Cherry Picking?
Your suggesting that in the last 25 years, most games have had amazing narratives?
Here't the best selling games of all time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games
Tetris - 100 million
Wii Sports - 82.69 million
Minecraft - 65 million
Grand Theft Auto V - 52 million
Super Mario Bros. (NES) - 40.24 million
Mario Kart Wii - 36.38 million
Tetris - 35 million
Wii Sports Resort - 32.80 million
New Super Mario Bros (DS) - 30.79 million
New Super Mario Bros. (Wii) - 29.32 million
Wii Play - 28.02 million
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - 27.5 million
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - 26.5 million
Call of Duty: Black Ops - 26.2 million
Grand Theft Auto IV - 25 million
Call of Duty: Black Ops II - 24.2 million
Kinect Adventures! - 24 million
Nintendogs - 23.96 million
Pokémon Red, Blue, and Green (Game Boy colour) - 23.64 million
Mario Kart DS - 23.59 million
Pokémon Gold and Silver (Game Boy/Game Boy colour) - 23 million
Wii Fit - 22.67 million
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 22-29 million
Wii Fit Plus 2009 - 21.11 million
Super Mario World (Snes) 20.6 million
How many of those narrative classics started with the story?