I think Nintendo was at a very creative point in the years starting with the launch of the GBA through the release of the DS and its many clever games. This included the wonderful launch of the Gamecube, which really revitalized Nintendo following a slow burn-out with the N64.
The biggest issue Nintendo began to face that gen is gamers were growing up. Moving into the 2000's, a lot of people who grew up with the NES and SNES and whatnot were becoming teenagers or young adults. It was no longer "cool" to appreciate games that were perceived as being cartoony or unrealistic. And many became highly critical of Nintendo's unusual approach to design and format choices. I can recall many people scoffing at the GCN because of its colors, or its small discs, or the irritatingly low-capacity memory cards.
But the first year or two were great. I remember my parents got me the indigo Gamecube and Luigi's Mansion. Leading up to release I bought Super Smash Bros. Melee, and sometime around then Pikmin came out and I got that as well. 2002 saw even more high-profile releases - Super Mario Sunshine, The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker, Animal Crossing and Metroid Prime.
I remember being one of the first people to buy Animal Crossing, having read about it in Nintendo Power leading up to its release. It was just unlike anything else at the time, and to this day I still tend to think the original had more content than a lot of the later ones. I had bought my copy at a KMart, and it included a bonus memory card that unlocked a few extra goodies right from the start.
Windwaker's launch was great because I got a free bonus copy of Ocarina of Time and Master Quest for pre-ordering it. It was the first time I ever got to play OoT, and it was pretty great. I remember convincing my friend at the time to pre-order, and he did, but after he got the OoT disc he canceled his copy of Windwaker because he "thought it looked stupid." I had the hardest time convincing other people of how great a game Windwaker was when it came out. Everybody constantly criticized it - how Link looked, the cel-shaded art style, and I felt very much like the lone fan of the game at launch.
It left a bitter taste in my mouth when I had supported Nintendo so strongly from the start of the Gamecube's launch, and they essentially screwed me over about a year later. They released a special Gamecube bundle that included Windwaker, as well as Ocarina of Time - and Majora's Mask, ALttP and one or two other Zelda games. (Possibly even Master Quest?) Suddenly all of these people were buying Windwaker and exclaiming about what a great game it was. It's like well yeah, but where were all of you fans at the beginning? It felt cheap, and really made me critical of Nintendo in the following years because they weren't supporting their biggest fans. They were just trying to improve lackluster initial consumer response.
Metroid Prime was perhaps the most impressive offering on the system. It re-envisioned a 2D platformer as an FPS adventure game, perfectly.
I think what kind of killed the Gamecube era for me, along with the Windwaker fiasco, was that they blew their load too early. After Metroid Prime, while a large number of great games now existed for the system, it was slow-going for the next big releases. Mario Party 4 was the last game I bought for the Gamecube when I initially owned it, and was just a lousy, overpriced release. Big third-party games I was looking forward to, such as Evolution and Phantasy Star Online, just kept getting pushed-back and I wondered if they would ever be released. Nintendo did this thing where they kept re-releasing NES games - first they were all included in Animal Crossing, but then they released them on the experimental eReader (which I supported on the GBA), and then later on they just decided to put all of these NES games on GBA cartridges and sell them again.
At the very end of the Gamecube's run I caught back up with a few of the games I missed out on, and indeed there were still some really good games late in the system's life, as few and far in between as they were. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Baten Kaitos (1 and 2)... Odama might be one of the most creative game concepts Nintendo ever embraced, and I am surprised they never followed up with the idea.
The slog that plagued the Gamecube lasted well through the Wii's life cycle, and it faced similar issues with a strong initial year or two, followed by nothingness. It has taken just about until recent years for Nintendo to really recover from that problem on the console front with the Switch.
The DS and 3DS thrived these past several years, but began to show their wear as time went on. At least Nintendo is at the point where all games they make exist on a single system, but it took many years of regression for them to improve their reputation with gamers again. And they still haven't regained all of that respect.
Edit: It occurred to me that Windwaker came out the following year. So it was sometime after that where game releases trickled off.
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