> I noticed when working on a Texture Pack, how small the textures are, > was that the max size files that it could process!
Asked and answered: textures really were that small in the hardware.
I would dispute that the N64 "went wrong"; it was #2 in a 3-console generation and home to half a dozen of the most beloved games of all time.
It was quite pleasant to work on for the most part, too. CD emulators were a gigantic unreliable pain in the ass at that time; cartdevs were well-refined technology from the 16-bit era and Just Worked. And the bliss of having fast DMA access to all of your data at any time instead of having to deal with the at-the-time 2X speed CD-ROMs could not be overestimated.