What a strange coincidence, then, that Nintendo should find itself in such a similar situation a decade later. The Wii U has so far struggled to make the impact expected of it, with sales forecasts missed and even the recent appearance of Super Mario 3D World apparently failing to improve its fortunes – at the time of writing, the game had only managed to reach number 14 in the UK charts.

The venerable Mario, it seems, has been utterly upstaged by the glittering launch of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 – once again, Nintendo is outshone by two technically superior next-generation consoles.

In the wake of this news, Naughty Dog founder and former THQ boss Jason Rubin suggested in an interview with GameTrailers that “Nintendo is irrelevant as a hardware manufacturer in the console business.” Although noting that “They’re a national treasure,” Rubin also added, “It is a crime that we do not play those games on the systems that we have.”

It’s a familiar argument, then, and one that appears to hold water: lots of people would love to play the latest Mario game, so why should they spend their hard-earned money on a struggling console to do so? Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if the next Zelda was a multi-platform release? That way, Nintendo could be sure of more sales across the board, while consumers wouldn’t have to choose between buying an entire new system or miss out on a game altogether.

If Nintendo were to follow Sega into the software business, however, it would be turning its back on a 30-year tradition of creating both games and consoles in tandem. Not all of Nintendo’s ideas have struck gold, and some have been downright odd – few would argue that the Virtual Boy was its finest hour, for example – but every so often, it comes up with something that is truly different and unexpected.