1983-1993. The first golden age of Nintendo, and the irrelevancy of clowns like Atari, Coleco, and Mattel. Also before a bunch of fruitcakes tried and failed to launch a glut of unsuccessful "Multimedia consoles".

1982-1992: MicroProse's independent years. Some of the finest games came from this golden child of a company. Like Civilization.

Edit: I'm going to be honest, I think 5 years is a better space; technology frequently outpaced itself within a short time.

1980-1989
1990-1999
2010-2019
2000-2009

1990-1999: The bulk of my gaming time took place during this decade and the one that followed after that, when lots of my favourite games appeared on the scene.

2000-2009: Following the 90s, this decade offered more games to be added in my favourite list.

2010-2019: Except for a handful of really good games such as Mass Effect 2, Bioshock Infinite, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and maybe some more, nothing else happened that piqued my interest in the long run when it comes to AAA games. In the end, I found my niche in the indie scene; some really good games were offered during this period.

* As for 1980-1989: I don't have significant ties with this decade when it comes to PC gaming, though I used to love arcade games back then.

i'm not so sure what everyone's beat is against the period 2000-2010

thank god we have galaxy that allows for the quick rearrangement of your whole library to see which games you have bought from that period

first that springs to mind is Dragon Age Origins ...
Bejeweled 3
The Kings Crusade
Sword of the Stars
Batman Arkham Asylum
( command and conquer 4 trolol )
Metro 2033
Supreme Commander 1 & 2
Mass Effect 1 & 2
Warhammer 40 Dawn of War 1 & 2
Sins of a Solar Empire
Kings Bounty ( some episodes )
Gratuitous Space Battles
AI war fleet command
Majesty 2
Fallout 3
Trine
Overlord
The last Remnant
Anno 1404
Civ IV
DrakenSang
Fantasy Wars
Fear
The Witcher
CIVCITY ROME <----------------
Company of Heroes
Commmand and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars
Total War Rome
Total War Medieval II
Heroes of Might and Magic V
Disciples II
Star Wolves
Dungeon Siege II
Jade Empire
Darwinia
Kotor
republic commando ( love the new disney thing going on btw )
Nexus the Jupiter Incident
Heroes of Might and Magic IV
Trails in the Sky the legend of heroes
command and conquer Generals
Deus Ex
Simcity 2000
Baldurs Gate 2
and probably some more i used to had on disc .. only one that comes to mind is Freelancer
It is granted that what 2000-2010 tried to do became a lot better in 2010-2020 but we did see the start of some nice franchises

The 90s, for sure. 1991 saw the release of the SNES, which is the best games console ever created and hosted at least 3 of my top 10 games of all time. 1994 saw the release of the first playstation, which was alright ;-) . Probably 7 or 8 of my top 10 games of all time are from the 90s.

The transition from 2D to 3D during the decade led to a huge explosion of innovation and creativity in games. Yes, 2000-2009 started strong, with the creative momentum from the 90s, but imo it finished much weaker; saw the introduction of online DRM; saw the rise of large corporate takeover/dumbing down of big franchises; the shift towards console casualization of games, with the PC often getting lazy ports of console versions, etc.

The past decade has been one of the weakest yet. So little true innovation and overall even backsliding in many areas other than graphics: AI, writing, level design, gameplay ... indie and small dev games have been the only saving grace and our only hope!

The 90s. Is not even comparable. The best consoles (NES was still relevant, the SNES, N64 and PS1 where rocking the decade), there were arcades around, some of the biggest franchises ever started in that decade, and we had CRTs (yes, I know, heavy and took way too much space, but the image quality was way better than that of LEDs by being analogue and not digital so no pixel-perfect problems with resolutions). Also, the games had COLORS, and there was way more experimentation in gameplay.

I haven't put forth a ranking yet but for me, I would say the Scheme client that led to the near-total DRMification of PC gaming (and contributed greatly to the takeover of DRM/digital/now streaming in gaming and media as a whole) automatically makes that period the worst.

And I guess here's a reason for the 2010-2019 to join 2000-2010 at the bottom, lol.

I can't really put them into any order, it would feel too arbitrary to me. I can find enough great games and duds in all of these decades. 80s would probably my least favorite decade now in hindsight, since the games were still comparatively simple in gameplay and graphics, especially on PC, but all other decades are equally great to me. I don't really care about what EA, Ubisoft etc. do, if there are enough alternatives, and 2010-2019 was an awesome decade for indie games and AA studios. And my favorite time is now because it gives me access to 40 years of gaming history without me having to spend a fortune on it.

1990-2003 > the golden age of classics on both console and pc. Still a bit clunky and experimental, but original and fun even nowadays.
2004-2014 > the age of Steam? Better acessibility, prices, tech, UIs, but a bit less interesting overall.
1985-1989 > early platformers, RPGs and point & click. Strong on nostalgia for a few titles, but maybe too basic for the most part.
2015-20XX > the age of mobile games, lootboxes and microtransactions. Luckily some indies still save the day.. for now.
1975-1984 > important period, but too primitive for me.

Right now. Because I still have the previous. It's nice and compounding that way. And lots of great stuff continues to come out (and UI/UX, along with difficulty options and built-in customizations goes a long way). We just don't get anything even approaching decent from the mass-market-targeted sector.

Overall if are picking a year range, it can't include 2004, which was a disastrous year -- probably the most disastrous ever (with the possible exception of 1982). That's the year the Internet truly showed its place to ruin things, with the release of WoW and Half-Life 2.

So I guess I'm saying '93-'03.

Favorite gaming decade... one has to assume one had decent access to said games... I have a lot of memories from my Atari800XL which isn't part of the consoles (not really) and a bit less so on others so let's see...

Our list is almost the same... wow...

2000-2009 - When i had my own consoles. 360 and PS3, PS2 and Gamecube, the most games decent prices, and many dozens of hours playing a single game or multiple games.

1980-1989 - NES with tmnt, but mostly it's the Atari800 as that's all i had... and my dad's stack of disks. He effectively abandoned the Atari in favor of the IBM MS-DOS systems. Who wouldn't want to do everything on a 40x24 display console with 320x192 display at 1.7 Mhz and program in BASIC?

1990-1999 - SNES/Genesis, more emulation at the time (zsnes), still played Streetfighter and MMX, Shadowrun, chronotrigger... Brainlord... DOOM and Wolfenstein3D

2010-2019 - remakes... everywhere remakes... not that much new coming out. Oh yeah NEIR, loved that game but otherwise can't say much there i like got or played. Yeah got into steam/GoG at this point and got a decent machine, but more flashy lights isn't the same...

hmm yea, but maybe it was more of a expected reaction against the online wild wild west behavior then actually aimed at normal consumers, gamers... still point taken ..

this one right now - as I play all the other games made before and I can good new games as well.

edit - or to put it more precise, i don't really have one, as there have been some good games and many bad games in every single decade I have played them (I started gaming in the early 70's, so getting close to 5 decades now... and I suddenly feel very old)

1990-1999 I consider this one the Golden Age of PC Gaming. Also the Glorious Console War Between Nintendo and Sega. Like previous posters said, lots of things were happening, It was a booming decade. I played lots of PC and NES. My best friend had SNES and we played SNES sports together, Super Mario World/ Karts. Too many to list here.
2000-2009: PS2 Era. I played quite a bit of Final Fantasy, Xenosaga series. I bought my own PS2 and and it still works 20 years later! Yay for the Elder Scrolls on PC, also.
2010-2019 Not much happening here for me. I'm pretty much playing previous games.
1980-1989 I played Atari before begging parents for NES. Pac-Man, Pole Position, Bezerker.