Nintendo's most successful era

[Wman1996]

Soundwave said:

Younger people won't understand, but it's the NES era. Nintendo completely changed popular culture in general and basically popularized a new entertainment medium that would become on par with music and movies with home video games. Before the NES, most households had a TV, a record player or stereo and even home video adoption (VCR) was still maturing at that point and that was it. Having a game console in the house wasn't a common thing. 

To do that from being a no name little Japanese brand that was basically a rag tag operation, and within a span of about 5 years (1985-1990), Nintendo had character properties that were rivaling the Walt Disney corporation, it's incredible. And they had almost like a total market share dominance in the US and Japan in particular.

A lot of people just called all video games "Nintendo" at that point, the brand was so dominant that it just became a descriptor for all video games themselves.

Imagine some tiny South Korean game maker today going from a niche little brand that doesn't even have proper global offices in all major countries to having a near monopoly on a market segment like gaming and having a character property more popular than Disney/Minions whatever and now imagine all that happening largely in a span of basically 4-5 years.

It's the double-edged sword of it could be seen as Nintendo's most successful era because they clawed their way from the bottom into video games but also the other edge is that they had little meaningful competition. That is part due to Nintendo's own ability, but largely due to the state of the market at the time. 

I did vote Switch, but NES and Wii/DS eras are valid for this thread.