Don't you ever call the C64 a console! :-p
In all seriousness, it is a full-fledged computer, with all the peripherals and functionality of modern PCs, albeit in much simplified form (naturally). It was directly programmable. The only thing you needed to make software for the C64 was a C64.
The thing I find really impressive about the platform is that while the hardware stayed (almost) exactly the same over its considerable life span, the software kept getting more and more advanced. No hardware has ever yielded as much performance as the C64, relative to what it had to work with. Today, in order to make advances in games, we have to keep upgrading the hardware. Back then, they found new ways of utilizing what was already there.

Heh, I kind of miss the days when the user's manual for a computer was also a programmer's manual. First it told you how to load and use programs, then it told you how to make them yourself.
As for the Amiga, well, I loved it. I still do. It took years for the PC and Mac to catch up with it (in some areas, I don't think they ever did), and I wish it hadn't disappeared. I mean, if it was around today we'd still have a decent alternative to the Windows-based PC (and no, the Mac is not a decent alternative. It's even worse).

Loved my Amiga - pretty much begged my parents to get me one after I saw Putty on TV. Remember feeling strangely proud when they used the Video Toaster for the early CG in Babylon 5. Of course it had all started to go wrong for Amiga well before that :(