Maybe I will talk more about that, actually...
If you are curious, I also made a wallpaper of the 35 games published by Nintendo themselves that are NOT in a black/silver/blue box.
Nintendo wanted to get North American gamers into RPGs, so they chose to publish Dragon Quest (and rename it to "Dragon Warrior"), Final Fantasy, and Faxanadu. They also chose to publish Mega Man 6 when Capcom didn't seem to want to do it.
But it's interesting what we have here...
Consider the black/silver/blue-box games (seen on the wallpaper in my previous post) to be when Nintendo was starting out, that is, the early NES era.
Then the games with red banners on the top would be the latest phase (because the Super NES was on the horizon or already out, like Kirby's Adventure, Wario's Woods, and the Yoshi puzzle games).
Then everything else in between is what you'd think would be the "peak Nintendo era".
But if you filter out the Zapper and Power Pad games, since no one remembers those (sorry, Super Team Games and To The Earth), the games from franchises that are not dependent on Nintendo anymore (as mentioned earlier, like Final Fantasy and Mega Man 6), then what are you left with?
Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, both Zelda games, Punch-Out!!, and... that's pretty much it?
(I mean, I like StarTropics, but sadly, that's not really remembered after the NES era... wasn't even released in Japan... not even any Super Smash Bros. references, if I recall correctly...)
Arguably, The Legend Of Zelda would almost be a "Black Box" game due to the timing and that it almost had a black box... but that just means one fewer game for the "peak era" that we are discussing here!
I mean, sure, the Mario sequels and Zelda (even if it's "just" Zelda II) are certainly nothing to scoff at, and Punch-Out!! was insanely popular too. Though big, nay, HUGE, that's really not many games at all. But they didn't need to make many more, clearly. Maybe Nintendo didn't NEED to release more stuff, lest it distract from the well-selling Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3. Looking at this really goes to show how the "peak NES era" was probably heavily supported by third-party games, that is, Mega Man, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, even licensed stuff like Disney and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Certainly interesting to look at it this way, isn't it?
