Coming off the SNES I watched Nintendo's third party support die on the N64. Seeing Squaresoft go to PlayStation was massive at the time and all the RPGs followed there.
Also, the games looked awful to me then and have aged even worse. Early polygon games were like going back to Atari 2600. The only time I felt games looked good were sprites or those FMV scenes (which N64 struggled to do). I never liked the controller and once the Dual Shock came out it was night and day. it was made for Mario 64, which is great if you liked that game, but for me it remains the lone Mario main line title I do not enjoy.
Now, the N64 did have some good games, but it was like the Wii U, amazing Nintendo game followed by months of nearly no games. Those stretches really hurt the system while PlayStation seemed to be getting tons of support. Also, the games were more expensive, routinely $20 more than competition ($60 v. $40). We complain now about Watch Dogs coming late to Wii U, on the N64 it was Resident Evil 2 that came over much later and cost more on N64.
I really think we'll have this same conversation about the Wii U in a decade when it has a full slate of Nintendo games over 5-6 years the library will look good. The N64 was the beginning of a Nintendo console becoming a secondary or complementary console and no longer most gamer's primary one.
