What are your three favourite console launch titles?

[Nu-Eclipse]

Super Mario 64 (N64)
Super Mario World (SNES)
Tetris (Gameboy)

Special mention goes to Ridge Racers (PSP) - Stunning launch game for a handheld console.

[Charlie]

Super Mario World (SFC)
Virtua Fighter (Saturn)
Mario 64 (N64)

[Grapple Convoy]

Which brings up an interesting point. Which region(s) are we using for the term "launch title"? Because the only region where Gameboy Tetris was a launch title was in Europe; the Gameboy was out in Japan and the US I believe before the game was released in those respective territories.

It was indeed. The GB launched with Super Mario Land, Alleyway and Baseball in Japan.

Ah, Super Mario Land, beautiful rendition of Super Mario Bros, but miniaturised and with more variety. That's worth a mention in this thread.

[nakamura]

Which brings up an interesting point. Which region(s) are we using for the term "launch title"? Because the only region where Gameboy Tetris was a launch title was in Europe; the Gameboy was out in Japan and the US I believe before the game was released in those respective territories.

Well as I started the topic I would just say feel free to go with any launch title. Most early titles like Tetris gained no advantage for being a later UK release so it all counts for me.

[Wil]

Super Mario Land
Super Mario World
Super Mario 64

I sense a pattern emerging.

[Kubrick]

did I see someone pick RR6? how can you pick that but not 7 0_o.

Overexposure I had played the **** out of Ridge Racers, Ridge Racers 2 & RR6 within the space of what, 18 months if you're lucky? I was pretty-much all Ridged-out by the time I got a PS3, especially when much of RR7's content was in the last one I played.

To this day I still haven't really played it much.

[Wools]

Honourable mentions have to go to Sega Rally, Ridge Racer, Tekken, Sonic Adventure, Super Monkey Ball and Project Gotham Racing 3, along with the often forgot PSP launch of WipEout Pure & Ridge Racer.

However my all time favourite belong to the following.

Sonic the Hedgehog
My first ever console at Christmas and a perfect game to go alongside it. It was the most vivid and exciting game I had ever played and stands up as one of my favourite ever 2D platformers. Its pacing was perfect, its levels were ingenious and has some of the greatest music in 16 bit history. Out of my three choices, it's one of my most played and certainly one of my fondest.

Mario 64
Still my favourite Videogame ever made and I don't think any other will replicate that feeling of initial wonder. Holding that three pronged analogue stick and looking up to that beautiful, primary coloured, 3D World for the first time.

Halo
In the same vein of Mario 64, Bungie took all the best bits of FPS's and made them for a console whilst bettering its PC counterparts. GoldenEye for the 21st century and in many ways better, it was the game that made me play Co-Op non-stop for 2 years and has never been surpassed by Bungie or any other developer.

[Brad]

Soul Calibur - DC
Mario 64 - N64
Twilight Princess - Wii

Honorable mention: Halo CE

[QualityChimp]

Pen Pen Trilcelon (Dreamcast)
Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire (PS3)
Marky Mark: Make my Video (Mega-CD)

Not really! *chortle*

I've only ever had the original Game Boy and XBox 360 at launch, with a massive 16 year gap in between. I was always a console behind.
As the C64 came out, I got a Vic20
As the SNES came out, I got a Mega Drive
As the N64 came out, I got a PlayStation
As the XBox came out, I got a PlayStation 2

It doesn't bother me though, because I got to avoid the likes of Godzilla Generations and FantaVision and started with the likes of Gran Turismo and Tomb Raider.

So to get back to the question...

Tetris (GB) (I saw the blocks falling as I closed my eyes on Christmas day from playing it for so long)
Project Gotham Racing (360) I spent hours taking photographs, looking for places I'd been in London, New York and Tokyo and strolling around my Lamborghini garage.
Call of Duty 2 (360) I'd probably not got as immersed in an FPS since Half-Life and I was using a joypad!

Was quite surprised by 1Up's feature on the worst launch titles where they slag off Super Mario Land, which I thought was astonishingly good:

If you were alive in 1989 and owned a Game Boy, you were most likely playing Tetris and rocking an awful haircut. But, aside from this brilliant pack-in, Nintendo did offer a meager selection of launch titles, the worst of these being Super Mario Land. It's a sad, strange day when a Mario title could be considered the worst of anything, but then again, Super Mario Land is a sad, strange game. The random Egyptian theme and the cheap, floaty controls made this entry in the Mario series feel more like a Chinese pirate version or a ROM hack of the original Super Mario Bros. before we even knew what either of those things were. Nintendo got their act together with future Mario Land games -- which were just as playable as their bigger Super Nintendo brothers -- but so much of the original Mario Land game feels like you're playing it in some surreal nightmare where you're more concerned about your couch coming to life and eating you than you are with those turtles that explode when jumped on. In a few years, Mario would ditch those impractical rubber balls of Mario Land for the power of fire in his portable outings, but until then, we were left with a puke-green desert romp and yet another brain-dead princess named Daisy who we assumed we'd never see again -- boy, were we wrong.

[Darwock]

The only console I've ever bought at launch was a PSP (and even then I was a month or two late) and I only got one game for it - Lumines.

I usually get the feeling I've been spared from a lot of mediocrity by not getting consoles at launch.

[Grapple Convoy]

Was quite surprised by 1Up's feature on the worst launch titles where they slag off Super Mario Land, which I thought was astonishingly good:

That's officially the most Wrong games "journalism" ever.

[Party boy]

Some great suggestions in this thread, I think I'd have to go for:-

Mario World

Mario 64

Turok...

Though Halo, Super Monkey Ball, Sonic and Daytona were all awesome too...

[nakamura]

Sonic the Hedgehog was not a launch game people.

[dataDave]

1. Super Mario World
2. Super Mario 64
3. F-Zero GBA (This edges out SNES F-Zero due to having the internet to compare times with people, and my skills were more evolved in order to appreciate some of the depth)

Ridge Racers - Probably the definitive PSP game. Nothing since has come close, for me.
VF3:tb - This was some gud **** too.

[Wools]

Sonic the Hedgehog was not a launch game people.

It was in the UK?