Gustavo Pezzi goes down memory lane of past great consoles from the perspective of a programmer:

It is always useful to look at the past to understand the current state of affairs. This article is a brief overview of the history of game consoles from a programmer’s perspective. Let’s understand the limitations and the driving forces that helped shape the technologies we use today in modern game development.

Good stuff - I still believe that the pinnacle of game development happened towards the later part of the 8-bit generation and the 16-bit generation. The technology was sophisticated enough to provide an engaging experience yet limited enough to force the developers to be creative.