Yeah, I'm good with respectful disagreement, and I'm glad we can discuss topics like this here without it degenerating to insults.
As far as design affecting relevance, yes, I do think it does. That's not to say it makes a game irrelevant due to outdated appearances. Streets of Rage has badly outdated character designs, and I love it. What I believe it does affect, though, is a game's accessibility to younger audiences. In an age where a huge chunk of young people barely distinguish between playing a game and watching a let's play video, games turn into memes and don't always get the credit they deserve. Sega has taken a lot of flip-flopping from journalists about design of characters like Skate or Fighting Vipers characters long after the fact even though they were well received at the time.
What I was trying to get across is that by using consistent design based more on fantasy than modern trends, many of Nintendo properties have one more thing going for them when retroactively attracting new players. Internet memes and bad journalism have caused games like the CD-i Zeldas to be looked at as abominations when they are in fact quite playable and even fun. Skate from Streets of Rage jumps out at me because I've seen him cited as a major criticism in modern retro reviews, when at the time it wasn't really a topic of conversation. I'm not saying Nintendo's designs are better as much ad I'm saying they're easily digested.
I wasn't even really thinking about emulation. I've never done it, but I guess to younger players who aren't collecters that would add yet another wrinkle. It's those younger players that really turn the online discussion on its ear, as they begin adding their opinions to all sides with a completely different perspective. Most of us who lived through this time are set in our ways, but hopefully have learned to appreciate everything that's out there. I know that for me, opening up my mind to new condoles after being a Nintendo die hard as a kid allowed people to teach me about awesome stuff I hadn't heard about. I bought in on the Genesis eventually and learned to respect it, and that's one of the things that led me to importing and exploring other systems' libraries as well.
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