Was it really so long ago

Was it really so long ago when it seemed like every game released was a platformer? The Golden years of this once mighty genre were during the reign of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, and with the help of one vocabulary-limited, Italian-plumber, it became one of gaming's more prevalent 8-bit genres. Some of the notable conventions of the genre that we've become so familiar with today included: well-timed jumps, shiny item collection, and dispatching of enemies by smashing in their heads from above. The PlayStation-N64 era signaled a resurgence, with Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot borrowing many of the genres conventions while creating some new ones. Historically, there hadn't been a genre that has experienced so much prominence before, and it seems highly unlikely that any genre ever will again.
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