The game that not only saved the SNES, but brought it to dominance. It is probably the first mega-hyped game ever made, and it really changed the tide of the 16-bit era, not just so that Nintendo caught up to Sega, but that Nintendo sales began to so heavily surpassed Sega that they ended the 16-bit generation quite a bit ahead of the Mega Drive.
While the N64 lost the generation, this game did save the console from dwindling into obscurity early on in its lifetime. While the N64 had Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, and Lylatt Wars from Nintendo, if you were going to play games with friends, there was a very high chance that it was going to be this one. The N64 without Mario Kart would have been an obscure system with a few forgotten gems without Rare. Luckily thanks to Rare, not only was there GE007, the most played game of the generation, but there were also a number of single player gems to accompany the first party games. GE007 was to the N64 in the West as Monster Hunter was to the PSP in Japan.
Anyway, there actually was a company that rivalled Rare, and their golden age happened to be the exact same time as Rare's, starting in 1994 and ending in 2001:
1994 - Final Fantasy 6, Breath of Fire, and Secret of Mana
1995 - Chrono Trigger, Front Mission, Seiken Densetsu 3, Secret of Evermore, Romancing SaGa 3
1996 - Super Mario RPG, Bahamut Lagoon, Gun Hazard, Treasure Hunter G, Tobal
1997 - Final Fantasy 7, Tobal 2, Bushido Blade, Final Fantasy Tactics, SaGa Frontier
1998 - Xenogears, Parasite Eve, Bushido Blade 2,
1999 - Final Fantasy 8, SaGa Frontier 2, Legend of Mana, Front Mission 3, Chrono Cross, Parasite Eve 2
2000 - Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy 9, The Bouncer,
2001 - Final Fantasy X
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
