The third console curse: Which was the biggest stumble?

[Soundwave]

The funny thing about the actual Nintendo Super NES CD drive (not the Playstation variant) is Nintendo basically solved all/most of the CD issues people were bringing up.

The SNES CD drive came with a cartridge that could act as a loading buffer and thus effectively eliminating loading times. Once you took a few seconds to let world/level data load into the cartridge the rest of the game could be designed to run as quickly as a cartridge game with smart programming.

The caddy prevented scratches on the disc and also prevented piracy. It also meant it was a wholly proprietary disc format and Nintendo was free to charge whatever licensing fee they wanted.

It was stupid to not use that same design for the N64. They did all that work and for nothing. I also hope at the Nintendo Museum thing where they are showing off prototype models we actually get to finally see a real version of the SNES CD drive made by Nintendo, or maybe it's too painful a part of their history and they don't want to show it off.