Most influential system (and why)

[BraLoD]

DekutheEvilClown said:

The NES established the modern console effectively.

The PS1 completely smashed down the social barriers and massively expanded the market,

The Atari 2600 did it, not the NES. It was already a 30M console before.

The NES got gaming back on its feet after the Atari 2600 failed to find a balance between shitty games and moving fowards.

But Atari was the one that did it all first. Console gaming already a strong gen before the NES. Even the gaming mascot, we already had Pac-Man, which was HUGE in arcades and came to the Atari 2600 before the NES as well.

Even as I consider pre-NES games to be mostly vastly inferior to post-NES ones, we already had even Nintendo games on arcaded before too, Mario and Donkey Kong were born there. Punch-out too.