Dear Future Gamer

Firstly, to get any accusations of bias out of the way, I own a PlayStation, N64 and Pentium III, not to mention a collection of older systems from Vectrex to SNES. I think I've played my share of games, and while I love MGS and the Tekken series on PlayStation, and Half-Life and Midtown Madness on PC, I undeniably spend most game-playing time on the N64. To add insult to injury, the SNES still eats up a fair amount of time too, mainly thanks to Mr Miyamoto's work.

The PlayStation is clearly a greater commercial success, but if you judge success by achievement in terms of playability, control, depth, imagination and plain fun, I would have to go with the big N. Besides, I wouldn't really call the N64 a failure (a dismal 2.2 million?). It's probably done at least as well as the SNES in its time. The PlayStation has just expanded the market enormously.

And to put this all into perspective, what about the humble Game Boy? I could be wrong, but couldn't you argue that this a more successful machine because of its incredible lifespan? This whole debate seems to boil down to a financial version of the old 'my machine is better than yours' nonsense. Why can't these people simply love games?

Anyway, to get the most out of gaming you'll have to go multiformat, but if that isn't an option I would take the Nintendo.

Rob Noordhoek

FG: There's no denying that the N64 has seen some of the greatest videogames of all time released for it, and Rob's also right in stating that to get the most out of videogaming you have to go multiformat. People who can't see that each machine has its advantages and disadvantages are simply short-sighted.