See, to me it was more like the first level of Panzer Dragoon in 95, because yeah, I was that guy.
By 1998 it took a lot to blow my hair back, though. I’m not saying it was a better game, but FFVII had been out for a year, and Quake 2, Half-Life and MGS had come out already. Things had changed.
But hey, the good news is by the time I did get around to OOT, later and through emulation, I still thought it held up alright, even if I’m not on the same “best game ever” boat as a lot of people.
Were you older? Might be that that if they were younger and didn’t have a computer to play they just wouldn’t have the same context.
Differing opinions between generations can be largely boiled down to nostalgia and someone’s age during that period informs greatly how much they could even experience prior to [thing] to compare.
Yeah, I was in my teens and by the time the N64 came out I had a gaming PC with a proper GPU in it. Between that and the N64 launching quite late over here (and doing pretty terribly) I definitely had a different experience than all the “Nintendo SixtyFoaaaar!” kids out there.
But there are levels to it. Coming at it dispassionately in those circumstances I still played through all of Mario 64 and OoT and thought they were great and good, respectively. GoldenEye, Turok and the Banjo games not so much.
Of course that opinion also has to do with controller support on PC being utter garbage until the Xbox 360 came out. For a long time the best playing 3D games on PC that weren’t shooters or RPGs were emulated console games with a PS2 controller adaptor.
Oof, sounds like you missed the whole space sim genre then. Took extra hardware for the best experience, but even with a cheap joystick it could be amazing stuff. I enjoyed first-person shooters and the like, but TIE Fighter and Freespace were 3D to me back then. I loved my Sidewinder gamepad in that era, too.
That may or may not be why fifth-gen console 3D does next to nothing for me. Until the Dreamcast came out, it all looked way behind PC, and almost no one was doing the amazing spritework that they excelled at anymore.
Me having my first ‘open world’ experience with TES Oblivion and not enjoying it until my inner monologue suddenly switches from “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do” to “I can go anywhere. I CAN DO ANYTHING!” and then I am slaughtered by the guard for trying to kill the nearest random peasant.
-Sometime in 2007
And then you got outside, there’s a fiery volcano and zombies that make Link shit himself.
Those zombies terrified me! They really slowed my progress because I avoided all the places with them.
The falling hands were also scary, but I had no idea when or where they would appear so I just had to deal with them.
Star Control 2 on the 3DO, playing that before I’d seen a PlayStation, was this for me.
And later, FF7 was this for me.
I wonder if there’s a timeline where Link is wearing flood pants when he first meets Rauru on that weird fountain platform in the Chamber of Sages
