Collider just put together a ranking of the ten best fifth generation consoles, and I'll admit it: any list that forces me to think about the N64 versus the PlayStation again is going to start a fight in my head that never ends. Those two are the heavy hitters of the era by any measure, and Collider leans on them accordingly.

The fifth generation, roughly the mid-1990s, is where 3D gaming was born. Before that we were sprites and Mode 7 and clever tricks. After it, nothing was the same. The PlayStation brought CDs into the living room and built a library so deep I was still importing stuff for it years later. The N64 gave us Mario 64 and Ocarina, the two games that wrote the grammar of 3D movement and lock-on combat every action game still uses today. Ranking those two against each other is basically the gaming version of vinyl versus CD, and I've been arguing about it since the Clinton administration.

Where these lists get interesting is further down. The Saturn launched in Japan in 1994 and hit North America in 1995, and it never matched the PlayStation's sales in the West despite a devoted following. The machine deserved better. If you spent any time with one, you know the library had real teeth, and the people who loved it really loved it. Sega fans have spent three decades being right about games and wrong about market share.

Then you get the long tail, the machines people forget existed. Every fifth generation ranking has to grapple with the gambles that didn't pay, and ranking them is really ranking flavors of noble failure. A full ten-console list means the back half is a museum of weird ambitions, which honestly is where I have the most fun. Have you ever actually gone back and played the losers of that era? Some of them hold up better than the sales charts suggested.

Looking at the era as a whole, I keep coming back to how much the hardware choices mattered. Cartridge versus disc, 2D versus 3D, Rumble Pak versus nothing. This was the last generation where the physical format genuinely shaped what kinds of games could exist, and every choice cut off whole genres and created new ones. Nina and I have a running argument about where Final Fantasy's soul lives, single-player versus XIV, and both of our positions exist because of decisions studios made during this era.

Rankings like this are ultimately argument starters, not settle-ers. Go read Collider's full list, then argue with it. My only warning: whatever lands at number three, the comments section is going to get ugly, and I'll probably be in it.