NES was no more a modern console then its predecessors. The Atari VCS (later known as 2600) was the first widely successful cartridge based gaming console. Before that, the firs successful home gaming device was Atari's pong, the home version of the first successful video game ever, the arcade version of Pong. There are a variety of of game devices that predate Pong, most notably the Magnavox Oddyssey (first TV game, which had all of it's games hardwired in and required overlays for different in game environments) and the first commercially released game, Spacewar. They were bothcommercial flops, but they pave the way for the industry we know today.
The Fairchild F Channel was the first cartridge based system, also a flop. The first console war was between the Atari VCS, Colecovision and Intellivision systems, as well as about a half dozen other systems (or more) that are almost too numerous to mention.
I think the Vectrex arguably had the first aproximation to the "modern" game controller, but the NES pad is what most famously spawned what is now effectively the modern gaming controller.
