Some video game systems-- the NES, the Genesis, the SNES, the PSX-- were legitimately "cool" and mainstream while active. Others-- the TurboGrafx-16, the 3DO, the Saturn-- were "systems for losers" back in the day, but like William Shakespeare became cool after their lives had ended.

The Nintendo 64 is one of those systems. I owned one at launch, and sold it less than six months in because there was absolutely nothing to play on it-- it was bar none the worst system I've ever owned in terms of release draughts. I brought it to Funco and traded in for a PSX-- in terms of my hobby, best move I've ever made.

To paint the juxtaposition, I recall my best friend at the time bringing over games like "Goldeneye" in 1998, and thinking "what the hell is this crap?" I actually ruined the system for him, because right after he showed me Turok, I fired up Unreal. He soon had me build him a PC, and he put his N64 into a box in the closet.

But take a look at this video from John over at Digital Foundry: turns out, the aforementioned "Turok" was actually a pretty cool game, and did some things technically better than even PC shooters of the era. And for some reason cartridge based systems themselves are just "cooler" these days to me than CD systems with their slow and flaky optical drives-- they've aged better somehow.

I started looking at N64s on eBay, and turns out that not only are the systems cheap, but the games are affordable as well.