When did Nintendo's Golden Age end?
Circa 1994 with the end of the Famicom
>>12889627It began with the Switch
Snes
>>12889627The GameCube where every first party IP was worse than the previous generation.
>>12889627the last good console was the famicom. last good handheld was the ds
>>12889627NES-SNES was when they were on top. N64 they fell behind on sales and would only recover with the Wii, but they still had great games. Gamecube was the beginning of the end, with games like Sunshine and Wind Waker being good but flawed, you could see they were losing their touch. Wii was the nail in the coffin, as their commercial success made them believe they should exclusively target a mix of toddlers and your grandma who never played games before, and made them drop out of the hardware specs race.
>>12889631Double Dash is better than MK64But agree about the rest being worse
>>12889631Yep, this is the first time Nintendo took a dip in quality. not bad but N64 games were much better.>>12889629Switch started great but they have been lazy as of late, especially on Switch 2
>>12889629They finally made 3D Zeldas that were actually good.
>>128896271996, the year they released the Nintendo 64. I have fond memories of Goldeneye, Mario Party, Mario 64, and Banjo Kazooie, but they fell off hard competitively.
>>12889627After the Gamecube era
>>12889629it started with the switch.wii u was the last true nintendo console.
>>12889627Metroid Prime. It was the swan song
>>12889629>>12889648>
>>12889631smash, kart, f-zero, metroid, not to mention pikmin and animal crossing becoming a thing. retarded take. and Im sick of people pretending sunshine and wind waker were disasters just because the 64 had two of the greatest games of all time. sunshine and wind waker are way better than the slop that was made after it.
>>12889674Yeah bro I feel ya. "WINDWAKER IS GARBAGE BECAUSE IT'S A 90 INSTEAD OF A 98"People need to fuck off with that shit.
Wii was when the company really felt different to me and I gradually lost interest in Nintendo products. Sterile look, baby easy games, lame gimmicks like waggle and underpowered hardware. Felt like they gave up on the core gamer and went for everyone else.....and it worked for them but not for me.Gamecube and earlier you can debate their absolute peak and which console was their best but I think their soul was intact throughout and they made much better games.
>>12889631>F-zero>mario kart>metroid (debatable but prime was an amazing game)>smash is an insane leap forward in qualityI'll grant you mario and zelda. Also super monkey ball 2's existence singlehandedly elevates the gamecube's library.
Golden Age: Nes - Snes - GBDecline: 64 - GC (GBA was still good tho)Casualization: Wii - DSSecond decline: Wii USecond Casualization: Switch
1996 was the end. Sure, the N64, GameCube, and the Game Boys still had some decent stuff after that, but the late 90s and early 00s was by no means a golden age for them. That was the Sony golden age with the PS1 and 2.
>>12889686They kinda did good with Odyssey.
>>12889628Dude, the Super Nintendo IS Nintendo's golden age!!!!
>>12889629
>>12889631What?!
end of the snes.
>>12889757>>12889773snes is saferetro for comfytards
>>128896272001
>>12889710if it was so good why didn't i finish it
>>12889627The gamecube
>>12889627Never. It's still going.
>>128896272006
>>12889627Depends how you qualify "golden age". The dominance of the industry that they had during the Famicom and Super Famicom eras ended with the N64 and that was confirmed completely with the Gamecube, but you could argue that they remained the best and most consistent major publisher / developer in the industry during those eras and even beyond them. So would the end of Nintendo's Golden Age be marked by their decline in quality as a developer / publisher or by the end of their dominance over the industry?
>>12889683Windwaker doesn’t even come close to OOT, it is not a 90, not even close
>>12889981we're not accountants. we're talking about the quality of the games.
>>12889785>saferetro for comfytardswhat?
>>12889996the games on there are perfect for you to post title screens on reddit. they have good graphics and sound but bad gameplay. the design of the console was nakedly a choice of style over substance. almost everything on there is iterative, dumbed down, and easy.
>>12889992A lot of these threads end up being bickering over that kind of shit. Anyway, I think Nintendo only became less consistent with the Gamecube. The N64 is a bad console with a shit library especially compared to the PS1 but Nintendo's output on it was fantastic.
>>12889998holy trvke, zamn...
>>12889998>style over substanceStyle IS substance you joyless brutalist.
>>12889627The Virtual Boy, through a multitude of effects that rippled into the future in a very significant way, but all centered around the loss of Gunpei Yokoi.He grew disillusioned with the direction Nintendo was going in the 90s and left the company. He would die soon after the release of the WonderSwan.
>>12889631Smash bros was better on gamecube. So was Mario kart.
>>12889627It ended with NES and its overpriced expansion DLC - SNES
>>12889707More than one company can have a golden age at the same time. Sega's golden age is around System16 to Noami in the arcade and Genesis (just this system no add-ons or handhelds counted) for home. Id say early 90's was the whole gaming golden age cause you had DOS evening peaking this time.
>>12889685>>12889674>implying double dash was better than kart 64please tell me this is bait
>>12889690the only way 64 could be considered a decline is if were talking about sales figures and third party support, both of which are retarded metrics for OP's question. the first party games on 64 are both higher quality and way more innovative than snes.
The moment the Wii was released. I'm convinced that Steve Jobs actually died in 2005 and his soul was bound to the Wii product development department like an infested terran command center.
>>12889639lol what a faggot
Console Gen 5. The PSX absolutely devoured the market and Nintendo had to begin leaning hard on their handhelds.
>>12889627lmao how is this not false advertising?
>>12890012As developers, the N64 probably was Nintendo at their peak but their lineup is ultimately too shallow to call it part of their Golden Age. It's like how Toaplan officially ended with Batsugun long after their heyday of Tiger Heli, Slap Fight, Flying Shark and Tatsujin.
>>12889981>but you could argue that they remained the best and most consistent major publisher / developer in the industry during those eras and even beyond them.There's no fucking way you believe this.Capcom, Konami, Namco and Sony themselves don't come to mind at all? You're just showing you only grew up with Nintendo hardware.
>>12889629This but unironically because Snoy and Microshit dropped the ball so hard that tendie became #1 by default
>>12889627Without a doubt, there have been three golden eras, and only one is retro according to this board rules (yet):(1) Game Boy with Pokémania(2) Wii and Nintendo DS era(3) Nintendo Switch 1 era (2 remain to be seen)Everything else, no matter how much it hurts you to admit it, has not been a golden era. Not the NES, not the SNES, absolutely not the N64 or GCN.
NES/SNES: golden ageN64/GameCube :silver ageWii/today:shitty age
>>12890254if you're going by sales the switch 1 got outsold by ds + wii, by a lot. all they did was consolidate console and handheld. if you're talking software the switch doesnt have anything besides wii u ports. it has great third party and indie support but not much from nintendo
>>12890257I’m not talking strictly about sales, although those also coincide with Nintendo’s periods of greatest economic growth (each within the context of its time), but rather about cultural impact. Game Boy and Pokémania need no introduction. The Wii brought gaming to everyone and popularized motion controls, which are still used to this day. The Nintendo DS brought touchscreens to a generation and made them mainstream years before the iPhone, it was the App Store before the App Store. And the Nintendo Switch has literally saved the Japanese video game industry. Without it, there would basically be no market there. There’s no denying that it has also become an iconic cultural phenomenon across the rest of the world that saved Nintendo from red numbers.
>>12890260>pokemon is the biggest media franchise in the world>ds led to the creation and success of the touch based smartphone>switch is the most popular contemporary console/handheld in japannot that impressive in comparison. i'm in japan now and i never saw someone playing the switch on public transit. they are all playing mobile games. even without nintendo, japanese gaming in japan would still live on, through mobile, arcade, and pc.
>>12890267The Switch’s hybrid nature is so iconic that it has created an entire new market for hybrid PC handhelds, and it has been so successful that it’s even forcing Sony and Xbox to turn their next consoles into hybrids.However, I agree that you don’t see them out on the streets, but do you know why? It’s the price and the form factor. The audience for Nintendo’s handhelds back in the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and DS days was made up of kids. The current prices of handheld consoles (which shouldn’t cost more than $79, with game packs costing no more than $30) prevent them from having the same mass appeal among children.If you ask me, the hybrid concept is really an illusion. In my personal opinion, it combines the worst aspects of a home console without offering the best aspects of a handheld. It’s too big and uncomfortable. It’s a handheld you play while lying on the couch at home, but not one you take out and play on the street.
>>12890326Additionally, it’s sociological, too. In the dystopian reality we live in, 10-year-olds want a phone with TikTok to look grown up, not a Game Boy with bing bing wahoo. Sad.
>>12889631This. Everyone is reacting binary to this comment. The golden age ended and gamecube is a silver age. It's good, but it is a step down. People are just ignoring that every Nintendo console had a mario game at launch. NES, SNES and N64. What was Gamecubes? Luigi's Mansion. Lets not act like that game is anywhere near on par with those 3. Mario Sunshine came later.
>>12890326>The Switch’s hybrid nature is so iconic that it has created an entire new market for hybrid PC handhelds, and it has been so successful that it’s even forcing Sony and Xbox to turn their next consoles into hybrids.I'll believe it when I see it as far as Sony and Xbox are concerned. PC's like the steam deck rog ally are very niche. They sold less than the wonderswan. They are like the Atari Lynx and Sega Nomad of this era.
>>12890254>>12890260Switch 2 will not be as successful as Switch 1. The economy has assured that. Developers still target S1 compatibility for the biggest market possible.The Family Computers are the premiere golden age candidates for their impact alone. The NES literally saved the industry and attracted developers of all stripes to step in, which would later happen on a larger scale with the Playstation. They're also easily the most popular emulation target, commercial or otherwise; overwhelming numbers of people still want to play those games today.The Wii's success was too front-loaded and experiments with alternative controls too simplistic and non-committal (its most popular games are played with standard controllers) and ultimately the 360 dominated the conversation, impressing upon the form and function (e.g., 360 controllers and its successors are the most prevalent down to the asymmetrical stick layout, triggers, button layouts and naming conventions) of gaming through today even at the indie level. The 360 cemented what would become the maligned generic contemporary game; so ubiquitous your eyes glaze over pages and pages and pages of them as you browse through catalogs.What the Wii U did with Splatoon's gyro implementation is what the industry took away from flirting with motion controls in the end.Even allowing the NDS as an inspiration to the iPhone, Apple deserves majority credit for the innovation including the adoption of capacitative touch and the development of the literal app store.In all, it's rough to use technological impact as the metric for determining "golden age" as it's not precedented and, as a true competitive industry without mono/duopolistic rulers, it's discounting the fact rivals inspire and pressure each other. Sony definitively moved the console industry from cartridges to optical media, first to CDs then to DVDs then to Blu-Ray yet many would not claim the PS3 was part of Sony's golden years.
Nintendo's golden age ended with the GB games. Metroid II, Link's Awakening, Kirby, Six Golden Coins. Even those were a fluke and should've ended at SNES.
1997
>>12890365too us centric, too console centric. consoles arent as important as you think. most games in the us were on ms dos and most european games were on amiga, the only reason consoles even existed was because there were no cheap consumer PCs with good graphics in japan, until Nintendo tried to make the Family Computer. And NEC/Hudson was the first to use CDs in their console and it was a big hit in Japan. So much so that Sega and Nintendo copied them. The only reason Sony got involved was because Nintendo contracted them to do the Super Famicom CD add-on. But Nintendo rejected them and Sony turned around and made their own console from it, just like NEC/Hudson did when Nintendo rejected their idea for the Famicom Disk System
>>12890380I'm well aware the PC Engine had the Super CD-ROM2 and the Mega Drive had the Mega CD. The NA-centric perspective is essential considering they were the largest market until generations later.Even if your beloved Amiga was more than just part of the MiSTer's namesake, this is a thread about Nintendo's golden age after all.
>>12890391why are you giving the famicom credit for what the ps1 did, but you wont give the ds credit for inspiring the iphonethe 360 was only more important than the wii in america. the 360 dominated the conversation in america and inspired contemporary american games.
N64 era.Their heavy hitters started feeling unfinished and felt more like side games after the N64. MM was rushed and it showed, but WW felt unfinished and insultingly easy.They started depending on 2nd party devs for big titles, even stuff like Metroid and Zelda. There was a huge focus on family and UI "experiences" from management.A lot of the 1st-party GBA stuff was ports and rehashes.It felt like the "A-team" checked out completely after the N64 and the company had grown intoto a large team of noobs that were pushed in weird directions by management who had basically retired early.
>>12890241>There's no fucking way you believe this.I don't, I said "you could argue" and I think someone easily could.>You're just showing you only grew up with Nintendo hardware.I grew up with a Playstation and the only Nintendo console I owned before I started buying games on my own was the Wii.
>>12890380>most games in the us were on ms dosSo what? Most gamers were on consoles, and that's what matters. You're conveniently forgetting that back in the day a 386 or 486 PC cost like $3000 in 90s money, which, if you adjust for inflation, would be like buying several nvidia 5090 GPUs today. An NES in the early 90s sold brand new for $100.
>>12889627The Virtual Boy, the system itself had no real effect on Nintendo but it was also when they changed from being developers who took pride and effort in their work, the NES, GB, and SNES were all monumental and were so successful Nintendo had to spend money to prevent their name from going generic. However this success (largely due to the Gameboy ironically) was also why Nintendo stopped caring about making good shit. They just pivoted to making dumb ass gimmick machines, excluding the GBC and GBA. There's a reason Sony ended up coming out on top and it was purely due to Nintendo being arrogant and wasting time and money on shit no one cared about, you can praise the N64 and GameCube all you want I don't even hate the systems but they did not dominate like the SNES or NES.
>>12890424in the 90s in the US the ratio of sales between console games and pc games was only 2:1 in favor of console, and thats with PC being more expensive and easier to pirate games on. gaming definitely would have been fine without consoles.>>12890428There was a lot of infighting internally at Nintendo. The team that made the Famicom had a different vision for gaming, they wanted games to improve people's lives and to not be a sweaty solitary activity. They eventually left Nintendo and fulfilled their vision for gaming through a console called the Xavix, which Nintendo heavily copied to make the Wii.The handheld division was all Gunpei Yokoi. He was a genius and is the only reason Nintendo ever made games at all. He exclusively did handhelds because he was unhappy with the direction of the Super Famicom. The original Famicom team was also unhappy with the Super Famicom. The reason being it was a technical upgrade and they were competing on specs, which was seen as unoriginal and a race to the bottom. Gameboy was created by using lateral thinking to create something new from simple technology, SFC was a simple specbox. Same with the N64 and the Gamecube, they were purely trying to compete on specs, with their own DRM bullshit, like cartridges and minidiscs, that handicapped them in the end. Yokoi left after the Virtual Boy, which only failed because of regulations in the Japanese market not allowing it to be what it was intended to be (basically like AR glasses without the clunky stand)Yamauchi loved Yokoi and wanted him to be his successor, but as we know Yokoi died. So Iwata was installed, because he reminded Yamauchi of Yokoi. Then they released the Wii, inspired by the original Famicom guys, and the DS, inspired by Yokoi's dualscreen Game & Watch, and experienced a strong resurgence. But then Iwata died and the bankers took over and the result is what we have today.
>>12889631This. Doesn't mean it's bad, just the beginning of the decline.
>>12890516holy fucking trvke
>>12889631I love the Gamecube. Melee made me love fighting games like I've never loved them before. Gamecube was my first dip into the Tales of series and even though Symphonia shows it's age today I still like it. However GC has my all time favorite horror game locked away in it library, Eternal Darkness. What a banger.Gamecube might be the silver age of Nintendo, but damn it was a good ass silver age.
>>12889631Melee was almost a straight upgrade over 64. I say almost, because 64 had character models on the select screen and those fun pinball bumpers you could throw around.>>12889648BotW is a good game but not a good Zelda game.
>>12890786Yeah, because the Zelda formula doesn't translate well to 3D, so they tried something new, and it worked.
>>12889627Ugly ass ALttP didn't look anywhere like this
>>12889820because a fired chunk of Sonic Team made it
>>12890786>and those fun pinball bumpersYour favorite Smash is on the WiiU
>>12890792it's just ubislop nothing new.
>>12890849I've never actually played that version, but I have played the 3DS version. It's alright. I rank it between Melee and Brawl. I still haven't played Ultimate.
>>12890760Hate Naka all you want, but Oshima is just as a big hack as he is, just a loyal suck up who wants to SEGA and Nintendo to keep hiring him for clout reasons.
>>12890792The Zelda formula is better in 2D, but I don't hate 3D Zelda. BotW is still not a proper Zelda game though.>>12890851Nah, BotW has infinitely more soul than a modern Ubisoft game. It's still got that Nintendo touch to it.
>>12890852>I have played the 3DS version. It's alright.You have good taste, I'm afraid.
>>12890858is it because he likes soft gay porn of Sonic characters?
>>12889627>>12889981with the n64. Despite having some beloved games (mostly 1st party tho), it suffered from:>ending of their dominance for third party software releases (dev way more willing to consider competitors for the first time, and nintendo had basically been forced to completely abandon the 'you can only make X number of games per year bullshit', and almost no new dev studios would drop stuff on n64 for their inaugural launch)>completely undercut in software price for its entire life basically>the few cross-platform ports don't hold up other than load-time.>effectively locked out or basically abandoned several genre of games that were bread and butter catalog contributions (RPGs, arcade ports, nearly all fighting games(ignoring smash), anything that used FMVs as key feature, dance games, almost anything with a 2-d engine or art direction regardless of genre...)I think its correct to say when you are no longer where every maker wants to be, can't compete on software price, makers can't use your tech for what they want as well as they do other consoles, and regardless of explanation your effective catalog ends up with gaping holes, and none of this was true in previous gens, thats the end of a golden era.
>>12890859no soul at all
>>12890774It was the worst of a great era>>12890908It was better than the Saturn
>>12890915Nah, unlike Pokemon, there were mainlinen RPGs on the Saturn>but Stadium is le kinoIt was a beginning of a nightmare, Pokemon for sweats only and not going on urban adventures with your pals.
NiGHTS was a good game and SoA is very happy to promote it largely with their "infinite budgeting"
N64 was were they really started to show they were a bit out of touch
>>12891015saturn didnt have 3d platformers. it barely had 3d games at all.
>>12889628Came to say this.
>>12889627>Nintendo>Golden age
>>128896272004
>>12889628WTF, dude?!
>>12889684Well, that's Satoru Iwata's Nintendo.
>>12889627Considering its the only console maker from back in the day still making consoles, not yet.
>>12890908No cd-rom drive really fucked them... wondering what could have been if we had gotten the NintendoPlaystation timeline where the nips hadn't chosen to be backstabbing subversive greedy cunts instead.
>>12889631Everything that came out on the game cube had that soulless static fake plastic crazy-taxi look and feel to it and the taint of that is still present in the dna of nintendo to this day in the switch / switch 2, the first game I have seen them have on the platform that felt like it finally shook it is the latest remake of Ocarina of Time.
>>12890760I felt this way about Mario All Stars. I really loved that in Mario 3 every king was an animal, and every airship had a unique color. They gutted this stuff for the SNES port. They took away the detail and charm.
>>12889627Yokoi’s death
>>12889637>Gamecube was the beginning of the end, with games like Sunshine and Wind Waker being good but flawed, you could see they were losing their touch.The GameCube is what made Nintendo realize they could no longer directly compete for and win the "mainstream videogame" audience the way they did during the NES and SNES eras. Sony had too much clout and Nintendo's games weren't standing out like they used to. They had to differentiate themselves, play to their strengths and cultivate their own audience. The Wii, for all its faults, was the first step in that direction.>made them drop out of the hardware specs raceThis was always the right decision. Winning the "specs race" has NEVER been the winning play for the videogame market (with many attempts yielding notable failures)
>>12892414Playing to their strengths was selling gimmicky shit like the Wii to families and focusing on games for kids (a very real market) instead of traditional gamers. It worked for sales, but as far as I'm concerned Nintendo died when the GC came out, they decided to make primarily kids toys. I was there waiting in line for the midnight release of the cube, I got all the hits on it, and it felt very disappointing when all was said and done. I played the cube maybe 5% as much as my PS2. The best time I had with it was day 1 Rogue Leader, it never surpassed that. WW, Prime, Sunshine, and Pikmin were good, but not great.That was the last gen I bought a console in. PC all the way!
>>12892423Wii still had good Nintendo games, it wasn't golden era but still decent. it was mostly just the 3rd party was trash. PS2 has it large share of trash as well, They maybe over 4 thousand on games on PS2, only maybe a 70 of that is good.
>>12890915Something being better than Saturn is a very low hurdle, you know.
>>12891971>wondering what could have been if we had gotten the NintendoPlaystationYeah, things would be so much better under a monopoly. Healthy competition is such a stupid concpet.
>>12889648I recently played both botw and totk and fell off both of them cuz I got bored. They are unc games.
>>12890915Gayga Shiturn
>>12890254>Without a doubt, there have been three golden erasWhat the heck?!
>>12889627When you grew up
>>12892491Okay, fuck you!!!
>>12889627in 1994 when psx and saturn got release, along with 3d arcades being really big. Also PC gamingi was turning to LAN parties really huge thanks to shooter and strategy games.Also Pokemon ate nintendo. Pokemon was a juggernaut as big as PSX in late 90s.
1950 when Sekiryo Yamauchi died
>>12893625LOL, no, but you can keep seething.
