Was 2017 Nintendo's Best Year Ever?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

NightlyPoe said:

AlfredoTurkey said:

The NES had a higher marketshare than PS2. It's still the most dominant home console of all time... easily. As kids, we were all eating Nintendo cereal, wearing Nintendo shirts, playing Nintendo games, watching Nintendo cartoons. Nintendo, like I said earlier, was gaming personified. It was a pop culture phenomenon. 

Do you honestly think the company is even close to that now? If so, I find it hard to imagine you were old enough to have experienced that era. I was. There's no contest.

Trust me, I'd be much happier if I wasn't pushing 40.

The question wasn't when the company was at its most dominant or had the most children wearing Mario jammies?  That's easy to answer.  It was which was the best for the company, a question that would encompass business, cultural, and artistic success?

Artistically, I would put 2017 up there with any other year, save 1986 and 1996 with Mario 64, Pokemon, Mario RPG, and Wave Race 64, and Donkey Kong Country 3, and I will freely admit, that was the most important to me.

In terms of business, Nintendo made an incredible comeback, launching what is becoming a phenom in its own right.  In terms of culture, they're riding a significant nostalgia wave.

The_Liquid_Laser said:

All true.  

For me the most shocking moment in gaming was when everyone I knew bought a PS1 instead of N64, me included.  I only knew one guy with an N64, and he also had a PS1.  We were really just going where the games were, and they all seemed to be going to Playstation.  The success of the Wii and Switch were not shocking to me at all.  Nintendo losing home console gaming to another company?  That was shocking. 

I'd still take the N64's lineup over the Playstation's any day.  But, whatever.  The 32/64 bit era was the worst in gaming anyway.

The absolute peak for Nintendo in a business, cultural and artistic sense was definitely 1989.  They had just released the Gameboy and the NES was at it's peak.  Tetris was also released that year, and the Wizard came out in theatres at the end of 1989 heralding the arrival of both Mario 3 and the Nintendo World Championship.  Two 16-bit consoles, the Genesis and Turbographix-16, released in 1989, and the 8-bit NES thoroughly stomped them into the ground sales wise.  

In the US, at least, there was never a better time to be Nintendo than 1989.