What was Nintendo's golden decade?

[Iceman404]

Yeah, it's something, but not necessarily built the way I'd actually care about it or notice really. In Mario it's always a choice, a warp pipe or something. I meant if they took the Sonic route for a game and set every level up like: Top = Hard to maintain, quickest, and most rewarding/ middle = regular route and a middle man path to each one/ bottom = hard to stay alive (deathpits) and not as rewarding (as well has hard to escape).