Not counting PC since that is easy mode, I would probably say the Wii for me personally. I have had: n64, gc, gameboy (pocket, color, and advance), DS, and ps2 besides the Wii. But I think I put more hours on the Wii than any of those. Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Zelda Twilight Princess, smash bros, and mario kart wii. Very solid catalogue. Plus it had the virtual console and was what allowed me to play some old classics like Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country 2. I never had a snes growing up so that was pretty huge to me. I even cut my teeth on some FPS games like call of duty, world at war and conduit lol.

The Wii might be cheating a bit too since a lot of my fondness for it does come from its backwards compatibility with the Gamecube, and gamecube games were still very relavent during that time. Metroid Prime 1 and 2, part of the Trilogy of course. Smash bros melee. I even had the Zelda collectors edition disc which had GC ports of zelda OOT and MM.

So yeah Wii was definitely kind of cheating since in some ways in my nostalgia I mix it up with basically every Nintendo system that came before it heh. But even on its own it had a solid lineup IMO.

Probably the only good mobile games are ports of console/pc games. There are some surprising ports, like the KOTOR games, medieval 2 total war, and lots of square enix’s older catalogue. Fortnite, genshin impact, and pubg are probably the biggest games on mobile right now. But yeah nothing really worth going out of your way for, or even bother with at all, if you already have a gaming pc or steam deck.

Maayybee the only real usecase is if you are going backpacking and want to bring some games into the backcountry with you without lugging a steam deck along lol. Digital board games like Root and Wingspan would work well there and have pass around modes if you are with friends. Just remember to bring a battery bank with you, or a portable solar cell.

Yeah, it is basically impossible for me to use the stock switch for anything more than an hour handheld with my hands cramping up. I ended up having to get some rubber grips with a palm bumpout in order for it to be remotely comfortable.

The steam deck is a huge upgrade in that regard. Significantly more comfortable to hold. Plus, the steam deck is capable of emulating pretty much anything on the switch full speed :). On top of all of that is barely even costs more lol.

Out of the 2D metroids, I think Super Metroid still takes the cake. Dread and 2r are still pretty good but there is a reason why super metroid game design gets taught in college game design courses. One of the best games of all time probably, still trades blows even with good modern metroidvanias. I played it for the first on in the Wii back when I was in high school so this isn’t even nostalgia talking, I even played it after the Prime games.

For the 3d ones, both Prime and Prime 2 are classics imo. Just the sheer immersion is something you don’t find too often in video games. Prime 2 gets a lot of flak for the ammo system and dark world constant damage, but I think those were useful improvements to balance the game since Prime 1 is quite an easy game. They do add a decent amount of friction to traversing the world and makes the dark world feel actually dangerous to be in. Prime 3 was a bit more forgettable but still not a bad game.

Holy shit does that thing have functionality. Elden Ring split screen with only one copy? Deep Rock Galactic split screen? Dark Souls 1 and 3? Sign me the fuck up!

Wingspan is a very solid port of the board game.

Since Wingspan is on there, why not put tabletop simulator on there too? It has got pretty much the same set of features in regards to multiplayer.

On that note, both of these games also have a “pass controller around” feature as well.

Eh, this doesn’t sound anywhere near as impressive as what Valve did for Proton itself. First of all, Proton is actually good to the point where native linux ports aren’t even needed (although appreciated), its not just for dev prototyping.

And as the top post said, Apple’s fork of CrossOver is not public. Pretty expected from Apple by this point.

Diablo 2 has aged fantastically. It is still pretty much the king of the genre despite being 23 years old. D2R did a lot to bring the visuals up to date. Unlike other ARPGs, you can actually beat the game pretty fast if you know what you are doing. It’s a very efficient and clean game design. The game is a blast to play casually.

Always a bit of a turn off for me. Ross (guy that did Gordon’s mind and game dungeon) has a pretty good series of videos about why online only games are bad because they can be killed. He really hates the idea of killing games, and I agree with him.

Not only can the game get killed, however, but it can be changed fundamentally in a bad way. Balance can be tweaked for the worse etc. And unlike single player games you can’t revert back to a previous version.

I also hate that LAN play has been pretty much stripped from the PC game landscape. LAN parties during college were the shit.