The vast majority (though not all) of my consoles were gifts from others as I've rather made a habit of being broke for most of my life. I'll list them in the order I got them.
N64: My first ever console, I don't remember ever getting it as such, I've simply always had it for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are of Mario Kart 64, Donkey Kong 64 and of course Ocarina of Time. I shared the console with my two older siblings and after they became adults and moved out they left it with me. I'm thrilled to say I still have that same unit to this day along with all the controllers and accessories we had back then and most of the games we had (though my brother did sell a few, specifically GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, Resident Evil 2, Diddy Kong Racing and 1080 Snowboarding if memory serves. I have since managed to collect all of those again except for RE2)
GameBoy Advance: This one is a bit fuzzy for me as I was still rather young but I'm inclined to believe I got it for Christmas in 2004. All the other children I hung out with at school had had GBAs for a while already and I had been begging my parents to get me one for the better part of a year. Eventually in the winter we went out to Walmart and bought one with three games but of course I wasn't allowed to open it until Christmas. The three games were Super Mario World (Super Mario Advance 2), Pac-Man Collection and Spy Kids 3. My collection would later expand but those were the first three. I technically still have the Flame Red SP but I don't really use it these days seeing as I have a GameBoy Player for my GameCube that I much prefer. Sadly I recently lost all of my cartridges while moving and found myself slowly but surely rebuilding my collection (thank God for eBay).
Wii: I remember getting this one under the tree one Christmas in either 2006 or 2007, I'm not entirely sure which. I remember getting Twilight Princess from my brother the very same Christmas, faffing about with Wii Sports for a while and popping Twilight Princess in after my family had retired to the kitchen once the novelty of the motion controls had worn off for them. I'm not certain but I may have also gotten LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga at the same time but I can't say with absolute certainty. Today my Wii library is rather limited. I've mostly lost interest in all the motion-controlled fitness games and the like that made up the majority of my collection, the only ones I really play on Wii anymore are Mario Kart Wii (which I interestingly didn't actually own until rather recently) and LEGO Star Wars. I still have all the rest but they're tucked away in a box somewhere in my house
DS: And the fuzzy memories keep on coming, for some reason getting more and more vague as they become more recent. I reckon I got this one in or around 2007, possibly for my birthday. I remember getting Diddy Kong Racing DS with it and I remember sitting in the living room with my sister while she taught just what the hell a "stylus" was. (Now if she can just teach me what a "thumb" is we'll be golden.) I can't quite remember how I got most of the rest of my DS collection but I still have them at the very least. Sadly the black DS Lite was not long for this world as the wear and tear of excessive use (and being left at somebody else's house overnight to fend for itself) took its toll and rendered the D-Pad and R-Button nigh on useless in 2010 I believe. Thankfully though her relief was not far off.
3DS: Now I'm starting to remember more clearly. My birthday in spring of 2011, I remember my father got me Rayman 3D for the system as I was (and still am) a huge fan of Rayman 2 on the N64 and loved the idea of having a port of the game on the go with analog controls. That was my first game for the system (if you don't count Face Raiders, Find Mii and the like), followed shortly by my old love reborn anew, Ocarina of Time 3D. I still have the vast majority of my games for this system as well, and in fact my 3DS library is one of my largest, not even counting digital titles or Virtual Console releases. Of course having gotten the 3DS when I did meant that I qualified for the Ambassador Program which strengthened my library significantly. This system however holds the distinction of being the only one I do not still own (sort of). In 2015 I got the New 3DS XL in red and decided to give the old aqua blue 3DS to a very good friend of mine after I had finished transferring my data and software. She still has the system to this day and I still have my red New 3DS XL.
Wii U: Another very clear one, Christmas of 2012. I remember begging my parents for it after reading about it online back when it was still being called "Project Cafe" and I also seem to recall seeing a preview of it in Nintendo Power (Issue #269 if memory serves). I got the deluxe edition and I remember getting New Super Mario Bros. U from my mother's boyfriend at the time. In addition, my father (knowing my love of the Bond franchise which began with GoldenEye on the N64). My library was and is to this day rather small for this system unfortunately and I mostly only play Wind Waker HD, Twilight Princess HD and Breath of the Wild on it these days.
PS1: Funnily enough the first console I ever bought with my own money wasn't even from my favorite company. I remember when I was a wee lad my sister's boyfriend brought his OG PS1 over to the house along with a few games (Crash 3, Spyro, CTR, The Italian Job being the ones I remember). I remember he left it there with us for some time and I reckon I probably played it the most out of all of us. In fact, in the time that I had with the console I managed to beat Crash 3, collect all the colored gems, collect 10 relics and even discovered two of the hidden levels (other than the ones you unlock with the relics). Fast forward to 2016 (if memory serves), I found myself waddling into a local game store with about $70 in my wallet and a particular goal in mind: I was going to buy my very own PS1. I walked away with the smaller revised model with a memory card and a clear red controller for $40 and a copy of Crash 3 for $30. I have since also collected Crash Team Racing again as well.
Nintendo Switch: Having been eagerly anticipating the Switch since the days when we called it the "NX", one can imagine I'd have slain to get my hands on it day one but alas, it wasn't in the cards. I was between jobs at the time and thus didn't have enough money to buy one for myself. That said, I did have enough money to get something else that dropped the same day: Breath of the Wild. I had reserved a Wii U copy for myself at EB Games at the mall and when I went in to pick it up there was a young gentleman who was showing off his own Switch in the store. I remember asking him if I could give it a try and he said to go right ahead. I took up the JoyCons and started waddling around the Great Plateau naked as a newborn with a woodcutter's axe strapped to my back. I thanked him for the brief experience and went home to play Breath of the Wild on my own console, though I still wanted the Switch badly, knowing fully well just what kind of software was in store. Needless to say that when I woke up on Christmas morning that same year to a shiny new Nintendo Switch under the tree from my father (along with a copy of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle), I was thrilled. Later that same day we had gone to visit my aunt and my grandmother and while I was there I was gifted a $50 eShop gift card. I hurriedly connected the Switch to their WiFi and bought Yooka-Laylee for myself and spent the rest of my Christmas enjoying both games.
GameCube: By this point (Early spring of 2021) I had moved out from my father's house and had moved in with my girlfriend an hour away to help her take care of her ailing father. One day I was scrolling through the classifieds online and happened upon a pair of listings that I just couldn't refuse. I had wanted a GameCube with a GameBoy Player for some time but they were always over my budget so when I saw a GameCube up for $80 and a GameBoy Player with the startup disc for $160 I jumped at the opportunity. The lady and I decided to split the bill seeing as we'd both get plenty of use out of such hardware and so later that week we rolled out to town to pick them up. She had never had a GameBoy Advance and my GBA charger had crapped out so it provided me with an opportunity to relive a good few childhood memories and to even share them with my girlfriend (who managed to beat A Link to the Past ahead of me, the legend that she is). Having always wanted a GameCube but never having owned one I was pleased to finally be able to add one to my collection, even if I was about 20 years late.
PS2: And once again I found myself scrolling through the classifieds in the winter of 2021 and happened upon another Gen 6 console that had eluded me for so long, though unlike the GameCube the PS2 had never really been on my radar until I got into Castlevania and wanted badly to try Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness. In addition, I wanted something in my game room that I could play DVDs on. (My laptop wasn't really cutting it). I spotted a PS2 with a few controllers and games (Including Guitar Hero 3 and a guitar controller for the system, a game I had loved on the Wii when I was wee). However, there was a small complication: On the day when I was supposed to go and make the exchange I found myself stuck at home with no ride out and the seller was an hour away by car. I hated to ask him but I had no choice. I pulled out my phone and dialed the man, the myth, the legend, my father. It was thankfully after he got off work and he was his usual saintly self and really came through for me in the end. He picked up the console for me and I reimbursed him when he arrived.
If there's a lesson to be taken from all of this it's that my father is way cooler than I am and I owe an alarmingly large chunk of my collection of games and consoles to him.
