If I could do it again, I'd list the Odyessy.  I just didn't think anyone would choose it, because it barely moved the needle in terms of sales.  But, after reading the comments in this thread, I realize that many people think otherwise.  

NES and it's not remotely close objectively. The NES and Nintendo's standards and regulations around that period of time (particularly in terms of quality control) defined the industry and really built the industry.

Video games as a hobby and market would undoubtedly be much smaller than they are today if not for Nintendo so carefully and perfectly bringing the subject back into the limelight.

yes- if Nintendo hadn't been around eventually someone else probably would have revived the home console market- but to the level and effect that Nintendo did? I doubt that. The quality and talent involved in bringing the NES and its library to life is incredible considering how the retail market was so afraid of video games in the USA after the Atari crash. I mean it's probably already been mentioned a bunch of times in this thread but just to get the NES in stores Nintendo had to market it more as a toy bundle to retailers by pairing it with a robot accessory.

And the reality is if another company had been the first to innovate and rebirth the game industry they could have easily started with a much messier route of middling quality and customer service. There could have been ANOTHER video game crash, it could have been fad. All it would have taken was another hardware manufacturer popping up that didn't implement serious regulation on what software was allowed on their system (quality control).

In a weird way Nintendo's shrewdness for control and specificity over their first big video game platform is why the video game market ended up flourising. It set a baseline and grounds for how things should be done and made consumers more comfortable and confident in purchasing video games because they trusted that they weren't investing into an Atari 2600 like system with a ton of shovelware. 

I think it's difficult to really credit the NES as much as it deserves. Considering how leaps and bounds it was above any other home console before it in terms of accessibillity and performance I think it's particularly impressive the roster of games it had as well. I mean think of plugging in a Nintendo system with Mario Bros and compare that to ANY home console experience before then- it's an incredible difference.

In the end the quality emergence between the NES and the generaion before it is a wider gap than any other generational gap in video game history and by a massive margin.

Before Nintendo video games, at least in the living room, were not taken very seriously or reliably in terms of the product you were going to receive.

We can talk all day long about how relevant and signifcant systems like the Playstation 1, PS2, and Wii were in terms of culture and their effects on the industry at the time and beyond it- but the reality is the foundation for all of these platforms was laid by the NES. I mean things like the NES's controller, save features, the 'seal of quality', multiple genres of games- so much was innovated in that period. 

lol, gaming would've been just fine without the Playstation. 

All that would've happened is FF7, MGS would've been on Sega Saturn and it would've done great as a result. Sony didn't bring jack all the table other than Gran Turismo in 1998 and a Sonic rip off in Crash, big whoop. The rest was driven by third parties who were close to Nintendo to that point that would've made those games anyway. 

The console business NEEDED Nintendo on the other hand, Mario was gaming's first (and still largest) superstar, he would become in time as popular as Mickey Mouse and that changed everything, then third parties like Capcom, Squaresoft, Konami ... all these companies cashed in on the Nintendo craze and made a name for themselves. Capcom wasn't shit before the NES. Squaresoft wasn't shit before the NES. Konami same deal. 

Honestly I'd prefer an industry with Nintendo + Sega over the current setup we have. Sony/MS have drained the industry of a lot of its charm IMO, what we have now are basically just boxed, boring ass PCs really that are called consoles. 

I mentioned a point you made from another thread about Nintendo and their IPs. We forget the types of games that were being made prior to the NES. Can you imagine being someone during that time whether as a kid or as an adult playing a game like Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda? It was almost night and day compared to the games before. And it doesn't hurt that characters like Mario, Donkey Kong, and Link were, and still are, endearing among the community. Even Samus to a smaller extent, especially as a surprise being known as a woman. Then adding characters like Simon Belmont, Mega Man, Chocobo, and others, it worked out for the NES with the help of these characters.

secoundly the ps1 was the one to change how we view gaming, as it was the system to draw in a mature audience to gaming.... games stopped being for 5-9 year olds who wante mario.

There was a pre-Windows?  The past truly is a mysterious and terrifying place! :O

It did save gaming in terms of where it was headed and it would have died with nintendo running the ship eventually. People did not realize how much video games could sell until playstation consoles came around. The market was stagnant in comparison to what it could do. Alot of 3rd party sales were generated from playstation console sales. You damn well know that no nintendo console can push the kind of 3rd party game sales a playstation console can. Nintendo carries no weight with 3rd parties because they know that most of their games won't sell that well.

What would happened to a lot of 3rd party devs if they never had those kind of sales? Would they have created some of the games they did? Who really knows but to act like it would have been business as usual without playstation consoles around. lol That's absurd. More than likely, the bulk of third party devs would have went to the pc market and told nintendo to eat it's shorts. If ms still entered the market when it did, the devs would have put games on that console along with pc. 

If you disagree with me, by all means have at it.  This is nintendo fan forum and I never expected anything different from a nintendo console being the favorite choice or that I would catch some flak for saying something opposed to the  group think. I don't really give a shit what nintendo fans think of the best console or best games or what is the most influential console is. We're going to agree to disagree on that stuff and that's that. 

What would of happened without sony is console gaming would have remained a kid's hobby and everyone still gaming would have went to pc.

I never said anything close to nintendo fans being fanboys but I did say I won't trust their opinion on gaming topics like best console or best game because they're biased. It's no different than ms or sony fans but this is a nintendo site. *shrugs.