PixlBit

I got a charcoal-black GC for my birthday. It's one of my favorite systems ever even now. The Nintendo 64 let me down, so the Gamecube had a lot to do to regain my trust. And it delivered. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess were two of the most amazing games I'd ever played, and Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4 signaled the return of action games.  Plus, it was great to have strong RPGs on a Nintendo system again. Tales of Symphonia, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Skies of Arcadia, Baten Kaitos, and Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life were my favorites, and I also enjoyed playing FF Crystal Chronicles with a friend. The Gamecube version of Soulcalibur II with Link was a nice little bonus. Some years I played Gamecube and bought more games than I did for PS2.  

We're getting a lot of these games released on the Switch this year. It's 2004 all over again.

Final Fantasy X was my first PS2 game. There were so many amazing RPGs on it, but it also seemed like action games also made a big comeback on PS2, thanks to games like Devil May Cry. Grand Theft Auto III and Vice Ciry were also fun. I played Dragon Quest VIII with my wife, got FFXII the next year. My last PS2 game was Sakura Wars, bought in March 2010. 

I think the PS2 would have crushed it anyway because of the incredibly strong position Sony was in when the PS1 launched. I loved the Gamecube, but Nintendo was in a weakened position and still struggled despite stronger Japanese support. Microsoft was finally getting a long-overdue lesson that throwing its overflowing checkbook at everything didn't guarantee domination. (Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be a lesson that they internalized.)

Even setting aside DVDs, the PS2 was pretty much the default choice, though the DVDs did help at first. I feel that being the lead console for the unexpected blockbuster Grand Theft Auto franchise was what helped Sony in the long run.

Soulcalibur and DOA 2 were very nice-looking games. On launch day, there were two lines at Software Etc. One line was for the Dreamcast, the other for Final Fantasy VIII for PS1. I was in the FFVIII line. 

I got Skies of Arcadia Legends as my second Gamecube game. My original copy got lost, but I have since obtained another copy.. Grandia II, the Dreamcast's other notable RPG, I played on PS2 and now own for the Switch.

I was disappointed in the lack of RPGs, top tier fighting games, and Metroid for the N64, but Super Mario 64 and the Zeldas were amazing, and the N64 far outclassed the PS1 in first-person shooters.  In addition to Goldeneye, I was a fan of Doom 64 and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, both of which I have on Switch.

I've tried it, but I'd honestly rather just play the games it attempts to emulate. 

The PS1 was also my first non-Nintendo system since Atari days. In my case, though, it was because the Nintendo 64 had an almost complete lack of RPGs, my favorite genre. When you're doing cover features on Quest 64 because you have no other RPGs to show, you've lost the plot. The lack of any high-quality fighting games on the level of Tekken or Virtua Fighter didn't help. 

My PS1 was the first thing I bought with my first paycheck from a regular scheduled job at Wendy's, and the first game I bought for it was Final Fantasy VII. I bought a butt-ton of RPGs over the next couple of years, with Lunar 2 being the last PS1 RPG I bought before I upgraded to PS2.  I still have both Lunars for PS1 in their original boxes with all the feelies.

These days, Windows PCs that aren't complete potatoes cost as much as some Macs, while even the low-end Macbooks are still very capable machines compared to low-end PCs. That helped facilitate my switch.

I remember my parents played Myst and The 7th Guest together. I played them a bit, but I was more interested in Zelda and Final Fantasy on SNES. I did play Doom, Wolfenstein, and Heretic/Hexen with my dad, though.

My SNES came bundled with A Link to the Past, which was the most amazing game I'd ever played up to that point. I also got Mortal Kombat II, which was one of the best arcade to home conversions pre-PS1, and was a harbinger of Nintendo's reversal of its censorship policies. It was ironically released 1 week before the industry-wide ESRB ratings system went live, so it just had a small warning label on the front of the box.  Nintendo had tried to be family friendly in response to Congressional threats to regulate the video game industry, but they lost big on the first MK game. 

Super Metroid was another near-perfect SNES game, still arguably my favorite side-scroller of all time. I was disappointed when Nintendo never made a Metroid game for the N64.