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.
My votes go for the Amiga and the PC Engine.
The Amiga was tricky to develop for, particularly if you wanted to use all its custom chips to their full potential. So many Amiga games are just questionable ports of Atari ST or even 8-bit home micro games.
The PC Engine was really ahead of its time, but it’s now kind of an obscure little thing, and a bit quaint when put up against the SNES and Mega Drive.
PC Engine was huge in Japan if I recall correctly
It was pretty big, and I believe it was Nintendo’s main competitor for a while. Just didn’t quite break out to the rest of the world, and it never got a proper followup