I think we’re the same age. I turned 14 and started highschool in 1997.

Freshman year for me would have begun fall 1997, so yeah. FF7 was released in the US in September of that year.

Maybe I’m remembering wrong and that was not the first time I heard of Playstation. None of my good friends had one. If they were into gaming it was Nintendo systems and computer games. If I’d heard of Playstation before that, I did not realize that it was CD system and not one that took cartridges, that was new information to me. Honestly, I >only found out from you that Playstation was more popular than N64 a year ago. I didn’t realize that N64 was a commercial disappointment.

Oh, it wasn’t a commercial disappointment (I guess I could have worded that better)–but gaming enthusiasts across the board thought the PS1 was the better system. Nintendo loyalists had a very hard time defending the N64 on any grounds besides the few really big classic games for the system (Mario, Zelda, 007, etc.) almost all of which were made by Nintendo themselves. The Sega Saturn, after a decent start in 1995, did
The first time I ever heard of the Sony Play Station, it was three words like that and was followed in the magazine article it was in with “(????).” This “what, Sony’s making a console system? That’s gonna bomb just like when Panasonic did the 3DO!!!!” attitude not only backfired badly when the PS1 started off strong but would repeat itself later when Microsoft (eeeew, Bill Gates! Nerd geek dork goober with too much money and who stole stuff from Apple, eeewww!!!!!!!) announced the XBox.

I never owned a consul system other than SNES. My parents probably never would have bought me a game system. I was allowed to have an SNES because I won it selling candy for my school, but I was allowed by them to pick it as my prize and they did buy me games for it as gifts.

Hahah, the last holdouts against letting kids play video games.

I remembered Toxic Tower being brutal, but didn’t think it was that hard this time. Honestly, if you only died 10 times in DK 1 then the second game should also be easy.

I seem to recall finding the DK coin and the hidden areas to be a real bitch, but who knows.
I don’t mean to make DKC2 sound impossibly hard–it’s just obviously developed to be a lot deeper and more challenging than the original game.
I definitely died more than a few times in DKC2.

I played some of the Gameboy Donkey Kong game and liked it. I have a Super Game Boy, which I need to play Link’s Awakening. I have Metroid 2 and like that game as well, but it’s been made obsolete by the illegal remake.

I keep forgetting that Metroid 2 remake exists, and I think there’s more than one?
I wish I had played Link’s Awakening.
I wonder if anyone ever considered remaking Kid Icarus: Of Myths And Monsters. Yeah, probably not!!

Have you played the Donkey Kong Land games? I’m kind of curious, but I remember playing one for a few minutes and thinking that it was hard to see my sprites, and I know that other people have that complaint as well.

Never played them. It was pretty stunning that they managed to get those graphics on the Game Boy at all, though.
Cripes, I mean, they tried to do Street Fighter II and friggin’ DOOM on the Game Boy, too.
The continued existence of the Game Boy and all the games they tried to make for it and all the add-ons and whatnot could make its own documentary, really.

I think what you’re describing is in Web Woods, but there are a couple of puzzles like that so maybe it was in one of the swamp levels.

checks Yep, it’s Web Woods.

I definitely beat those games without looking up any kinds of hints. I did play them with my sisters, so they found some of the hidden stuff. We didn’t have the internet when we first beat #2. I think I still didn’t think of it as a resource to cheat at video games when we played through #3 a year later.

I probably could have beaten the games without any help but I would have definitely missed a few bonus areas and such.

I actually bought DK 3 summer of 1998, and it was still being sold new in stores at that point.

That’s pretty interesting, 1998? I wonder when the last SNES game was officially made, and when SNES games were officially no longer being stocked. I know that the last officially-licensed NES game was Wario Woods in 1994.

Looking it up online I see that although Playstation hugely outsold N64, N64 did much better in the U.S. than in the rest of the world, so I don’t think the gap was so big here. It outsold Playstation for at least a while. This was in a some random message board thread and sourced to a broken link, but

Oh, I could believe it. Nintendo’s sheer popularity as a company was probably bound to keep them alive even if the N64 wasn’t a particularly beloved system by gaming connossieurs of that era.

In the eight-bit days of the NES, I didn’t know anybody who had a Sega Master System (and hell, I probably can’t name 10 games for the Master System.) Virtually nobody had a Sega Saturn around where I lived either.

Did Playstation have any multiplayer/competitive games as popular as GoldenEye or Smash Brothers?

Uh…I dunno…Twisted Metal 2 sure was popular, but I can’t say if it’s more popular than the examples you named (and who knows, maybe the most beloved multiplayer game for the N64 is Mario Kart 64.) Possibly fighting games like Tekken 2 or Soul Blade. “I’m sorry!!” “I’m sorry!!” Oh, shush. Street Fighter Alpha 2 was pretty respected, too.