Is there any retro consoles that you never lived up to their potential? where the games fell short of the hardware?.
Personally I feel that the NDS was under-utilized, as it was a fully 3d capable console, that was used mostly for 2d pixel art games, and platformers. When it was able to support full 3d platformers and even a fan remake of portal.
The n64 controller is a very cautious design.
they were not sure if people(players and devs) would utilize the analogstick and chose to design the controller in a way that it could be used in the same way established controllers were used, the n64 predates the dualshock by a whole year afterall.
Nintendo’s way is to get last-gen hardware and add some kind of tweak to it and then just have a solid game library. They are almost never cutting edge. Even the new Switch2 is not a cutting edge SOC.