I’d have to go with the wood grain Atari 2600, I’m a sucker for 70’s designed electronics.
While I definitely agree the overall best design goes to the Atari 2600, this comes in close second for me:
This bad boy (or girl, rather) is the Casio Loopy. Yes, Casio, the company primarily known for making wristwatches. This console was only released in Japan, and when it launched it had a target demographic of girls and young women. The console came with a built-in sticker printer, and the games were woman-targeted games in genres like romance, fashion, and life simulation (like Animal Crossing). Only 10 games were ever made for the Loopy, by the way. Its biggest failure and reason for not selling well was being a console that had games that looked like the SNES but having to directly compete with the PS1 and N64, as well as the replaceable sticker cartridges being very expensive.
Now, I am a man, and I am clearly not a part of the target demographic of this console. The games are entirely uninteresting to me, except maybe the Animal Crossing-like game “I Want A Room In Loopy Town.” But something about the curved shape of the console and its cool purple hue speak to me. The black cover for the sticker ejection port has me imagining a newer version playing an animated logo on that part if a small screen was behind it. The absurdly massive Eject button just looks like it gives the most satisfying “kerchunk” when you press it to eject a cartridge.
In third place I’d have to give a shout out to the Apple iMac G3, even though I really dislike Apple products and its neither a game console.or made for gaming in general, something about the white and bold color combo just looks really cool. The mouse was really bad though. Got a bit of that Frutiger Aero look.
The 2600 depicted in the article thumbnail, was absolutely a beauty in its native environment of the late 1970’s:
The Mega Drive is the best looking retro console, I mean look at it
This one looks a little naked. Needs more “High Definition Graphics” or whatever it says
The Sega Saturn, especially the Japan version:
Although I never owned this model myself, I recently picked up an 8bitdo replica (M30 bluetooth) of the Japan controller and it looks and feels great, although not strictly a direct copy of the original.
The Dreamcast is up there too imo!
Japan had some killer PC designs in the 80’s and 90’s. But I’d say my favorite is a toss up between the X68000 and the Sony MSX 2
For consoles, I still think the Sega Genesis Model 1 is a masterclass in visual design.
The MSX design space was such an exciting place.
For anyone curious about the above, it’s like this:Imagine Nintendo said “instead of manufacturing the Switch 2, we released the specs and invited everyone else to build their own. You’re welcome to buy the Xbox Switch 2, the Sony PlaySwitch 2, the Philips Switch 2-i, the Sega Switch 2 & Knuckles, or the TRSwitch80 2. They’re all guaranteed to be compatible with our software lineup.” and then like, that actually happened.
Sounds similar to the 3DO’s situation!
That MSX 2 is sick.
It just looks so sleek. For me, it was the future of gaming.
while not necessarily the prettiest console by any means but i always thought the Og xbox home menu went way harder than it needed to, now that’s presentation!
They said retro, the Xbox can’t be retro, its only been around for- oh. Oh no.
One more vote with OP. That Atari is a nice looking machine.
Hol’up.
Atari’s only had 4, not 6, switches on them?
Nope, there were two different versions! The 6 switch is the original. (And in my opinion the better looking one!) The 4 switch came later, and still has 6 switches, they just moved the difficulty switches to the back. I believe it saved them some money and made production a little easier because everything was on one circuit board with that setup.
(I’m sad no one uses faux-marble anymore.)
Vectrex, hands-down.
PC Engine. Not only does it look like a prop from the set of TNG, but it is delightfully tiny. The cartridges are little cards that you slot in the front. There is literally nothing bad about a PC Engine. (Except for maybe that it’s only got one controller port)
+1.
Also it can be turned into a coolest spaceship, with its CDRom attachment, a very first in 1988!
Also the HuCard format for its games is unbeatable!
Speaking of spaceships…
Not the most practical PC engine model, because it lacked the extra oomph of the SuperGrafx and you couldn’t attach a CD-ROM² - but just look at it
I’m a fan of how ENIAC really used the space
If we’re also talking old computers then it’s hard to beat the Cray-1
Also had the advantage of fooling your house guests into thinking it’s a weird, modernist couch that makes conversation really hard.
Why does there have to be just one? So many consoles are awesomely designed and reflect their eras well. I’m partial to colecovision and the Intellivision II. The redesign of the intellivision had an entire suite of peripherals to match the new design, including a musical keyboard.
Nintendo’s GameCube. It’s cubical. Cubical!
It came with a beat carry handle and drug-hiding compartments!
