Most influential system (and why)

[Soundwave]

Chrkeller said:

HoloDust said:

True, N64 was first console to feature all those. It did however launch almost 2 years after PS1 and by that time there were already consumer GPUs with those features.

Yeah, consoles typically borrow heavily from PC.  Which is fine, building on existing ideas is smart.  

Overall Nintendo has had a lot of influence on gaming, same with Sony.  Neither one should be downplayed.

The N64 chip is from 1993/1994 (design wise), it just took several years for Nintendo to make games for it, it didn't copy PC GPU architecture, there was no GPU architecture to even really copy from to begin with. It's a stripped down SGI workstation supercomputer architecture (the workstations that made the CGI for movies like Jurassic Park and Terminator 2) which was not consumer level hardware for that time. 

Nintendo's mistake was using cartridges, otherwise it would have wiped the floor with the Playstation (Mario 64 + Zelda: OoT + GoldenEye 007 + Final Fantasy VII + Resident Evil etc. etc. would be curtains for Sony).

Last edited by Soundwave - on 21 February 2026