1. SNES
2. Wii
3. NES
4. N64
I think the Wii U has the potential to rank anywhere in the top 3. Despite some weak sales on the home continent, it is off to an overall very strong start; stronger than any Nintendo console outside of the Wii.
SNES. I had to mark as first, because the 16-but generation came out with so many timeless games that no other generation could match. While the Mega Drive was arguably the better console for the first bit, something happened and Sega just sort of fizzled out after DKC came out on the SNES. The SNES took what should have been the twilight years of the console's life and instead turned it into an era of unprecedented high quality gaming, it was as though a new generation had begun without even requiring new hardware - although RARE had managed to render 24-bit sprites on a 16-bit console.
The PSX seemed much more like the successor to that late era of the SNES and also the Mega Drive, all in one. The N64 marked a steep decline in all things EXCEPT Nintendo and RARE who still managed to put out amazing games. Then Nintendo just seemed to fade away and vanish during this era.
I put the Wii in second because it was ultimately the Renaisance of Nintendo, and turned out to be a far more successful era than any they had ever achieved before. It was a bright light after a long period of darkness, decline, and failure for Nintendo. It is hard to really decide between SNES and Wii, since the Wii did have a few strong RPGs in its tail end like the SNES (although the SNES had several times more), and it did have Mario Galaxy which was their masterpiece. Ultimately, it is that the generation began stronger than it ended on Wii, and SNES just had more strong titles in the end than the Wii did. Right at the end of the generation, there was: Harvest Moon, DKC3, Terranigma, Kirby Superstar and more, it went out strong - the Wii just didn't.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
