Gamecube.

The other consoles were pushing for more, but instead the Gamecube only cared about being small?

I was fresh off Nintendo 64 so I was expecting Banjo-threeie (STOP N SWAP had been so hyped), other awesome Rare games, a new Mario, the new Zelda, and finally a Pokemon game on a modern console!

Hahaha

Mario Sunshine was such a bad game that had none of Mario 64's soul I never touched another Mario game after that. I hated the art of Zelda Windwaker and that it had lost all the dark vibes, and obviously none of the other games I was expecting never happened. I felt completely scammed for being loyal to Nintendo. I taught me to never be loyal to a brand.

The one and only game I enjoyed on that system was Metroid Prime, but as a child I was only allowed one new console like every 5 years and I deeply regretted not getting a PS2 instead like my friends.

The PS4. My wife and I played a lot of PS3, so we were excited for the 4, but it just didn't hit right. We ended up barely using it. At some point we let someone borrow it and never asked for it back.

I don't even remember what we didn't like, except that we were both pumped for the latest sack boy game, which ended up not anywhere near as fun as the first one.

Xbox One. Everytime I booted it up to feed the Halo crave, there’d be an update that took like an hour. Finally get on… Halo needs to update. 1 hour later, I’ve lost interest.

Repeat 6+ months later.

The Sega Game Gear. That sucker could drain six AA batteries in about three hours. Do you know how hard it was to find a place to buy AA batteries on Christmas day?

While a rechargeable battery pack fixed that problem, most of the games were garbage compared to the GameBoy. The first party games were the best, but most everything else was 'meh.'

I never did get that TV tuner add-on either.

Honestly, my gaming laptop. Bought a few years ago, 3050. It was good and I could play games on it - but I live in a situation where all my electricity is solar generated and limited, charges 12v batteries and runs mains appliances via inverter. And the laptop was just too power hungry for long gaming sessions.

It was more a failure of me to properly research than a problem with the product, but was a let down. Bought a steam deck and never looked back.

The Atari 2600. I was expecting a NES.

PS5 or Nintendo Switch.

PS5: No games I want to pmay except Demons Souls Remake. Its the only PS5 game I own. Every other game I wanted to play I just play on PC instead.

Switch: Weak, underpowered "console." Never left the dock, ever. Still had performance problems in first party titles, like Breath of the Wild chugging to 15fps or less in the Korok Forest when facing East for some reason. After I was disappointed with Breath of the Wild, I haven't touched the 2014 midrange tablet "console" since. Only emulated the games for an immensely better experience.

I owned a fucking Virtual Boy. Do I really need to explain why I was disappointed?

Xnone. I bought it on, and for, the Fallout 4 release. They both sucked so bad I haven't bought a console, or Bethesda game since.

I still want the console experience though. Couch gaming, mostly all set up. I don't have the inclination to research a build, buy all the individual parts and build the thing.

I was thinking about a Beelink SER8, but the Steam Machine announced. When the steam machine releases I'll compare it to equal price point minis. Steam gets a valve bonus, plus a bonus to knowing that's the target Devs will be trying to hit.

The Switch.

Damn thing was fragile af, and they wanted to rent everything to us, no more Virtual Console no more solid hardware, they spend more money suing people for fixing it then they do on it like blocking local backup of saves so they can force a cloud sub and them still not having fixed the drifting JoyCons then charging you more than they are worth for repairs.

PS3. Coming from the PS2, the library was bland in comparison. And later on, when I got interested in console modding, the PS3 was the slowest and most cumbersome to do anything and with barely any variety of homebrew stuff. And also, I'm dreading having to replace the controller (due to the 3rd party PS button situation) and replacing the HD (due to how entangled pieces apparently are).

Later on, it'd become an overpowered PS2 console for me.

I am one of the few lucky ones to actually get an Ouya... It wasn't great.

PSP. I know now people are racing about it, but the games basically all sucked except a few and it was a pretty good emulator handheld though. But it mostly collected dust.

Probably the Switch. It's ... fine, I guess? NES? Awsome. SNES? fantastic. GB? amazing for its time. Genesis was killer. Atari 2600 was huge in its day. The switch? Meh.

It doesn't help that I'm generally unhappy with nintendo being a bunch of greedy fucks as I see it.

I wouldn't call any console I own a disappointment, even the Wii U had several games I loved and put too many hours into. But the system I ended up playing the least was the Steam Deck. It's just too bulky to feel like a proper portable, not nearly as cozy as the Nintendo handhelds I grew up on. I get some use taking it to FGC events as a monitorless setup (and I will be bringing it to Combo Breaker 2026 next week), but that's kinda all I ended up using it for.

I still don't regret buying it as the most important thing to happen to Linux gaming, but it was a system I bought to have more than to use. I later bought a Miyoo Mini Plus and ended up putting far more hours into that than I ever did the Deck. If anyone ever gets SteamOS running on a device in that size form factor, they'll get my entire bank account.

Probably the Sega 32X. The messaging around it was kind of confusing, and still being fairly young when it came out, I was expecting it to be the gateway to 32 bit gaming that I would be enjoying for years to come. I ended up getting virtua racing on it, which was better than the Genesis version, but nothing spectacular really. I also got virtua fighter, which was a genuinely good game. Almost everything else was ports of mediocre games that had already come out on the Genesis. A couple of original games like knuckles chaotix just... Kinda sucked. Then when I found out that all of the support was going behind the Saturn, and that's where all of the new and original games were going, well I just felt swindled.

Xbox. I wanted a gamecube but my parents didn't like nintendo for some reason. Now im old and i don't like nintendo for some reason, and I still don't like xbox

Probably the virtual boy. It was so cool at the time, I got Red Alert(?) and it was fantastic. Then there was like, a bowling game, and maybe a wario game? And nobody made anything else for it, and it sat in a drawer for years before my parents made me get rid of it. It could have been so good.

The Nintendo Wii.

Like so many, I fell to the marketing hype. Was completely bored of the thing after like a week. Where it was definitely some peoples cup of tea, it was most certainly not mine

I think it's the Wii for me. I always felt like the controls were too limiting have games that played well. Sure there are some good games I played, like Mario Kart Wii and Mario Galaxy, but overall I remember being disappointed with both the game selection and how bad the controls were.

(dis)honorable mention: the Switch 2, because there's nothing to play on it that I can't play better on pc+deck.

I was pretty disappointed after getting a Switch 2 when I found out that Nintendo had blocked all video streaming apps on it. Even apps like Pokemon TV, which had transferred from my Switch 1 during account migration, were blocked from opening despite being downloaded on the device.

Switch Lite. Great console, but limited in stupid ways. Why no video out?

Nintendo Switch, I should have known better. Nintendo consoles are great for kids who are new to playing games, not so much for people who have been gaming for generations.

PS Vita. It had so much promise, but the games weren’t really there and Sony kinda just forgot about it. I remember it was the first time you could stream a PS4 game to a handheld, which was novel at the time. But it never felt “good enough” and most games didn’t support it or were too finicky. If I look at my Steam Deck now, I think that’s more or less what Sony had in mind for the Vita as well

I was a bit conservative myself (or maybe lucky that neighbor kids had a 3DO and Sega CD I could try) but I did own a Sega Game Gear. That thing drank 6x AA batteries like there was no tomorrow. And the game library was very lackluster after the Sonic titles.