SNES isn't bad either, because of many classics like Super Mario World and Zelda Alttp. But N64 seems unbeatable.
Let's do some maths (I fucking love maths) in the top 15 ( http://www.speedrun.com/games#mostpopular ) (I am considering only speedrun.com so technically my maths are false because MetroidSpeedruns are important SNES speed community) : N64 : OOT + SM64 + MM + Banjo Kazooie = 960 + 710 + 210 + 185 = 2065 SNES : SMW + Alttp + SMW2 = 215 + 205 + 180 + Metroids = 600 + Metroids If there were more than 1465 runners in Metroids, SNES would win, but I doubt it will ever happen.
I would say the best consoles for speedrun select-able games would be between the PS1 and N64 because they have allot of great games allot of us enjoyed allot of, most of the games are great for running because they even to date are still finding lots of interesting glitches/tricks and better routing options for allot of the games that are and are not popular.
If you thinking of a more recent Console I have my vote of the 360 as it has the current largest library of games of this recent age. I currently own and run games from the following consoles: 360,Ps4,GC,PS1 and PC.
I realize this doesn't really say much about their popularity as such, but here's a list of games per platform on the site (as of 2 months ago):
PC has a lot of games, but not every PC games has a lot of runners. There are three main reasons for this :
- Obscure/Indie PC games: Games that are in the deep of Steam Store or indie websites
- Memes games : Games that are made just for fun/learning to code are usually short and not very ran
- Fangames "The Guy" : There aren't that much runners in every fangames (maybe Boshy)
When I was a kid, I grew up with only a computer, I didn't have any console and thankfully there are a lot of PC games to enjoy and to run. Also emulators are a great way to run console games.