I don't know. I seem to be up and down. It was always so amazing to visit a friends house and play Duck Hunt or Super Mario Bros. I remember watching the Mario Bros. show as well but that was around 1990 I think when I first started playing those games and just in such small doses.
Then one day, my parents surprised our family with an SNES which came with Super Mario World. I'm not even sure back then I realized that the Super Nintendo was different from the NES or realized just how new it was. Regardless, that was around 1993 and so that was the generation of games I grew up. Going to the movie store was always so amazing to look at all the different games for rent. Nintendo Power was also available at the library and it was through this and friends at school that I began my gamer education if you will.
The SNES lasted us for years. The first time I saw a 64 was at Toys R Us and they had it running with Super Mario 64. I was watching someone play the third world or so is the lagoon with the sunken ship. It was phenomenal to see a whole 3D game in action. The size of Peach's castle.
However, it would be some time before we finally had enough money to buy a 64. It was right around the time Donkey Kong 64 came out that we finally purchased it. During that time, I'd never really played the 64 so when we got it with Mario 64, it was still an amazing brand new experience. Up to that point, we'd just been renting SNES games still. Due to the time we bought the 64, there were a lot of games we never played. Also, about a year or so later, I just wasn't playing games that much. My brother was still playing regularly though and he'd rent games all the time and play them but I'd hardly watch or join in. At that point, my interests began to run more towards books and I was starting to be more interested in films and watching a lot of older movies. During that time, I saw some of my first Hitchcock movies like Rear Window and Dial M for Murder. Things like 12 Angry Men and 2001: A space odyssey. Finally watched the Star Wars movies as well.
So, when the Gamecube came out, my brother was all over such news and had shown me news about Rogue Squadron 2, I was quite interested having become a Star Wars fan suddenly. Seeing it in action at an EB Games was again, another mind blowing moment. I tried the game out and it took me a moment to get used to the controls but then I put the X-Wing in a loop and just watched the background as it showed the Death Star and then Yavin 4 and back again in this never ending loop. I felt I was flying in that game it was so real to me. Unlike the 64, we had jobs delivering papers and flyers and so we were able to save up faster for the system and bought it in Feb. 2002. After having sort of fallen away from gaming and giving it up to my brother, I decided this was a chance to start fresh and challenge his gaming superiority.
We both attacked Rogue Squadron earning medals and trying to see who could beat it first. He had an advanatage on me and was able to unlock Endurance first and even got a silver medal before finally dying in it. I soon caught up and unlocked it and then one late night, I figured out a good strategy and beat that mission for the gold. I had done it. I had beat my brother at the game. He loved Rogue Squadron for the 64 and completely aced that game and had gold all missions. I only got to the 4th mission it. But I had now beat him at his own game. However, he never went back to finish RS2. After the amount of time it had took him to get the silver medal, he just wasn't interested in having to sit and play that long to get a gold. I don't blame him really. It is a real time-waster. Yet oddly, he then began to fall away from gaming. He had bought himself a computer and was soon more interested in that and it became his interest. There were a couple more games he still played but compared to what he used to be like for gaming on the 64, he had definitely fallen away.
For me, the Gamecube was a rebirth. The controller was amazing. I credited it with helping me finally handling better in 3D space. It's like I suddenly understood the 64 controller better and how to play those older 64 games. I don't know if that had been a factor in my falling out of gaming with it but it just seemed to click in my head now. Being an adopter of the Gamecube so early on, I was able to keep up with a lot of games for it and could now start affording to buy more games instead of renting them. As such, the Gamecube is the system I ended up owning the most games for and even now, it sits second place with only the DS surpassing it. I played the heck out of a lot of GC games and adore that system the most. I have a soft spot for the SNES but the problem I have is that I've played those games so much, I'm just not interested in playing most of them anymore since I can remember everything about them. Gamecube benefits from the fact that I had so much choice at that time that I never really overplayed anything and so I still have an eagerness to replay games.
When the DS came out, I thought it was an odd device and I couldn't see how a person could look between two screens and not get lost. Still, I was impressed with the fact that a handheld could play 64 games or games in 3D. Then there was the promise that this would be Nintendo's foray into online gaming as well. Reading the features about it, there were a lot of neat things that the system had. Finally, when they released the Electric Blue DS bundled with Mario 64, I took the plunge. I got the system started and was right away impressed with the idea of a touchscreen. Playing the minigames that came with the 64 games once again amazed me at playing a game with a touchscreen. Particularly the one where you had to find a Mario, Luigi, Yoshi or Wario face among a bunch of faces of the others. Finding and tapping away at the screen was probably the last childlike wonderment I got from a game. Soon, I was racking up DS games as well and liked the fact that they were less money than console games. In fact, the DS impressed me so much that I realized I liked it more than anything consoles were offering. So many developers were willing to try new things on it and it ended up having so many different experiences and properties available to it that at times I think it is the best system Nintendo's ever released.
Surprisingly, the Wii did nothing for me. After the experience I had playing the DS for the first time, I refused to play the Wii until I finally bought and owned it for myself. I wanted it to blow me away like playing on a touchscreen for the first time. Sadly, it didn't. Maybe I overhyped myself or maybe I knew what to expect having read so many articles of people's impressions and thoughts on it. I also think it was partly because I wasn't that impressed with Wii Sports. I found it too limiting. I didn't like Tennis because there was no moving my character around the court. I just had to swing and hope. I don't think I've ever figured out Baseball yet either. Bowling was the only game I liked. Golf and boxing were just kind of meh. Then when playing other games, I found the motion control a bit annoying. Playing Mario Galaxy with the Wiimote made me wish I could have used a GC controller or that they had just assigned the shake movement a button press. It was during this time my interest in gaming began to fade more and more. I was living on my own and could play as much as I wanted but instead I was more interested now in watching movies and TV then playing games. A lot of the people I would play GC games with also started doing different things in life and so the interest of gaming fell away for them.
My interest was such that I wasn't even sure if I should get a Wii U but decided to anyways as it seemed like Nintendo was shifting away from motion controls and going with what was their strongest innovation in having a touchscreen control. I also find myself starting to wane a bit in my movie interest and TV watching has really dropped off for me. Much like when I got a Gamecube, I'm considering this as one more fresh start. But if I find myself still disinterested and not really playing much anymore, than I'm really thinking this will be it for me.
So, long story short: The Gamecube to mid-DS era would be what I consider my generation of gaming.