A mythical era reputed to be in the 80's, when capitalist self-contentment is widely known to have set in. If you actually play games made in this era, you'll realize that they are mostly self-congratulatory clones of earlier games, or random jumping fests. The myth was created by people who lived mostly in the 80's when they needed some way to talk about the good old days, but didn't get any drugs, sex and the rock'n'roll people were still alive wearing spandex, so that made the younger generation suspicious, and the older people started talking about the great, original games.