Great OP.

In a numbers game you can't really get around the PC Engine if you count it here, but personally I'd say the art-direction in these old generations make the best looking games. The NES had Batman, which looks, I mean, d*mn.

I would have loved to have an SNES 2 instead of an N64. But the problem is (and many people probably don't realize this) is that 2D systems are not space efficient. Most N64 games hardly need storage space, but the late gen 2D games were all exceeding 500MB on PC and CD by the end of the SNES lifespan (and remember what came next, the multi GB Baldur's Gate games etc.) Kind of crazy what Nintendo accomplished with 4MB. Then the 8-32MB cartridges of the N64 era arrived, but can you imagine how much trouble it would be to release a 640x480p game on an SNES 2 with only 32MB of storage? Crazy hard.

I still miss the SNES era the most though. I would have paid a lot of money for an SNES 2. Widescreen for an SNES 3 in 2001 would have been so good. I want both!

End of the day, for all the flaws, the CD AND 3D graphics really changed things and made games fit for sale opposite to the way that 2D and cartridges unfortunately made games uneconomical to sell.

The Saturn tried that approach. It netted them cult status in Japan and abject failure everywhere else. I doubt that all the 2-D Capcom Saturn fighters put together sold half of what Tekken 3 did. At the end of the day, people wanted something more than just a prettier version of what they had before. And for what it's worth, even in 1996 I understood that sprite graphics were terribly inefficient compared to 3-D models. That was actually a point of discussion in a lot of online forums back then.  Even the Saturn needed a memory expansion to get the most out of its 2-D games.

For my part, the N64 was my least favorite Nintendo console, but that's because it had almost no RPGs, my favorite genre, and had a lot of other glaring holes in its library, thanks to the limits of the cartridge format. Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask were mind-blowing. I'd much rather have had those games than prettier versions of SMW or A Link to the Past. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon was an often-overlooked gem of the N64 that I hope Nintendo and Konami will put on NSO, and I felt it was a genuine leap forward from the SNES game. The Gamecube managed to put it all together, but it had a rough time competing against the PS2. 

I 100 percent agree with you, almost every sentence ha. Can't say that often on the internet. Too bad we couldn't have both, but the tech needs are different and you couldn't really have an amazing 2D machine and 3D at the same time, at that time (not without a huge price). I play so many 2D games today in 2022, it is so nice to have them, or even just pixel art games. I love the FF Pixel Remasters and Octopath Traveler and STEAM STUFF, but I wish we had the AAA teams making them like in the 90s. Also I wasn't out of luck after the N64 launched, as Nintendo kept on putting out great 2D stuff for their portables.

We can thank 3D for giving us totally new things to play. I just want 2D games widescreen and slightly higher resolution for my modern larger TVs. I wish Nintendo would have a full time team remaking their SNES classics for 1080p widescreen, with modern pixel art. 

Basically what we were both saying (regarding the Saturn also) is that it wasn't economical to continue with 2D. Also thanks to 3D, we can easily play old games at 4k/120fps without much trouble, while 2D games get stuck with their old hardware, you don't get the free upgrades. Imagine how amazing a Nintendo home console that just played the existing games at 4k/120fps would be. Little work, huge reward, but 2D games can't be improved so easily. The entire industry has made a lot of money "remastering" 3D games, but not any 2D remasters, for a reason.

Every major N64 game will be remade as a native PC port over the next few years, which is the most exciting space right now. I finished Mario64 and Ocarina of Time, and I can't wait for Wave Race I hope soon enough! Couldn't do that with SNES games without a large team and lots of money. The advantage of 3D is still bearing fruit.

I do remember back in the PS1/N64 era that 2-D games had a tendency to get dumped on, similar to how Japanese games got dumped on for most of 7th generation. Namco's community manager got quite frustrated with the low review scores for Tales of Destiny on PS1. He actually came out and called Final Fantasy VII shit.  That seemed to go away somewhat with the PS2. You had 2D RPGs like Atelier Iris getting decent review scores, and Nintendo seemed a lot more amenable to 2D games on the Gamecube, where they'd previously strongly discouraged them for the most part. 2 1/2 D games like Viewtiful Joe were also great, though the first one of those I remember seeing was Klonoa on PS1.

With the N64, I enjoyed it as best I could with Mario, Zelda, Perfect Dark, and Goemon, but ended up doing something I hadn't done since the Atari days: I got a non-Nintendo console (the PS1) to satisfy my RPG fix. That's one reason why I love the Switch so much. It has the best of Japan and the best of the West on it in one place. I can play Xenoblade, Fire Emblem, Dragon Quest, and Witcher 3 along with Mario and Zelda. 

Yeah the n64 has the best 3D graphics by far, and I like some of the games. But the PS was where Japan and RPG and others were at.

"Final Fantasy VII shit" ----- hahahah, nice