The thing is that, there's the crash, but nothing before the crash really holds up that well, so it's hard to say that, from a purely modern player perspective, that it was a dark age. It's just that video games were a burgeoning art form that needed to find its legs.
So if we take a purely post-NES launch perspective... it's really hard to point out a like dark age...
Like I at first want to jump to like the PS1 era. It's a system that, beyond a few genres like 2d platformers and RPGs, does not hold up well at all. And, at the same time the N64 has some classics on it, but they were super few and far between. Game Boy was really showing it's age and there were so, so many flops, like the Saturn, the PC-FX, the 3D0, the Jaguar, the Nomad, the Virtual Boy, the Pippin, etc.
But, even until 1996 there were just some true classics coming out of the SNES. The Game Boy saw a revitalization with Pokemon and, eventually the Color gave the system a last gasp at life. The N64, again, was dripping out games, but there are a ton of classics on the system. And even though 99% of the PS1's 2413 library is very of it's time, there are still fantastic games on the system that hold up. Hell, even the Saturn was a fantastic little system with it's own niche, reminiscent of the Wii U today.
But the biggest reason to dismiss that time was the PC, which would see it's biggest boom during this time until after the later PC crash until the mid-late 2000's. You had Warcraft II, Diablo, Starcraft, Grim Fandango, By the time the millennium rolled over, we were getting the last great games on the Game Boy, PS1, and N64 and then the Dreamcast just hit the ground running.
And let's not forget about the arcades. They would see a similar fate to the PC, dying by the early 2000's (yet never quite resurrected), but it was the last golden era of PC games with a ton of stellar fighting games, puzzle games, and, of course, Dance Dance Revolution.
My second gut reaction is the early Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii. The Wii launched with a mediocre zelda game and Wii Sports, but severely lacked software for a long time. The PS3's lineup was a joke for at least the first three years of it's release. And Xbox Live Arcade had not really hit it's stride yet, leaving Xbox 360 owners with a mediocre initial retail lineup lead by games that haven't exactly held up.
But portable games are what save that time period. PSP was becoming a system with a healthy number of must-have games and the DS... oh man, the DS. The DS was red hot following the 2005 holiday season, producing what I would argue is the finest library of any console to date, home or handheld. Just nonstop great titles hitting the system until it petered out in 2011.
The PC didn't have a breadth of quality, but a single genre seemed to keep it as a staple for games: the MMO. What I would consider the golden age of the genre gave us a ton of diversity in the genre and its biggest players, like Final Fantasy XI, and, especially, World of Warcraft, seeing their best years.
But the home console that picked up the slack when the HD era was finding its groove was the PS2. Some of the best games to come out on the platform came out well after the 360, like both Persona games, Okami, God Hand, Final Fantasy XII, Guitar Hero 1-3, Odin Sphere, and the Yaukuza games. By the time Persona 4 sang the PS2's swan song, the HD era was on it's feet and dishing out great games on all fronts.
The only other time in games I can think of is maybe the start of this generation? But the Wii U was fantastic after it's first year, the 3DS was amazing, the Vita had a lot of great titles, and the PC was putting everything else to shame, so it's hard to justify saying it.
tl;dr: there wasn't one, as long as you paid attention to all sides of gaming.
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