Its funny how this thread of Sega Master System versus the Nintendo Entertainment System is mostly about theAtari 7800 -- guess its a generational thing. The thread reminds me of AtariFever's post #2 on the death of Jack Tramiel subject. Its hard to fault the 7800 or Tramiel. It was released at a horrible time in June 84, while Tramiel came in after that and shelved it. It was re-released after Christmas of 85, so the NES had not yet been marketed nationwide. While its true that the 7800 library was arcade-centric, those were still popular games. I was a Commodore guy, so the crash was less apparent, but arcade ports were still popular fare on it. Also, arcade ports were not the past even as the arcade glory days faded -- many great arcade games were still in the future in 1984. Even if you do consider arcade ports 'the past', the 7800 had future thinking games like Impossible Mission. That had good platforming and puzzle solving. On that AtariProtos site they even say they found a 7800 prototype of Rescue on Fractalus. That was a pretty forward looking game.
Still, Super Mario Brothers was for the NES what maybe Space Invaders had been for the 2600. I mean Combat for the 2600 was a great pack-in, but Super Mario Bros was the NES pack-in, wasn't it? That has to have been the luckiest choice of pack-in titles ever. What did the 7800 go out with - Pole Position II? Okay, but not stellar. Reminds me of the Turbografx-16 ... if only they had used Blazing Lazers as its pack-in.