N64 days must have been horrible, the machine had only a handful of interesting games (if you could put up with the blurry as hell textures)... The games were expensive too...and there were constant drought of games, which is why any somewhat decent n64 title sold millions of copies despite the low install base... I had one for Zelda lot... Played a bit of Mario 64 on it and tried many of its other popular titles... And just sold the whole thing last year!

I would say the Wii era when Nintendo was really doubling down on the casual stuff. Both the Wii u and 3ds are winding down but I could still probably name at least a dozen games I want to buy on Nintendo's systems

That's quite the loaded question you've got there. Tell me, curl-6, have you stopped beating your wife?

The problem, here, is so many people getting their rocks off on ranting about Nintendo. A rational reading of what they're doing is fine, but people like being angry.

Making claims like Nintendo are skipping E3 when they're having a huge blowout of what could possibly be their biggest-ever title, that they're ignoring the Wii U because they're not showing off many Wii U titles in playable form despite the Wii U being the only platform getting a playable game, that Nintendo aren't going to cover anything but Zelda U because they said it'll be the only playable title even though the word "playable" indicates that others will be present, but not playable...

The list goes on. A 2017 release date means Nintendo apparently "delayed" the launch, despite Nintendo having never even hinted at a 2016 release (all there was were rumours, and just about all of them were debunked along the way). Nintendo's not going to get third-party support, apparently, despite the specific reason for a 2017 release being to make sure third parties could get their games ready for the system. A rumour pops up implying a problem, and people treat it like it's gospel, only for the rumour to be debunked.

It's not a bad time to be a Nintendo fan. Some of the greatest games ever released by Nintendo have been released recently, or are coming. There's a new console on the way, but Nintendo didn't want to let that distract from the systems that Nintendo fans already have. Nintendo are branching out into mobile, but only in such a way as to encourage more people to move onto their dedicated systems. Their newest big IP, Splatoon, is going from strength to strength, meaning that fans can expect more Splatoon... and likely more new IPs, too, especially if long-running rumours and hints by Nintendo bear fruit.

Nintendo's recent restructuring included making Shibata of NoE and Fils-Aime of NoA Executive Officers - that basically moves them from "the guys who run the day-to-day stuff of the subsidiaries" to "the guys who get a significant voice in the operation of the company, second only to Kimishima". Nintendo is adjusting its internal structure to be more like Western companies, and you can bet that this will result in more of a push for western support, etc.

Nintendo is modernising on many other fronts, too. Their digital presence has increased significantly, with My Nintendo and Nintendo Accounts, which there are strong rumours indicating that Nintendo Accounts will be integrated fully into NX, so accounts won't be tied to consoles anymore. Rumours from a relatively trusted source, Emily Rogers, also indicate that Nintendo's output will be a lot better on the NX because of other parts of their restructuring.

And Nintendo's collaboration with third parties is getting stronger. They've already built strong relationships with Koei Tecmo, Platinum, Sega, Atlus, and Bandai Namco. They're building relationships with Activision, Warner Bros, Square Enix, Disney, and others. And then there's their indie support, which has been gathering pace. They have had multiple meetings recently with EA, too. And then you can look at the more extensive leverage of their IP in that process - Nintendo IP has been included in Monster Hunter, Story of Seasons, Bayonetta, Skylanders, Sonic, Lego, Dynasty Warriors, One Piece, Scribblenauts, Fatal Frame, Tekken, Rayman, Project X Zone, Dead or Alive... the list goes on (and this is just from this generation).

I simply cannot see any reason why this would be called a "bad time to be a Nintendo fan". Because Zelda got delayed? Zelda always gets delayed. Because Nintendo didn't do exactly what you expected? Nintendo always defies expectation. Because Nintendo isn't treating E3 like it's a critical place for them to show off everything they have planned? Nintendo hasn't considered E3 to be that important since about 2010 (thus why they're putting all their focus on a single title). Because output for the current gen systems is down relative to last year? That's what happens in the year prior to the release of a new system.

In all this, you didn't actually specify a time when it was worse for Nintendo fans.

Eh nobody was really that upset about the Game Boy, but that time it was pretty old quite frankly, something from the NES era as the 16-bit era was winding down. We were also hearing reports of "Project: Atlantis" which was supposed to be the GB's successor.

Handheld wasn't really the same thing back then anyway, no one was freaking out about not enough handheld games, it was more like a bonus in those days.

No one at that time (1995) saw Pokemon coming.

The Playstation wasn't really that big of a deal in '95/early '96 either ... the N64 should have beaten it if it wasn't for the incredibly poor decision to use carts only. Hey if you wanna use carts cuz Miyamoto can't make Mario 64 on CDs fine, but that was no reason to make the system cart-only. Betting on the 64DD was stupid too. The N64 still had phenomenonal sales its first year until the drought of games thanks to cartridges stunted its momentum.

The N64 with Mario 64, Zelda: OoT, and GoldenEye *plus* third party support with the CD drive would've slayed everything IMO. NOA emerged from the mid-90s a much better company after learning some hard lessons from the 16-bit wars, their marketing was better and they had the killer add of Rareware. Every was going pretty good at that point, then NCL decides to cut their legs off with the cartridge decision.

Hard to say. To me the GameCube and original Wii weren't all that strong either, but the Wii had a few redeeming titles.

I wanted to like the WiiU but, now that we know Zelda isn't even coming out for it exclusively, it's hard to pick more than a handful of awesome exclusives.

In all era including GameCube era they had their handheld which helped them. In smartphone era handheld has become handHELP. OP is technically right.

Ha ha ha.

I guess you could say 1997 was bad for Nintendo fans because that was really the year where Sony overtook Nintendo thanks to Final Fantasy VII and an avalanche of developer support ... and they basically did delay their entire 1997 holiday lineup (Zelda, F-Zero, Banjo, etc.) and replaced it with Diddy Kong Racing.

Though the funny thing is GoldenEye 007 came out of nowhere and became Game of the Year and all that.

1995 also had the release of Secret of Evermore, just one of the finest games I've played to date, not just.... for the SNES, but RPGs in general, it even went so far to have 4 different currencies in the gaming worlds... I mean sure it's handy for you as a gamer traveling around your game worlds that Gil is accepted around the globe, but really if I drive 100 miles from here I need to convert my Euros to Pounds to be able to spend them.... and that is in a EuroZone country lol.

Evermore also had one of the best magic resource systems I've encountered, not just a simple refillable MP bar but a full list of alchemy ingredients used in different spells, often overlapping in their use so you had to pick if you wanted to use the defence lowering Acid rain or keep onto that water for a vital Healing spell during the fight, Can't recommend playing through Evermore enough, also... the music... wtf so atmospheric, shining gem in the SNES library.