Not as a whole, like not counting hardware, third party, etc, just in terms of Nintendo software.

Also, some games in the transition happened outside these consoles, like Starfox on SNES.

I think Nintendo handled HD quite well in that they didn't suffer from budget bloat as much as most other publishers, but I feel HD just isn't as substantial of a gameplay change as 3D was. They handled 3D so much better than any other company at the time when it came to legacy IPs.

3D. They didn't really do HD until 2012, and we know how that went. *quietly slides Wii U out of the way*

Aside from the huge step back in visual quality and animation, MGS came out the same year as Mario 64. Much better transition to 3D. Ofcourse that's already 2 years after the first Tombraider game. 3rd person 3D was already well established.

I could not get along with Mario 64, OOT was better but compared to top down Zelda, oof.

Yeah the console generations of early 3D games were painful. You could either play beautifully crafted 2D or 2.5D games running flawlessly, or a flickering mess of unstable 3D game with muddy textures and ugly lighting.

And Nintendo still often refuses to let you steer the camera in 3rd person, very annoying. (Plus their 2D games still look better than 3D on the Switch)

Wii U had top quality games 1st party wise but HD gaming as the standard was 7 years old. It wasn't new anymore and a lot of the kinks were worked out of the early days.  So they were not revolutionary/transformative when Wii U came out.  3D games as the standard was still in peak growing pains when N64 debuted. Mario 64 set such a high bar and became the model for how most 3D games were made. Transitioning 2D games to 3D was a difficult hurdle at the time. Nintendo did it nearly flawlessly when few did by 1996 on a home console.

MGS came out 2 years after Mario 64.

Oh yeah, I got confused with OOT's release date. Mario 64 came out the same year Tombraider came out.

First person was further along already, Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992, Doom 1993.


Anyway coming from PC, the first 3D outings on console were painful. While 'jealous' of console's 2D games and smoothness (which would never quite run hickup free on PC), early 3D on console was hard to look at. It wasn't until PS2, GameCube and Dreamcast that I got into console 3D. One of the worst of N64 was Turok, what a mess on TV :/ I did like Waverace 64 though, the reason I bought a N64. OoT was a bonus, Mario 64 a disappointment. On PS side Driver, GT and V-Rally were my favorite 3D games.

Platformers I didn't get into until J&D Precursor Legacy. 2(.5)D platformers still blew the early 3D ones out of the water. Coming from Amiga 500 with all its parallax glory, 2D platformers were simply far above early 3D platformers.

Would love to hear more from those who voted that HD was better.
I can see an argument for BOTW/Mario Kart 8/Pikmin 3/Tropical Freeze/Splatoon/Xenoblade Chronicles X/etc being better than Mario 64/Ocarina/Starfox 64/Majora/F-Zero X/etc I suppose, even if I personally don't agree.

I voted 3D but I prefer Wii U's output overall minus Mario 64. However, Wii U's output was slow going. As mentioned HD gaming wasn't exactly new or working out kinks from other devs anymore by the time Wii U came out so it didn't set any new standards. 3D gaming was still early going in 1996 and Mario 64 set the standard. Sp hard to argue against N64 to me when most devs were struggling to transition from 2D to 3D. SEGA did pretty well inventing the 3D fighter. Racing games translated well. Panzer Dragoon was amazing. Sonic....we got Sonic R lol

I would argue that BOTW set new standards for open world games, even if their Wii U output overall wasn't as groundbreaking as their N64 output.