[vikingerik]

It was fairly true for the NES and SNES generations as well. Each used a CPU five years old by then and a RAM size that was common in computers eight years prior. Really, for only the N64 console generation did Nintendo ever try to outdo its competitors on hardware specs.

[hbn]

What was the competition though? The NES pretty much single-handedly revitalized the home console market after the video game crash of 1983 by marketing it as a toy that happened to hook into a TV (R.O.B. the Robot, the light gun, all sold together), so it didn't really have any competition. Sega ended up slipping a 16-bit machine to market before Nintendo by a couple years with the Genesis, but the Genesis and SNES were directly competing for each of their respective lifespans, and both were fairly comparable, each having their own advantages in different areas.

I suppose you could compare to the Neo Geo which was far superior technically, but it was at such a high price point that it never made much of a dent in the market. That generation was pretty much defined by the SNES and Genesis.

[vikingerik]

There were also the Atari consoles. The 7800 was contemporary with the NES with slightly better specs, there was also the XEGS, and the Panther was in development at the same time as the SNES before it was cancelled for the Jaguar instead. They all flopped in the market, of course, but Nintendo didn't know that would happen while developing theirs, but they kept their hardware simple rather than ultimately overreaching like the Jaguar.

[DerekL]

It doesn't matter how the NES compared to computers, because computers cost much more. Also, less RAM is required if the program is on a cartridge.