Well I did say I enjoyed the Lost Vikings... if you'll go back and look at the early games Rockstar made you'd find there's a couple famous ones, such as Lemmings and body harvest that I have experience with, but there's plenty of misses as well even including one in their GTA franchise (GTA II could be fairly called mediocre imo).

Basically, those two come to mind because there's a point where they went from fairly conventional, if perhaps above average, developers (though Blizzard's resume' was quite short), to suddenly being the very best in the industry to this day. Seriously, the only bad release I can recall from Blizzard since Warcraft was their expansion to the original Diablo, and that's largely because they outsourced it (and also refuse to acknowledge it ever existed lol). Rockstar, meanwhile, has likewise dominated the industry ever since GTA III.

While there's an exception or two, all of their releases since then have largely ranged from great to masterpiece (and thus the "beyond" part of the title). That's why I thought of both of them... they went from good to fantastic almost overnight.

I don't know, I kinda liked that Morrowind had that old-school RPG feel to it, it's actually only Bethesda game I really liked a lot. I wasn't big fan of Daggerfall (Might & Magic fan here), and later games were loosing more and more RPG elements...they sure did streamlined there games, but in the end you get FO4, which is hardly RPG at all.

Fallout 4 is an odd move.  I think but can't be sure part of that is a desire to create some distance between TES and Fallout, which many often accused of being overly similar.  I don't think it's a good reason to make changes but I do think that could be part of theri motivation.  And my issue with Morrowind is they didn't want to pitch their tent in either camp so they awkwardly straddled the fence.  I like my old school RPGs.  I like my action RPGs.  I do not like it when conflicting elements of each are mashed together uncomfortably :P

I think Konami was a bigger third party, but I admit it's not the best example. Games like Battletoads, RC Pro-Am, and Snake Rattle 'n' Roll are solid. But I do believe the years between 1994-2001 were a big improvement.

Mentioning Level 5, leaving out the genius series that is Professor Layton. 

That's where they first hit gold.

maybe cd project red

Yeah, Morrowind did have some quirks, but it was still a fair attempt at making proper open-world RPG...I feel they've could've taken a better approach in following games if they wanted to improve gameplay, but still retain deep RPG systems (that's my main issue with almost all action-RPGs, there's too few RPG skill integration into actual action part).

Anyway, my view on Bethesda is similar to Infinity Ward - they've mass popularized certain genres, but in the process were forerunners of watering down those genres...some might even say ruining them. Luckily, in FPS there are at least few that are trying to make them again similar to what they once were, but in action-RPGs I only see things getting worse.

Yeah Rare really only had a couple quality titles during the prime of the NES (Marble Madness and RC Pro-Am come to mind), but otherwise there wasn't a whole lot that gen... I often get the impression that people haven't actually played Battletoads, as while it's a good game, it's become severely overrated with time likely due to its superior sequels. Otherwise, they also forget that it released in 1991, as in the SNES was already sitting on shelves and the world had largely begun moving on. The vast majority of its list of games is otherwise certainly mediocre (just go look up their games, I'd say about 1 in 4 or 5 is good). They really didn't start entering their prime until the SNES came along.

Konami, in terms of the number of quality titles released to the Nes, blows Rare out of the water imo. Seriously, it seems like half of my favorite games from that era were by Konami:

Gradius, Castlevania I & II & III, Rush'n Attack, Life Force, Metal Gear, Contra, Jackal, Blades of Steel, Super C, TMNT I & II & III

They kept busy heh, if any 3rd party defined the NES it was them.

Volition. DMA Design on the late 90's which became Rockstar North. WB Interactive.

One of the reason why I like Sony, is that they actually give mediocre developers a chance to experiment with bigger budget titles, after seeing that they have the potential. The best examples are Naughty Dog and Guerilla. Both made some rather mediocre games before their breakout titles and now they are 2 massive AAA developers.

Also as some others have mentioned developers like From Software and Gamefreak also fit the bill perfectly