It was Tetris that sold the first Gameboy, not Pokemon.

The thing people often forget, is that people didn't buy an NES or a Wii, they bought Super Mario Bros. or Wii Sports; the NES and Wii just happened to be attached to those games. They didn't sell well because they were bundled with the system, the systems sold well because those games in particular were bundled. It couldn't have been done with any other game. Those are the quintessential system sellers. Wii Sports even more so because it's range was even wider. In fact, I think Kinect Adventures has a similar influence as Wii Sports, and sold it's system in a similar manner, albeit on a much smaller scale than Wii Sports did.

Tetris would be third, it almost did the same thing as these other two, but had a couple of games to help it, most notably Pokémon Red/Blue. Super Mario 64 and Halo as you mentioned were also great system sellers. It's difficult to rank them I think. People were willing to wait for this game and the N64 with it because it was so awe-inspiring. Arguably, the N64 had the best launch line-up even with only two games just because this game was one of them. It also managed to singlehandedly sell the N64 for years, boosting other 'lesser' software's sales up when we waited for more worthwhile games. Halo on the other hand made the XBox, without it, there would be no more XBox. Halo 3 only sold so well because there was a Halo 1, which laid the ground-work and thus the heavy duty. That makes Halo 1 a bigger system seller in my opinion even if it's sales are lower. I think it brought a lot of PC gamers to consoles because Halo finally made the FPS genre good on consoles. I think those are basically a tie, but with personal bias I'll rank Super Mario 64 above Halo:

1. Wii Sports
2. Super Mario Bros.
3. Tetris
4. Super Mario 64
5. Halo

I think devilrising makes a good case for SMB.

I just wanna add, i'm not a pokemón fan, but the top three selling games that aren't pack-ins are mario kart wii, wii sports resort, and Pokémon Red / Green / Blue Version. I'm pretty sure mk wii and sports resort were secondary purchases. And I have a feeling Pokémon Red / Green / Blue Version were purchased with the system. Just something to ponder ...it did sell 31.4 million copies.

wii fit

Pokemon, Pong =p

Wii Sports, it's not even close.

Wii Sports by far

halo got me to buy the first xbox, halo will convince me to buy an xbo as well the way it is looking.

i bought a ps2 just for gta san andreas before it went to xbox.

i bought a n64 bc of mario 64 and how blown away i was at the demo at sears.

Streets of rage/golden axe and sonic is why i bought a genesis.

i could go on. it just depends. M$ should have made halo 4 for a launch title on xbo, it would have helped get my preorder first, that is for sure.

I question that, perhaps the graphics snobs may have, but I bet the techno savvy or die hard sony fans were more than the blu-ray enthusiats crowd.  Thing was that despite the blu-ray being included in the PS3, it wasn't what sold it.  In fact for the first 3 years the ps3 was sort of lackluster at best.  It might have been Sony's target to pimp it as blu ray, but sales came after games came out for the system. 

Just saying that DVD played a big role in ps and ps 2, but blu ray did not.

Wii Sports wasn't the reason people bought the Wii was it? It was the Wii's interaction/motion controls, they could have had any game on it that was cute and had motion controls and that would have made it sell. Maybe this view is wrong.

I'd say Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec on PS2.