At some point, all consoles will be retro consoles :p

!Gameboy Advance, just so many great games I'm still to play!<

Mega Drive

I still have mine.

ColecoVision.

OG Xbox with the OG Blade UI and an OG Full Sized controller. Modded and loaded with emulators will it play nearly anything.

GBA SP

I love gaming on the go so I'll put in a vote for the GBA, which has quite a few NES and SNES conversions.as well as soke great games in it's own right

Pong machine.

TurboGrafx 16 baby...

By my definition, the Vita is Retro. In which case that since it can emulate everything I want to play and more.

If I have to go pre 2010 probably a DS or PSP due to the vast library of games I like

Pre 2000... PlayStation 1 or Super Nintendo leaning heavily on PlayStation

Sega Saturn or PlayStation 2. I’m mainly a STG/shoot’em’up player and those two consoles have a ton of them. If forced to choose between the two, PS2 edges out on top because of Dodonpachi Daioujou which I consider to be perfection.

Wii U is probably the safest bet as it can natively play GameCube and Wii games with easy emulation for the rest of the systems.

I'd say the gamecube for smash melee mostly, but the first Wii was backwards compatible so there's literally no downsides to that over GameCube.

At first I was going to say SNES, since I did not own one as a kid and I'd have the chance to play all the 16-bit games I missed, but instead I'm going to say PS1. The classic SNES games are being re-released in various services or packs including Switch Online in their original form and if push comes to shove SNES emulation has been quite good for a long time. I've played even less PS1 and it has a huge library full of "hidden gems" and classics in all sorts of genres, many of which may never see a re-release on retro consoles or services. Just pick a type of game you want, the PS1 probably has it, something that even the SNES may not be able to say.