Apology twice over.

You didn't say I had poor reading comprehension. You said I couldn't read.

I also expect apology for being so ambiguous. Baiting me is not helping me understand you wrong. How could I even make sense of these two put together?

ADDED: How does underlined counter the argument I later provided? Would they have been on store shelves?? Be clear.

And you have many things to apologize for which I've never asked for apology. You can give me a nice BIG one once you've figured it out.

EBWOP:

@OP. Let's get back to the meat.

1) So, how much did SMB2(j) sell anyways? I'll listen to this, but you do realize it takes nothing away from the legitimacy of the metric I provided. Goes to show how little importance you give to evidence when it's not fitting your POV.

2) Ultimately my point stands high and tall. An N64 at 300$ with Mario bundled would have certainly sold more N64+M64's, leading to more 64s sold, more Mario 64s sold (via bundling), more Mario 64s played, and a better future for the Mario's natural evolution to the world of 3D.

Oh, you continuously mentioned how other series had failed at 3D, hence why it is not unusual for it to have happened for Nintendo's Mario. I just read this phenomenally interesting piece of VG History (one I am not unfamiliar with).

http://www.n-sider.com/contentview.php?contentid=231

Notice, in one section of the articles it mentioned that Nintendo shied away from CD since NEC and Sega CD had failed at it. Then, Sony pwned Nintendo with it with the PlayStation. Goes to show in certain cases it's only when something is done right that the technology works. I believe 3D was a perfect fit for Mario, and Mario 64 did it more than justice, it glorified it being a piece of excellent gaming quality. The circumstancial outcome is sad given mario 3D's potential.

Ultimately what all this means,  given VG History, solid hypothesis and actual sales data, there is very little Mario could have done to offset the MASSIVE JUGGERNAUGHT that was Sony in its unrelenting and determined entry into the video game market.

Say what you will, I'm fairly convinced you're very off the mark on this issue.

I guess, depending on your point of view, the N64 and GC could be 'abominations' if you think of them as major departures from Nintendo´s arcade gaming roots.

Wow, didn't think comment would get that much attention.

I was serious though, out of all the consoles in the past 3 generations, I've rated the N64 last and the Gamecube 4th, I guess I just wasn't a fan of Nintendo's 1st party games. The funny thing is, I haven't even owned a Gamecube, I just played the backwards compatible games on the Wii, played multiplatform games that were superior / released first on the Gamecube, or I've just simply heard about games on the Gamecube that are great. I'm still trying to pick up an older Wii so I can play Resident Evil Zero and Tales of Symphonia.

And that's only the games, the hardware is even better.

Double Dash was sub-par? It was probably the best game in the entire series when it was released, it towered over the laughably bad Mario Kart 64. I also don't understand the hate for F-Zero GX, that was simply a masterpiece. Eternal Darkness may have been ugly and a little wonky in terms of controls but it was easily one of the most compelling horror games I have ever played. What about Ikaruga, Future Perfect, Soul Calibur II, Killer7, Viewtiful Joe and the under-appreciated Serious Sam: Next Encounter?

I kind of agree with his post, so I'll try to explain what he may be trying to say.

Look at how Mario Kart 64 did in Japan. It did fairly well. It also did well in NA considering DD got some bundling love.

The belief is that Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 had mainstream appeal, where Mario Kart: DD!! kind of missed the mark in terms of game balancing and art direction. It borrowed from Mario Sunshine, and that wasn't a really good direction TBH.

Though the 2player per cart idea was cool, it ruined the multiplayer experience for the one who was in the back, and iirc kind of broke it when 2nd passanger was ai controlled to play true multiplayer. (this point I'm not 100% sure of, since I played only a bit of DD).

I think that's the way he's looking at it. From a gamer who looks less at these kinds of things, you may have prefered DD to MK64, but ultimately the mass has an opinion more of Jumpin's I believe.

Makes sense but I was thinking about Mario Kart 64's abysmal track design without considering the lousy back seat driving in Double Dash (waggle waggle). I never really consider sales when discussing quality due to the simple fact that far too many factors influence the popularity of a game.

Poor analogy at best, word size by the time of the 6th gen arrived was an ever decreasing factor hence why bits stopped being acknowledged, you can say a double core 64bit chip equals that when the tech has the processor speed to utilize it to the performance level of 128bit which is why that whole era is know as the 128bit era performance across the board was pretty much even, Sony and Sega were the only ones who used the 128bit in marketing even though their chips were double core 64bit chips, DC was a double precision 64bit chip from what I recall so bits were more about performance then instead of actual wordsize.

They were either lying (or as we call it 'marketing') or referring to the vector processor. Two 64 bit processors is in no way equivalent to a 128 bit processor, it really is the equivalent to two cars being a bus. 128 bit processor has a much longer word length which increases address space, data parellelism and floating point precision. Multiple cores allows seperate threads to be run simultaneously.

They do not have equivalent effects on performance at all - it really is apples to oranges.

You're right, I gave Mario Kart Double Dash too much credit; it was easily the worst and most broken Mario Kart game in the series - one of the two bad Mario Kart games (the GBA one was bad too, but not as bad). Terrible, short, and unmemorable tracks; a weapons system that is broken; and the whole double-racer Kart idea was one of the dumbest ideas Nintendo ever brought into a game, and just worsened the overpowered weapon problem. Mario Kart 64 was the best game in the series until Mario Kart DS, and it has many memorable tracks that will be in many future games; on the latest 3DS version, they brought two Gamecube tracks over and they are the worst tracks in the game - the boat is the worst track I played in the last 3 games.

Soul Calibur 2 was easily the worst main series Soul Calibur game - and hardly playable with a Gamecube controller; even Link couldn't save the Gamecube version from being the worst to play. The Single Player mode was MUCH less interesting than the original Soul Calibur on Dreamcast. It was overall a very disappointing game.

Ikaruga (Radiant Silvergun was SOOOO much better), Eternal Darkness, and Viewtiful Joe are even more overrated than the overrated Wii titles like Madworld, Zack and Wiki, and No More Heroes. I'll give it Eternall Darkness had an interesting idea (Insanity Meter and various historical eras), but it was very poorly executed and nothing was really added to the enjoyment of the game with either of those additions - it was just a bad survival and horror game, and quite possibly the most overrated game ever released on a Nintendo console.

I haven't played Killer 7, but it looks like just another bad game for angry 10 year olds who hate their mom, by the No More Heroes developers.

I only played F-Zero GX for about 10 minutes, but I was bored long before I was finished...

I haven't even heard of the other two game, let alone played them.

All of these games (except Soul Calibur 2), had they been released on any other console besides the Gamecube, would have been considered shovelware.