It's between the Wii U and the NES for me.

NES is the one I've personally put the least time into so I've got more fond memories with all the other consoles. However I do recognise it's the birth of Nintendo as we know them and so many great franchises (Super Mario, Zelda etc.) so I've put my vote in for the Wii U. I don't like dissing it as I do think it's underrated but the simple truth is all their other home consoles had greater first party exclusives.

The Wii U, the only Nintendo console which was never apealing to me.

The one without its very own exclusive Zelda

It's an unpopular opinion, but the N64. I haven't spent nearly enough time with the Wii U, but man the N64 felt dated from a gamepad design perspective, and games were few and far between, even if it had some all-time classics on it. Looking back on it, it just felt like a wasteland most of the time. 200 games released during its lifetime were nowhere near enough IMO, especially when the PC space was booming and the PSone was drowning in games. The Wii U it had at least some true gems like Captain Toad, Bayonetta 2 and Splatoon, that came out of nowhere and surprised me, and at first, even the hardware design felt like it could have some decent ideas behind it, even if Nintendo failed to deliver on the promises.

I am a bit surprised by the hate the GC is getting? I always felt it was one of the most underrated systems ever created. And man, I loved the box shape and the fact that it was really rugged and portable

Edit: love that nobody voted the SNES thus far, that system is brilliant

Honestly? probably gamecube.

There's only a handful of N64 games I like.

I see some people mentioning the Wii, but it had a lot of great games!

The N64. Nintendo betrayed me by taking gaming in a radically new direction that was also not fun.

3D?

If you want to reduce it to two characters, then sure.  But the reason I bought the SNES is because I wanted games like the NES but better.  I wanted the next games in each of the series.  But Mario 64 doesn't play anything like the NES/SNES Marios.  Part of it is 3D and part of it is you now find stars instead of get to the flagpole.  The game is different in every way.  It would be like telling me that Mario Kart is the true successor to Mario and then they stop making platformer games.

Also the controller really, really, really sucks.

Well they did make two 3D Marios were you reach the flagpole at the end of the stage and they are the two 3D Mario games I like the least. They are great, but my least favorite.