Best handled Nintendo hardware transition

[curl-6]

Soundwave said:

The SNES to N64 transition wasn't actually that bad to be honest.

1995 was a monster year for the Super NES, maybe even its best year overall -- SMW2: Yoshi's Island, Donkey Kong Country 2, Killer Instinct, 3rd party games like Chrono Trigger.

And even in '96, Super Mario RPG and DKC3 were sizable releases at least, but the first calendar year for the N64 is not too shabby at all at least for US tastes

Super Mario 64
Pilotwings 64
Wave Race 64
Killer Instinct Gold
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
Cruis'n' USA
Mario Kart 64
Blast Corps
Star Fox 64
Tetrisphere
GoldenEye 007

That stacks up as well as any first year any Nintendo system has had, particularly when Mario 64 can be considered 1996's Game of the Year and GoldenEye 007 is a lot of people's choice for 1997's Game of The Year.

The problem was with basically little to no third party support there was like very little support software in between Nintendo's releases so it made droughts seem incredibly dry, even though Nintendo's output objectively was pretty good.

If they had compromised on the CD-ROM issue they would have had games like Resident Evil and Street Fighter Alpha 2 and perhaps even Tekken and Ridge Racer to space out between the above releases and suddenly it's a great first year. 

SNES also kept going even after the N64 released. Post replacement it still got games like Donkey Kong Country 3, Kirby's Dreamland 3, and Harvest Moon. Later home consoles from them were pretty much over from the moment they were replaced.