The Wii, easily.
I still hear to this day people believing the Wii only sold well for 2 years, despite selling about 75 million more after its first two years to become one of the highest selling home consoles in history and the top selling home console of its generation. Or that people only played Wii Sports despite nearly a billion games selling on the console, with seven games counted among the best selling home console games of all time on a single platform.
What the Wii was is the rebirth of Nintendo. The last time we saw any kind of hype resembling that of the Wii was all the way back in the lead up to the Super Mario Bros 3 launch, with shades of it in the DKC and Ocarina of Time hype. Nintendo did what was thought to be impossible, and not only came back from seeming ruin, and the end of their existence as a home console manufacturer, but they beat what was thought to be an unbeatable adversary in the form of the PlayStation brand - which, the previous generation, everyone was imitating.
The Wii is basically where Nintendo regained their mojo, so to speak. During the early generations, they were the most innovative console manufacturer around, they were the ones being copied. Then somewhere during the N64 generation, after the flub, they got gun shy and decided to stop innovating. To stop being exciting. It was a bad call because it wasn’t because of the N64 innovative features that they flubbed it but because of the use of cartridges, which both meant N64 games were ultra-compressed and lacking detail, as well as much more expensive than PSX games. The innovations, 3D advancement and analogs, were absolutely the right direction. Instead, Nintendo threw out some kids version of a PS2, and the world felt Nintendo was becoming obsolete as a console manufacturer as a result.
The Wii and DS combo delivered Nintendo from that dark time, and Nintendo had their greatest success in history during that time. The Wii and DS eventually led to the current Switch hybrid console, which is Nintendo’s most successful console ever, and on its way to becoming the most successful dedicated video game console in history… although, from a profit standpoint, I believe it’s already there (With Wii and DS in 2nd and 3rd).
Of course, with great success comes great backlash. Rewriting of history, and that hit Wii harder than most consoles (PSP is probably a distant second). Usually Nintendo benefits from historical rewrites, with Gamecube and N64 being elevated much higher than the reality of those generations. But in the case of the Wii, there are rewrites that aim to ignore the success and impact of the console, and belittle its successes. What it really was is the second coming of the NES. It brought Nintendo’s vast handheld audience (which included a lot of girls and young women) into the home console gaming sphere. It brought people like me, who hadn’t really played a lot of Nintendo games since like Goldeneye, Mario Kart 64, and Banjo Kazooie back into playing Nintendo games regularly again.
Another post on the topic that I felt was persuasive: someone posted something about the PSP being underrated because of its comparison to the DS. I think that’s a good one. Because consider that it wasn’t up against the GBA, but Nintendo’s most successful handheld the DS, and as a new entrant. That’s kind of like if the Microsoft Xbox would have sold over 80 million units against the PS2 instead of its paltry 20 million.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
