the N64, and that the N64 has a lower number of quality games as compared to the SNES. The SNES probably has more high-quality games than NES, as much as I love NES.

[bunnybum]

It really depends on what qualifies as a "good game". As an example, I like puzzles and adventure games, so of all the 2nd grade shovelware on the DS a random pick would have a ~50% (To be honest, I have lost count) chance of being a "hidden objects" game, which in my book are good, while, say, the SNES and Neo-Geo have a big honking zero.

[Informationator]

It really depends on what qualifies as a "good game". As an example, I like puzzles and adventure games, so of all the 2nd grade shovelware on the DS a random pick would have a ~50% (To be honest, I have lost count) chance of being a "hidden objects" game, which in my book are good, while, say, the SNES and Neo-Geo have a big honking zero.

Well, I don't think genre matters. There are good and bad RPGs. ...well-executed and poorly-executed puzzle games. Tight and clunky platformers... Fun and mundane sports games... Addictive and boring fighters...

Within every genre are fantastic and miserable games, so I think when we consider good and bad games, genre preference shouldn't really enter into the equation (in as much as one can eliminate personal bias).

[Dangerboy]

The biggest problem is that sometimes good games may not be good enough for the individual. By no means can there ever be a true answer, but some of my personal feeling will most likely not agree with others.

As for the highest ratio of great games:
Neo Geo / Neo Geo CD
Turbo Duo / Grafx
Laseractive
PlayStation 1**

As for the lowest ratio
PlayStation 2****
Wii
Game Boy Color (way, way too many licensed throwaway titles)
3DO and Jaguar (most games worth playing were available on the PSX or Saturn, not enough exclusives to justify the decks).

Now the firewalls:
** PlayStation
At 1240+ plus games, there are a LOT of overlapping genres, especially in the sports department. However, this was prime rivalry turf - it's where the dividing lines began to separate and EA began to lose ground on the sports market. Game Day and NBA Shoot Out were now over-selling Madden and Live in certain years. There may have been a lot of sports titles, but there were a lot of GREAT sports titles. There's really not that many truly "bad" PSone games. On the other hand...

****PlayStation 2
Is where things started to fall apart. Suddenly JRPGs started to all look alike. Legendary series were suddenly going in weird directions (Final Fantasy X's straight line travel, 3DO's horribly over-use of game assets and sequels, EA begins the exclusive assault and removes competitive game series rivalries after ESPN 2K5 sells amazingly well, etc), and there were too many companies trying to cash in on the wonder machine.

In effect, the PS2 was the original Wii - you need only look at the amount of budget title releases and flood of licensed games near the end of it's life cycle to see the same pattern. The only difference is the Imagine Series wasn't brought to the table.

I was going for a complete PS2 set at one point, and after taking a step back, realized I could just play the better versions with lesser graphics on the PSX.

[bunnybum]

Within every genre are fantastic and miserable games, so I think when we consider good and bad games, genre preference shouldn't really enter into the equation (in as much as one can eliminate personal bias).

If we try that out and as a rule of thumb say that 1 out of every 2 or 3 games in any given genre is bad, the winner would be the system with the largest amount of games, which kind of makes sense

Personally I'd say the system with the absolutely highest concentration of good games would be the Commodore 64, with the Amiga coming in as a close second. The sports titles on these two systems are fun and enjoyable, there is an enormous amount of platformers and close to zero franchise-milking games.

You were asking about consoles though, so I'd say that the PS1 has the highest concentration. Yes, there are some absolutely god-awful titles out there but the chance of plucking one of those while reaching into a pile of random games is pretty slim. Also, genre-wise the PS1 library has a decent amount of games within every genre so you're almost certain to pick something you'll enjoy. Besides that, the NES (As in, no Famicom) has a pretty good concentration as well.

As for the low concentration, I'd say 3DO, CD-i and Wii.

[Rob2600]

Lowest:
NES
N64

Statistically, the N64 has one of the *highest* ratio of good-to-bad games. Out of 300 games, around 60 have received an overall rating of 8.0 or higher.

[Rickstilwell1]

Basically anyone who doesn't like a certain genre automatically calls it crap. If you are not into flight combat sim for example, you might call Air Combat/Ace Combat series on PS1 crap while other gamers gave it the reason why it's included in the Greatest Hits releases. Hate FPS games? The first Medal of Honor was good but not everyone will think the same.

There's only one way to do it for sure.

Get a list and total the number of games. Go down the list and count how many on the list you like (after trying them all with emulation, or as many as you can). Then use a calculator to find your personal percentage.

Look how many games I want for the following systems. It's not a good/bad list but rather simply how many games I know I will like in addition to what I already have. only CIB is counted as part of my collection:

Atari 2600 - want 34 have 8 = 42
Atari 5200 - want 16 have 5 = 21
Atari 7800 - want 10 have 2 = 12
Colecovision - want 15 have 0 = 15
Intellivision - want 18 have 9 = 27
Astrocade - want 5 have 2 = 7
Odyssey 2 - want 8 have 6 = 14
VIC-20 - want 22 have 3 = 25
Commodore 64 - want 14 cartridges, have 6 catridges = 20
Atari 8-bit Computer - want 27 have 1 - 28
NES - want 70 have 33 = 103
Sega Master System - want 39 have 7 = 46
Game Boy - want 67 have 15 = 82
TurboGrafx-16 - want 20 have 4 = 24
Atari Lynx - want 19 have 0 = 19
Sega Genesis - want 81 have 24 - 105

generally the systems that have more games for them are the ones that I have higher totals for. You can find out out many games each of these systems has and calculate if you want to, but in the end it kind of flattens out depending on how many games were available for the systems in the first place.

The only system that I think will end up breaking my trend here is the Neo Geo consoles - where I know I'll like any game I throw at it.

[kupomogli]

Highest-

PSP. Not counting PSN Minis which are digital only, plus they were originally working as PS3 only, the PSP has an amazingly high ratio of good/bad games. While the DS was getting all the shovelware, the PSP was pretty much left alone except for games that were actually good or decent being released on the system.

TurboGrafxCD. US releases only.

PSX. I think Dangerboy described it best, and obviously if you were to ask anyone about the PSX, it'd be him. I've played a lot of games on the PSX and there aren't too many PSX games I've played that I thought were terrible.

Lowest-

Wii
DS
GBA
PS2

The Wii and DS are the winners in this category, but there's also a ton of crap on the GBA and PS2.

[Snapple]

I'm surprised to hear people say NES, N64, and PS2. I think they have good ratios, and NES maybe a great ratio.

Yeah, you can probably name 20 forgettable sports and racing games on the NES (not including Tecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl, which are awesome, but the system has how many games? Like 800?

And to rattle off the number of games on the NES that are considered classic would take forever.


The Wii is full of shovelware. I love the DS (lots of good games for it), but the DS has shovelware for sure. GBA had shovelware.

PS1 I think is not... aging well, compared to PS2 and others. The RPGs for PS1 are some of the best of all time, and they stand up to this day. So does Metal Gear Solid. But the other 98% of the library doesn't always stand up so well by today's standards. There was a ton of 3D crap that was just... well, crap. RPGs were a very small percentage of the total library.

When I think high ratio, I think NES, SNES, Dreamcast.

[T2KFreeker]

Man, where is the Dreamcast for Ratios of good games? I understand there are a few stinkers here, but Damn, looks at how much on the system is gold?

[Tupin]

Man, where is the Dreamcast for Ratios of good games? I understand there are a few stinkers here, but Damn, looks at how much on the system is gold?

I was about to say this, I've been going back its library of games and haven't played a really horrible one yet.

Most Virtual Boy games were pretty fun, there's maybe one or two bad ones. The bigger the library gets, the more crap games there are. It was bad with the PS1/PS2 and GBA, but really got bad with the Wii, to the point where maybe twenty or thirty games are worth playing out of however many were released.

Technically, the PC is the absolute worst, but we're talking about consoles.

[Aussie2B]

For best, I'd pick the Neo Geo Pocket Color. Pretty much every single US release is at least pretty good if not great.

For worst, probably something stupid like the R-Zone. Anybody that would pick something like NES, which has boatloads of amazing games, in lieu of something like that must just be biased.

[Atarileaf]

There are good games on every console and handheld, but as a percentage, which consoles/handhelds do you believe have the highest and lowest concentrations?

A better way to think of it is, if you had a complete collection of every console/handheld and every game, and you were to draw a random game from each of the system's libraries, which ones would most likely net you a good (or bad) game?

Rule: The console/handheld must have at least 10 game releases.

Here's my thinking, in no particular order:

Highest:
SNES
Dreamcast
Colecovision

Lowest:
Jaguar
CD-i
Wii

I think a lot of this comes down to the type of game you play. For instance I don't like FPS's or RPG,s but I do like smaller more family friendly pick-up-and-play type games so I'd say the Wii has a higher ratio of good to bad titles that interest me whereas I'd put the PS3 and Xbox360 as having a fairly low ratio of good games, for me.

As far as older systems go I'd say I agree with what you posted above.

[Atarileaf]

Well, I don't think genre matters. There are good and bad RPGs. ...well-executed and poorly-executed puzzle games. Tight and clunky platformers... Fun and mundane sports games... Addictive and boring fighters...

Within every genre are fantastic and miserable games, so I think when we consider good and bad games, genre preference shouldn't really enter into the equation (in as much as one can eliminate personal bias).

Hard to do since personal bias drives game purchases, not what others perceive as a good or bad game.

[Orion Pimpdaddy]

Good discussion so far. Obviously, what's considered a "good" game is going to be different for everyone so just go by what YOU like.

The CDi has got to be in the running for worst percentage. It's very hard to find a good game for it without doing some research. It's a little unfair, since many of the games for it were supposed to educational, but oh well.

I gotta think the Wii has the second highest "bad" game percentage. It's hard to believe there are over 1,200 games. Of course, I wouldn't know unless I played them all. It's just a hunch I get when I walk into a Target and look at the Wii section. Even if it's not the lowest percentage yet, that percentage of bad games are bound to go up more since the Wii is entering its sunset, a time when discount games surface the most. Plus, Nintendo has moved its first party development to the WiiU.

The GBA and DS both have shovelware out the ears, probably more so than the DS due to it's larger install base.

I have to think that the PS1 is right in the middle. Most of the damage came after PS2 came out, when discount developers and publishers continued to stamp out games for it (PS1), like the Mary Kate and Ashely Olsen series.

I'm thinking the PS2, X-box, and Gamecube are all around the middle as well.

The Dreamcast was suddenly shut down before it could go through a "discount game" period. As a result, you have a solid library of high budget, arcade-like games. It's premature death may have actually saved it from a future of crap games.