THE MANLIEST VIDEO GAME CONSOLES
Why am I writing an article about the manliest video game consoles? Two reasons... first, it is damn fun to step outside the conservative/libertarian politics and cartoonish (yet completely sincere) ape-like chest thumping of the majority of the content on Arthur's Hall for some old-school nerdiness. Second... this stuff is f-ing good for business! Our "Manliest Games" article was a hit all over the Internet, and brought tons of traffic and interesting people to Arthur's Hall. You hear me Joystiq, Kotaku, and Destructoid? I expect to see this article on your front page! I suppose magic happens when you write about something you really are excited about, and I do love classic games. Happily, I also love archaic video game hardware and I do feel as if I have something substantial to say on this topic. So here it is men, and women (all three of you plus Colette Bennett), The 5 Manliest Video Game Consoles of All Time!
5:SEGA DREAMCAST
Manliness Quotient: 7.0
The Sega Dreamcast is without a doubt the most excellent, and manliest video game system ,ever to completely fail commercially. It is I think, generally accepted that Sega's earlier glut of hardware revisions to the Genesis, and the terrible piece of hardware that was the Saturn had more to do with the Dreamcast's failure than the quality of the system itself. Sega fans had lost their faith, and Sony's marketing machine was pushing gamers to wait for the PS2. When you look at it that way it isn't surprising that the Dreamcast failed, regardless it's quality. Normally, failure would be deemed unmanly, but not in this unique instance. The Dreamcast was evidence of Sega (a once great company) sticking to their guns and completely redeeming themselves. Because of the Dreamcast we can all remember Sega as the great (and manly) company it once was... not the disaster Sega became in the 32X/Saturn years.
Although the Dreamcast was a very solid piece of hardware, it did occupy a strange place in the industry. Released in 1999, it sat somewhere between the PS1/Nintendo 64 era and the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era. It was easily superior to all the systems from the previous generation, yet inferior to those that would come out a year or two later. Just don't tell a Dreamcast lover that their games are inferior to early PS2 releases. Still, the Dreamcast isn't really manly because of it's hardware specs... the Dreamcast is manly entirely because of it's fantastic lineup of manly games.
Case in point: the Dreamcast launched with NFL 2K. American Football is by far the greatest and manliest sport the world has ever seen. NFL 2K was a Sega-designed exclusive launch title for the Dreamcast that was years ahead of the competition in almost every way. I remember the first time I saw the game running at my friend’s house... I thought for more than a passing moment that I was watching an ESPN broadcast. As always, Sega had great first party sports titles for the Dreamcast, but the other manly aspect of the Dreamcast was its arcade action games from companies like Capcom, Treasure, and in-house Sega teams.
Now about those arcade action games... not only did the Dreamcast feature Ikaruga , easily the greatest traditional space shooter of all time (and one our 10 Manliest Games), but it's selection of other hard-core games was vast. Games like U.F.C., Bangai-O, Cannon Spike, Crazy Taxi, F355 Challenge, Guilty Gear X, Mars Matrix, Power Stone, Soul Caliber, and Street Fighter III are games any manly man can brag about playing and beating. The Dreamcast also featured a solid selection of Neo Geo arcade games. Perhaps it was the first home system powerful enough to properly emulate all the aspects of the 1990 Neo Geo hardware. The Dreamcast was a manly system for sure. A great system, with remarkable games... but there is one lingering black mark, and I'm not referring to the system's ultimate failure. I'm talking about Shenmue... who the fuck wants to play that!?
4:ATARI PONG
Manliness Quotient: 8.5
I have long considered truly old video game systems like the Atari 2600 and 5200 to be manly because of their simplicity. It was a simplicity that came out of technological necessity, but it was manly none-the-less. You wouldn't be far off the mark if you expected me to include the 2600 on this list because of its old-school games and simple hardware design. I do hate to disappoint all you hipsters who cherish your wood paneled 2600 machines... but in that arena Pong has the 2600 beat hands down. I know the unmanly amongst you are probably spilling hair product all over your Herman Miller chairs in shock... "isn't Pong a game? It's not a system!" WRONG HIPPIE! Pong was a system and a game. Talk about elegant simplicity... the Pong home game was just a box with two knobs used by two players to humiliate each other in a game that was a pure test of masculine dexterity and skill. Simple competitive tests of skill always have been and always will be the very height of manliness.
The beauty of Pong is the simplicity of competition. In Pong there is no blaming a complex scoring system or programming bugs for your failure to perform. When your buddy beats you in a game as elegant and primitive as Pong... he is a better man than you... period! That is simple, that is beautiful, and that is manly.
3:NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM
Manliness Quotient: 9.0
In many ways, the NES did more to define what modern video games are today than the Atari 2600. Games like Super Mario Bros, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and Kid Icarus were a huge leap forward in complexity and game design. Is that manly? Not necessarily, or at least not in my book. What is very manly about the NES was it's Stalin-esque dominance of a newly thriving industry that had looked to be dead just a few years earlier. Commercial success is manly. But the manliness of the NES is not limited to its industry dominance... because it also features a vast catalog of old-school, violent, politically incorrect, and insanely difficult games.
There is an almost endless list of NES games that made me to spike my controller in fits of manly rage as a young child. Games like Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, Kid Icarus, Metroid, Battletoads, Ghosts n' Goblins, Gradius, Double Dragon, Solar Jetman, and MegaMan are only a good start to the list of NES games that were not only brilliant in their design, but extraordinarily difficult. People who cut their teeth on games like these are a different kind of gamer than those young whippersnappers who are used to having their soft, blister-free hands held through modern games. Do I sound like an old geezer at the age of 30? I am perfectly fine with that! You sissies can have your handholding and endless continues. I'm perfectly happy getting my face smashed in 40 times in a row by Super Machoman, because I know the payoff will be that much greater when I finally do put him on his ass. If a man's pursuit of challenge, and level of achievement is a measure of his manliness... as I believe it is... then the game library of the NES is manly indeed.
2:SEGA GENESIS
Manliness Quotient: 9.5
Even though the release of the Genesis (or as the third world calls it... The MegaDrive) predated the Super Nintendo by almost two years, it was as if the Genesis engineers in Japan somehow foresaw the direction the console wars would take, and chose to custom design their new machine for maximum manliness. There are many defining traits of men, but the three that I think are most applicable here are these: men like speed and things that are fast, we are poor listeners, and most of us are more-or-less colorblind. Sure, the genesis had a terrible sound chip, and it could only display 12 colors (512 actually)... but that didn't stop it from smashing the SNES in manly fashion for most of the 16-bit life cycle.
While the processor of the Genesis allowed some very speedy and fluid gameplay, the Genesis was about a lot more than speed. The Genesis I remember was all about socially irresponsible exploitive gameplay and graphics. Road Rash, Streets of Rage, Altered Beast, Mutant League Football, Mortal Kombat, Time Killers, Golden Axe, and Eternal Champions were the sorts of games that demanded the attention 13 year old boys everywhere, hungry to prove their manliness by committing virtual acts of violence.
Let's get serious for a moment. I've made fun of the Genesis' sound, graphics, and the immature content of its games. Perhaps I'm not getting across my very real love for this manly system. The Genesis really was a sprite-manipulating powerhouse with dozens of competitive manly games. It was a "poor-man's Neo Geo", if you will. Games like Gunstar Heroes and Dynamite Headdy (by Treasure) packed in graphical effects that could never have been done on the SNES. Herzog Zwei invented the military real-time strategy genre on the Genesis. Other games like Contra Hard Corps, General Chaos, Ghouls n' Ghosts, Ranger X, Ristar, Shining Force, Sonic the Hedgehog, Vectorman, Alien Soldier, Streets of Rage, and Thunderforce were some of the most challenging and well designed games of their time.
The 16-bit era was an epic battle between the Genesis and the Super Nintendo. The Genesis processor was much faster, it had three buttons instead of six, it played superior NFL and NHL EA sports games, and the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat had buckets of blood with otherworldly surface tension. As I look back at the 16-bit generation, it is very clear to me now that the SNES was the far superior system...
FOR FUCKING GIRLS! Is there any doubt that the Genesis was more manly? HELL NO!
1:SNK NEO GEO
Manliness Quotient: 11
If you don't already know why the Neo Geo is the manliest video game system ever made, you probably don't know much about the Neo Geo. I'll start with the manly basics: First... The Neo Geo was released by SNK in the manly (pre-Klinton) year of 1990. What made the Neo Geo different from other, lesser consoles, was that it literally was an overpowered arcade board crammed into a home system. It was expensive as hell ($650!), but the sound and graphics of the Neo Geo made all the other systems of the day look like something you might find dripping down the wall of a San Francisco bathhouse by comparison. At the risk of getting too academic and unmanly... if the Neo Geo was King Leonidas of Sparta, the NES was that "Leave Britney Alone" guy on Youtube.
At its release, the Neo Geo was easily the most ludicrously overpowered console the world had ever seen. It featured the exact same CPU as the Sega Genesis (the Motorola 68000), but it ran at almost twice the clock speed. It also featured an expensive custom designed video chipset that allowed game designers to do virtually anything they wanted with sprites and backgrounds on screen with no slowdown or visual hiccups. The Neo Geo was the ultimate 2-D system. You doubt me? Check out the Metal Slug re-release for the Playstation 1... it has long load times, missing frames of animation, and even some slow-down!!! Fact: the PS1 and all of its fancy new-age 3-D graphical processors couldn't handle the level of manliness contained in your average Neo Geo cart.
The other manly thing about the Neo Geo was the games. SNK's bread and butter was the arcade market, so their niche home system was simply a manly afterthought. Because of this, 99.9% of all Neo Geo games are ultra-violent 2D shooters or tournament fighting games. The list of exceptional violent games for the Neo Geo is a long one: Metal Slug (the 4th manliest game of all time), Samurai Showdown, NAM-1975, King of Fighters, Pulstar, Last Blade, Blazing Star, Garou Mark of the Wolves, Shock Troopers, Fatal Fury, and SNK Vs. Capcom. Whether you are projectile vomiting blood to shoot down helicopters in Metal Slug, or lighting your opponent on fire with a flaming roundhouse kick to the face in Last Blade... I challenge you to do something unmanly while playing Neo Geo game! Wait... strike that... I just remembered Twinkle Star Sprites.
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