Neither the highly acclaimed year 1998 nor the indelible 1991: for the creator of the Super Smash Bros. saga, the best year in the video game industry It was and still is 1986. Masahiro Sakurai is an authority, and he does not say it on a whim: the number of cult sagas that were born that year, added to the revolutions that were being experienced in consoles, PCs and arcades, made it what he himself calls “a year of legend”. A play on words that, by the way, evokes the original The Legend of Zelda among other classics.
Through his essential YouTube channel Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Gamesthe Japanese genius substantiates for less than five minutes everything that 1986 brought to the video game industry, in addition to a compelling reason that gives it extra points over other superb years: there was a brutal creative and entertainment competition full of proposals and franchises created from scratch. Something that, whether we like it or not, seems impossible to do in the middle of 2024.
It is worth remembering that in addition to Link, sagas such as Castlevania, Dragon Quest or Metroid were born that year. And companies like Konami or SEGA dazzled the entire planet. However, Sakurai is fully aware that he is speaking from his perspective: 1986 in Japan was not the same as in a Europe that that same year was receiving the first NES boxes.
Of course, and although Masahiro Sakurai’s professional career rests on spectacular successes on Nintendo consoles, he does not forget other systems and what he has achieved on them, such as the wonderful Alex Kidd of Master System or the passage of Out-Run y R-Type for recreational ones. However, and to be fair, many of those games and games will take years and even decades to reach the West. In the case of Europe, Dragon Quest came to us in 2006!
It is worth highlighting the evolutionary leap that took place at the time with the arrival of the Famicom Disk System, the Japanese NES reader system that enabled the arrival of great games like the aforementioned The Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels (the original Super Mario Bros. 2) highlighting that not only enormous steps were taken in terms of software creation, but also in the way players took advantage of the hardware and developers who, by the way, They began to leave winks and tricks in their works.
In fact, Sakurai rounds off his review of 1986 by remembering Luxo Jr., the Pixar short film that would later light the fuse of the impressive digital cinematics that we will see and continue to see in video games.
Does that mean 1986 is the best year for video games? As we mentioned, Sakurai is aware that each region has had its own context. In a Europe without so many games imported from Japan, a very intense phenomenon was experienced from microcomputers that led to companies like Rare. But it is clear that the context then was very different from that of now, in which sequels, well-known formulas and cult sagas star in the most notable releases of each month with some exceptions. Not to mention the remasters and remakes.
In any case, we cannot complain too much: the balance of 2023 has been superb, and although its successes have been sequels, we have experienced numerous revolutions and surprises with titles as different from each other as Baldur’s Gate 3, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom , Starfield or Street Fighter 6. A bar that 2024 must surpass with games like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Tekken 8, the surprising Helldivers II or, looking to the future, the long-awaited return of Indiana Jones. Aftermath? Yes. But also great games.
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