I find it funny how a lot of Nintendo's longest lasting series debuted in really awkward circumstances that would basically be a death kneel for anything else.
Pikmin was GameCube, Splatoon was Wii U, Animal Crossing was an N64 game exclusive to the region where the hardware was least popular, Pokemon was a B&W Game Boy game mere months before the Color and multiple years after 3D became the norm, Kirby's second game was a two-years-post-SNES NES game, Mario Tennis was a double punch of Virtual Boy followed by late N64, Xenoblade had a shady GameStop exclusive deal, even Donkey Kong (and by extension Mario) had a really rocky arcade launch that led to the creation of Crazy Kong.
