Nintendo 64

I got this right when it came out. I loved the SNES, and being that this system was touted as being 3D, I was pretty excited. It didn't quite live up to the SNES, but it was a pretty decent system overall.

It is built Nintendo tough, and since it's not a portable, it won't have to stand that much abuse anyway. It is a lot less square looking than the SNES. It still uses cartridges as it's media. It also includes room for an expansion pak which is needed for some of the more memory intesive games.

The controller is the biggest downfall of the N64. It was just awkward. It had three prongs, only two of which you could use at a time. In theory this was interesting, but in practice, it was just limiting. Typically games used either the analog stick or the D-Pad, and usually it was the analog stick. This made the whole left prong essentially useless.

The game selection is not nearly as large and varied as that for the SNES, but there are still some pretty awesome games, such as Mario 64, Starfox 64, and Super Smash Bros. Note that because Square left Nintendo for Sony, there are no really good RPGs.