Most creative and diverse devs in their prime

[Tanooki]

Nothing that has never been said already but Capcom Konami Square and rare. They all put out little to nothing compared to the 20th century. It's sad seeing what they do put out as it's all a hollow shell of what it used to be.

[alienjesus]

Rare was just insane during the NES era. From Wizards and Warriors to Battletoads and Anticipation to Cobra Triangle, Rare's output during that era is unmatched, IMO, with regard to both creativity and diversity.

I much prefer their N64 stuff. All of their NES stuff was...iffy. They hadn't quite dropped the ZX Spectrum design principles of 'just make it really hard and kinda clunky' yet in my eyes.

Natsume would be my pick for this thread. Not many people realise that Natsume used to be one company, but split into 2 seperate companies, both called Natsume, in the 90s.

One of the Natsumes went on to develop a bunch of licensed pap like Medabots games.

One of them mainly focused on publishing and mainly put out River King and Harvest Moon games.

When they were one company though, they made stuff like this:

Vice Project Doom (NES)
Power Blade (NES)
Shatterhand (NES)
Shadow of the Ninja (NES)
Wild Guns (SNES)
Pocky and Rocky (SNES)
Ghost Sweeper Mikami (SFC)
The Ninja Warriors (again) (SNES)
The pretty decent Power Rangers games (SNES)
Renegade (SMS)
Sagaia (SMS)
Tail Gator (GB)
Ninja Gaiden: Shadow (GB)

It's quite a fall from grace really.

[Gunstar Green]

A lot of the old PC developers come to mind like Origin Systems, Sierra On-Line, LucasArts and Epic MegaGames. Even early Electronic Arts. It was pretty common at the time to diversify as much as you could. Before Doom came along there wasn't really an "it" genre to be making.

[marurun]

Westwood Associates was awesome for early computer development. Their console work was less spectacular.

[ElkinFencer10]

I've always been a huge fan of Suda 51. He's...insane....and I love it.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Falcom.

Looking at their "prime" retro era, they developed almost nothing but RPGs but there's a huge amount of diversity to be found within that framework. You have top-down and side-scrolling ARPGs, crusty old CRPGs, first-person and top-down dungeon crawlers, turn-based traditional JRPGs, PC-style adventure games, and strategy titles.

Hell, look at how many different types of play styles you see in the Dragon Slayer series alone.

[Segata]

Falcom.

Looking at their "prime" retro era, they developed almost nothing but RPGs but there's a huge amount of diversity to be found within that framework. You have top-down and side-scrolling ARPGs, crusty old CRPGs, first-person and top-down dungeon crawlers, turn-based traditional JRPGs, PC-style adventure games, and strategy titles.

Hell, look at how many different types of play styles you see in the Dragon Slayer series alone.

Personally don't think Falcom has faltered really at all. They still make really great stuff.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Oh, they do. They're much less experimental these days though. It's mostly just a string of Ys and Legend of Heroes titles for the PC and Sony systems.

[Exhuminator]

I wish Falcom would make a new Brandish with as much effort as they put into Ys and Legend of Heroes.