After the Super Nintendo, the Nintendo 64 was released on September 29th, 1996. I remember the date well, because it was my birthday. It seemed like it was meant to be, because I convinced my mom to get it for my birthday. Things were going well at that time. We were living in Detroit, she had found steady work and a new man, and we were stable for the first time in awhile. I had such a great time with Super Mario 64, and I knew that I would enjoy many new gifts from the gaming gods.
After I completed it 100%, I dove into Ocarina of Time. That was quite a game as well, which I finished 100%. Then, a curious thing happened. Rather, a LACK of anything I liked was released. Mario Kart 64 wasn't as good as the original, neither was Yoshi's Story. Goldeneye really wasn't my cup of tea, nor the new Castlevania. Star Fox 64 was great, and so was Super Smash Bros. But other than those, what was there, really? I was getting kind of frustrated, because the stable lineup of RPG's that I was getting into with the SNES was hugely noticeably absent on the 64.
Turns out that the third party developers had mainly jumped ship from the Nintendo dictatorship. I had heard about some drama years later. The big N had developed some hubris, it had seemed, and they weren't going to support a company that demanded unreasonable things in their eyes. The cost of new cartridges was a factor, for one, as well as their strict quality assurance needs. Going so far as to tell developers how to make their games for a Nintendo console and what they couldn't put in them.
As for me, I ended up buying only about a dozen games for that console. Which was disheartening, because I had about 30+ with their previous one. I was even getting games that I didn't like, because I was getting really starved for something new to play. Eventually, I just sold the whole collection, because I just didn't want it.
I bought another one years later. I still have a few of the really good ones. Somehow I ended up with a bunch of crap games again, too. I think I have about a dozen of them all together. It makes me forget sometimes that I had ever sold it in the first place. lol
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