90s Nintendo was simply better, even though Nintendo is still quite great today, look at the 90s and they had a top Game of The Year candidate (if not the flat out winner, like a very close runner up) like every year, whereas Switch era really can't boast that.
1990 - Super Mario Bros. 3 (probable winner of GOTY)
1991 - Super Mario World (runner up, probably Sonic wins)
1992 - Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past (probably SF2 wins, but this would be runner up)
1993 - Star Fox (probable runner up, Mortal Kombat I'm guessing wins)
1994 - Donkey Kong Country (runner up Final Fantasy III or Super Metroid)
1995 - Yoshi's Island or DKC2
1996 - Super Mario 64
1997 - GoldenEye
1998 - Zelda: Ocarina of Time
1999 - First year they probably don't have one (DK64 doesn't measure up), though this is the year Pokemon turned into a phenom in the West
2000 - Zelda: Majora's Mask and Perfect Dark
If you look at the last 10 years, Zelda: BOTW wins GOTY for 2017 for sure (Mario Odyssey even being runner up), but they haven't really had a GOTY contender on Switch probably since then, whereas during the NES and SNES era you could see it was a yearly occurrence.
NES and SNES also had legit 3rd party games (usually even exclusive) that were legendary titles, things like Megaman 1/2/3, Contra/Super C, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Street Fighter 2, etc.
People who didn't grow up in the 80s/90s or weren't old enough missed that, that was the really golden era of Nintendo dominance, not just market share but their power as an overall publisher. You will never see the type of run Nintendo had as a publisher from 1985-2000 probably ever again, because 85 GOTY would certainly be Super Mario Bros, 1986 would be Legend of Zelda, 1987 probably goes to Megaman 2 or something with Punch-Out! as runner up, 1988 would have Super Mario Bros. 2 up there but maybe not the outright winner, 1989 would likely be Tetris. So from 1985-2000 the only years where I don't think they had the GOTY or a game that was very close to winning would be 1987 maybe and 1999 and even 1999, Pokemon Yellow probably deserves to be up there as it was a huge hit for Nintendo and explosion of Pokemon in the West.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 05 May 2022
