Game consoles from the ‘80s to early 2000s defined entire generations of gamers. The NES dropped in ‘85 and basically saved the industry after the ‘83 crash—Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Mega Man—all iconic. Sega fired back with the Genesis in ‘89 and gave us Sonic, while Nintendo came back strong with the SNES in ‘91. Then 3D hit—Sony launched the PlayStation in ‘95, and everything changed. Discs replaced cartridges, and games got bigger, deeper, and way more cinematic. N64 dropped in ‘96 with Mario 64 and GoldenEye, and Dreamcast showed up in ‘99 ahead of its time—online play, VMUs, Crazy Taxi. By the early 2000s, you had the PlayStation 2 (2000) taking over, Xbox launching in 2001 with Halo, and GameCube bringing the last of Nintendo’s mini-disc era. If you gamed through this era, you watched the leap from 8-bit to full-blown 3D worlds—and it hit different.