I'd have to think about it, but I might defend the NES, SNES, and Gamecube as the best consoles of their generations, if we're just looking at the consoles themselves. The first two do even better if we consider the games, too (though the GC is plainly not its generation's frontrunner, if you add that—the lack of 3rd party interest really hurt it, its library is tiny, and consists mostly of few great Nintendo games and a bunch of terrible shovelware).
I'd put the N64 at a tie with the Playstation. The N64 looked better and had four-player support out of the box, which made a big difference in how many games supported four players. The analog stick on the controllers was a real problem, though, as was the storage size. Then again, the Playstation launched without any analog sticks. Call it a draw.
It's only really with the Wii that they stopped credibly trying to keep up (and IMO the Wii's various gimmicks don't make up for its deficiencies, among which I count some of those same gimmicks)
