Can confirm this, along with Advance Wars. At least the first two games. GS was noteworthy back in the day. It was right on the crest of the wave that was effectively Nintendo's golden era of gaming with Gamecube and GBA which people still think of fondly. It's why I always tag that people who say otherwise are revisionists or too young to remember. GS had no brand to go on and on its very first entry in an RPG series on a handheld managed to break a million. Be mindful that normally in the genre less than half of that was considered successful at the time. It's hard to describe really because today there's no equivalent to compare it to. You have the explosion of the internet and twitter, youtube, reddit, etc. to just get out the info quickly in the modern day.
Back in 2001, all I really remember about the internet was AOL and only using the internet for research for homework. Maybe using gamefaqs to look up some map. So when a game made an impact, it had to do it by its own merits or the brand that it had built otherwise it would stay hidden. Golden Sun definitely did that as surprising as that might seem. At its peak it really was bigger internationally than Fire Emblem, Pikmin, Mother, F-Zero and that's not to put those franchises in some disrespect; Golden Sun was just that big. Camelot's problem is they didn't strike when the iron was hot like so many other franchises did, including its contemporaries. I'm not saying it would have been Pokemon, but it had ability to replicate that success to a lesser extent.
GS was discussed on the playground, in the classroom, with random cousins you would seldom see except for a family event twice a year. Camelot is stupid so here we are.