[Andrew NDB]

I respect respect the N64. And it had its hits. To me, in the big scheme of things it kind of feels like a misstep, though. It represents Nintendo alienating Squaresoft (now Square-Enix), Rare, Philips and more. Power players that millions of fans loved even a few years before as brands with series, companies that were now asked to cross-develop for Nintendo with tiny cartridges that everyone else had moved on from. Most of them said no, or sent the N64 inferior versions. Nintendo zigged when everyone was telling them they should have zagged... and yes, everyone loves Mario 64 and Goldeneye, but it kind of forever cost them the console war.

Refusing to acknowledge CD as the next form of gaming media hamstringed Nintendo at a critical time in gaming history. Aborting the already developed (like, I remember seeing pictures of it in Nintendo Power) CD peripheral for SNES was dumb enough (and birthed the Sony Playstation as a rival, which they poured money into to create and then Sony just ran with it... and why shouldn't they have?) but to avoid it for the N64? Weird.

Honestly they've never recovered from the oddly cartridge-based N64. Ever since then the people in charge sort of felt emboldened by the backlash. "We're not like Microsoft! We're not like Sony!" But it was Nintendo's ground to literally give up to both players. And Nintendo did happily... for virtually no reason. The "they're a family company!" stuff went out the window with the release of Mortal Kombat 2, which did not have sweat instead of blood anymore. So that was in the past, even by the time of N64.

It's really interesting. And puzzling. Also a little bit sad. Though I do admire Nintendo for mostly sticking to its guns in trying to innovate. Personally, I wish they'd have stayed the course with the Wii as by that point as it was a big win after the ho-hum of the GameCube (which was funny as that was only a halfway admission that they were wrong about CDs... as in "OK, OK, we're arriving late now... but we still have our weird values so we will give you DVD *MINI* discs! That's all!"). You know, poured more dollars into an interactive experience. Like if the Wii was the PS1, imagine what the Wii PS5 equivalent would be. That's what I wanted to see. Instead they kind of kept their general idea intact of innovation... but shifted it into some kind of hybrid portable/light motion/also on the big screen model... which really sells all 3 things short and makes them now a leader in nothing. I mean, I guess the Wii U and the Switch technically outlasted anything Sony attempted in the handheld department... but this doesn't seem at all like a victory to me. It seems like a calculated defeat, with the intent on just survival after a series of bad decisions.

I mean, I guess they weren't as dumb as Sega? Though I like that Sega took big risks. But honestly if Nintendo had made the right decisions at the right times... I'm not sure we would have even seen a Sega Dreamcast. Imagine the Sega Saturn going up against the combined might of Nintendo and Sony under the Nintendo banner with a proper successor to the SNES. And now imagine what today would look like.