I vote for the NES - Had all the great Nintendo games plus pretty much 100% 3rd party support.

SNES is an amazing console but it was that generation that Sega started to take support and market share away from Nintendo. E.g. Sega had their own Probotector/Contra and Castlevania games.

N64 imo was Nintendo at their peak as a developer, the games they made for this console were truely amazing so it deserves a mention for that. However, aside from Rare's efforts the only other decent games for the machine could probably be counted on one hand.

These 3 consoles along with the PSone and MegaDrive/Genesis are my favourite 5 consoles ever and I doubt that will ever change.

All votes for the WiiU should be dismissed, its not even a month old!

My childhood was awesome because of snes. And I skipped N64 because all my friends played PS1. GC and Wii is cool console but not as great as Snes. Idk about wiiu because i only had for a month, and I only had 3 games. So I hope wiiu can give me a great time at least as great as snes era.

Technically, every N64 game was arguably better than the Snes counterpart.  Hell, if Quest 64 released for the Snes, people would have hailed it as the best game, ever.  But, was F-Zero X better than F-Zero in it's time?

And what the hell do you mean "What are you smoking D21!?"  You gave it to me!  Hell, we smoked it together!!

Also, I respect the Nes and all of the awesomeness it brought with it. It was the foundation for many things we have today. Most of the games I played in the Atari games were pretty mindless, and didn't have an actual ending (Honestly, NONE of the games I played in the Atari days had an ending!). The Nes had games with cutscenes, music that fit the mood, endings, tutorials, etc. and it was home to many of today's biggest name franchises like Metal Gear (Began on the MSX. I know. Shut the fuck up.), Castlevania, Final Fantasy, etc.

Still, I felt like the Nes was unrefined. The games were great for their time but, even then, you knew the hardware wasn't enough to deliver the experience the developers were trying to send. Limited animations, screens full of glitches and slowdown, small worlds. It was great being a pioneer as developers ventured into new territory but the Snes was the one that gave them the goods. You saw an 8-Bit character die and it was comical. Your imagination had to do too much of the leg work. You saw a 16-Bit character die and you were hurt. You saw Earthworm Jim do something comical, and it was funny. The animations were able to pull of the effect. 8-Bit just didn't have the capability to immerse you like 16-Bit and beyond could.

Just like I'd choose the PS2 over the PS1, I have to go with the refined console over the more "raw" console.

You dont have to tell me man, i never owned one perse, but i did enjoy playing my uncle's. these young whippersnaps dont know what the hell they are talking about, but seriously what ya gonna do?

this is one thing that ign got right

http://www.ign.com/top-25-consoles/1.html

The Wii U should not be on this list, it is way to early to judge it wii u is only out for a month and has almost no games till now. It is ridiculous that there are so many fanboys voting for the WiiU this console has like 3 Games an non of this games is really awesome all mediocre, compare this to a SNES alone with all its awesome JRPGs FF6, CHrono Trigger or Terranigma and all its other aweome Games, there you can see where the Fanboys are all that vote for Wii U just want defend Nintendo and there latest console.

Instead of the Wii U Nintendos Handhelds should be choices here, many of the best nintendo consoles are Handhelds.

SNES > Game Cube > all. the other Nintendo consoles went downhill for me.

N64.

This is no contest, N64 is the best console period. Basically every game was a classic and I could play them forever. Objectively SNES has the better library though, so of makes for a good #2. WiiU won't surpass N64, but as I see it now, it has a good chance to end up in the top half.