Consoles is where all the great Japanese games come from, just look at splatoon and mario maker, bloodborne, MGSV. Handheld is indeed very popular in Japan but it soon will replace by iPhone. Heck, i believe it's already replaced by Smartphone as Konami is now trying to enter the mobile market and next Fantasy Life 2 will only be on Smartphone while Gung-Ho (i believe it's a Japanese-Korean company ?) vast-majority of revenue come from Puzzle & Dragon.

Now dat i realized, Smartphone and handheld is kinda like PC and consoles tbh.

Maybe, I don't remember that much time before TP was launch, people then didnt know that game will be released on Wii too, but now everybody assuming it will be ported to NX too, so its not only Wii U owners are hyped about this game. Also back then not everywhere had internet, today with everybody have internet and following every new info, it's much easier to make big hype.

I'm just happy to get Fire Emblem Fates, whether the NX comes or not.

Just for reference, people saw twilight princess as the second coming. Zelda U is still an enigma 

Yup, still is enigma, and yet people are so much hype about it. Imagine hype when we will have name of the game and real trailer.

Lol you think we all just lived under rocks and waited for whatever games might suddenly appear in the stores? Magazines filled in for the Internet just fine, with word of mouth keeping all who might care in the loop. Nintendo, more than anyone, announced their games loooong in advance, sometimes announcing them so early that they'd end the project and devestated all of us who were waiting. Besides, by the time of the N64 the Internet was thriving, as was TV (I recall watching some show where they revealed the teleport spot in the first world of Mario 64 before it had released).

Every kid knew a Super Mario 3 was coming, and they all wanted it. Later on, everyone had seen the images of mario riding Yoshi and were dying to get their hands on it (I still remember my cousin showing it off when he brought his SNES down during a visit). 

Where the anticipation may have been its greatest, though, was the transition to 3d. Not just for Super Mario 64 but, given how long we had to wait, I'd say Ocarina took the cake. It had been teased since '95, and after seeing how well mario translated to 3d everyone (including myself) was just dying to see zelda make the leap. They kept putting off the date of it and the 64DD until, thankfully, they managed to release it without said peripheral. Still, my mother and I went to both Toys R Us and Electronics Boutique, and neither was accepting any more preorders; my neighbor had no luck either. That wait for more inventory was just torturous lol

Given how small the enthusiasm is for the Wii U is when compared to past consoles, I just can't see how this upcoming zelda at all matches the hype of that long-time-coming and transformational title. I can think of few (if any) times people were more excited about the future of games than that leap into three dimensions, and those two were about as anticipated as any games have ever been.

You had to buy magazines to be informed, you had to see that TV show on TV. For instance, in my country in Europe I didnt had those magazines or TV shows, I didn't know anything about new releases or any info about new games, I only knew when game could be bought.

But today every little info about game is available immediately for everyone on earth with internet and any device that have internet. So cant be compare at all with SNES or N64 period. Today Aonuma gives a little new info about Zelda U, and immediately you having thousands of threads and posts about just that little info, and hype is raising. And Zelda U i first HD, true open Zelda with biggest world ever, and hype is huge.

Yeah, it's going to be an intersting year! Hopefully they won't wait until E3 to talk about the NX.

lol you think the Nintendo Universal Park is opening next year.

Yep. TP was way more hyped, but that's because Nintendo decided to show the game, unlike this one.