Which is the first PC game that blew your mind?

s804@kbin.social to PC Gaming@kbin.social – 132 points –

For me it was definitely DOOM 2! Miles ahead of anything else I had played before.

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Morrowind, by far. I still remember the sense of freedom and exploration I got

Also Morrowind. The systems of that game blew my young mind, and I was far too dumb to notice most of the jank.

I was too young for Morrowind and started at Oblivion, but yeah, it's the Elder Scrolls games 100%. At the time, to me (age ~9), gaming was jumping and gunning around blocky worlds full of fake doors and imagining how cool it would be if GTA felt like an actual world instead of a blocked-out setpiece full of people whose only thoughts were to walk around, drive, or fight each other.

I started Oblivion and it was insane. I could go in nearly every house, I could have conversations with everyone, I could walk around picking up whatever objects and stealing stuff, then break out of jail when I got caught, I could get inducted into an assassination cult (even if I was really bad at lockpicking and struggled to get in the front door), etc. It was mindblowing and those sorts of features are why I prefer Bethesda titles even to these major titles everyone loves like Witcher 3.

This is 100% my experience too. My mind was blown when I saw what you could do in oblivion.

Same. One of my friend's dad played all the old school DnD games and what not. I remember going over one day and seeing him play that, and when I asked him he was showing me a bunch of things with the open world and the characters. As soon as I was able to get it, I did, and I put in so much time into that game.

Duke Nukem 3D.

Yeah, Wolfenstein 3d and DOOM were great but Duke 3D was some next level shit. Being able to take a leak at the urinal was so cool.

Hell, Duke Nukem 2 was pretty amazing even.

One of my most nostalgic games! I replay it yearly - the ambient sound effects and drone and atmosphere is incredible - the space levels have a creepy feeling despite the comedic tone it often goes for.

I remember getting my first 2 computers connected over 10base2 LAN with T connectors and terminators and all that stuff just so me and my brother could play duke nukem 3d. It was awesome. I also remember one of the computers could barely run it and then only if shrinking the screen down. If more than 3 laser trip bombs went off at once... instant slideshow.

For me, the original browser demo of Minecraft was really exciting. I grew up with LEGO, and the Minecraft demo really brought back the joy of just making things for no other reason than to make them. I’ll always have a soft spot for it

There is definitely a sort-of wonder I felt in the early days of Minecraft that I've been striving to find in a game since, and have been left wanting.

MechWarrior 2,

It was the first real experience I ever had playing a game that was 3D. I was pretty young and didn't know what I was doing. But I thought it was so cool.

My first? Probably roller-coaster tycoon. I was amazed how big and intricate the would could be, and all these coasters and everything were running at once. Led to other things like Sim city and such to find more world building games.

Myst has always stuck with me as looking amazing at the time. I totally sucked at the game but its graphics have a fond place in my mind for some reason!

Prince of Persia. I remember being blown away by how realistic the movement was

Yeah they used rotoscoping to do the animations. It turned out amazing and captured such realistic movement in just basic pixels.

Wolfenstein 3D. I'd played '3D' games like The Bard's Tale before, but the ability to turn around and look in 360' just blew my mind.

Half Life

This is the right answer. Half-Life 2 literally blew my mind when I first played it. It still holds up to a lot of similar games nearly 20 years later

Recently just played through most of it again with the HL2VR mod and it was amazing

For me GTA 3.

At its time I can't think of anything like it that I had access to. Really was a game changer for open world style games.

Probably Return to Castle Wolfenstein was one of the first games i ever played

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this game also the engine upon which Enemy Territory was built? I logged soooo many hours in that multiplayer mode...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iweK-Z99MwQ

I believe it was one of the early games to implement classes/roles in a team-based shooter

Arguably the best free game ever released. "I'm a medic!"

Even with the view window reduced so it would run decently on my 12mhz 80286, I was amazed.

Hello fellow old person! You’re thinking of Wolfenstein 3D, which I also played on a 286. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was from around the year 2000, I believe.

I didn’t own it, but my dad’s friend had it on a computer in the back of his shop. I spent hours back there when he was visiting his friend.

Black and White. Probably others before that too, but Black and White changed my idea of what games could be, it was so different.

I made my mom help me figure out how to install my first graphics card so I could play it without going to a friend's house.

The original StarCraft with those amazing (at the time) cut scenes

I miss the Use Map Settings community to this day. There's never been anything like it in gaming again.

I remember my first time playing Half-Life was pretty incredible. What really wowed me was the intro being so slow, and you just starting in a normal world, with no combat for like 45 minutes. I'd never seen anything like it before, and I loved the feeling so much. I used to hang out in the intro area for as long as I could, just enjoying how immersive and calm it felt. To this day I really dislike games that have little to no down time to them - I love just hanging out in a world. My favourite genre wound up being JRPGs since they handle that balance so well.

Final Fantasy 4 (2 in the USA)

That game made me feel things in a way that no other game had made me feel before that. The deep emotional story telling in that game was leagues beyond anything I had played before it. I played it once a year for a while.

Porom and Palom hit me hard as a kid. FF4 was definitely a gateway into a life long enjoyment of deep RPG stories.

You spoony bard!

Deus Ex. I was 14, didn't really play or like first person shooters and only played it because it was in the pile of old games someone essentially dropped off on me. But I understood rather quickly that this game was something special, especially with the player's choices actually making a difference. I remember a moment when I was playing around with cheats and at one point spawned a Paul Denton next to his dead body in the lab under UNATCO just to be funny and when he started talking to me as if he hadn't died, a quick online search revealed that I didn't even know how deep your influence truly went.

I still don't really like or play first person shooters, but that's now mostly because Deus Ex has set my standards very, very high!

Î was going to mention this one. Just the flexibility of approaches it permitted was revelatory to me.

On a more dubious note, it also unlocked sides of me that I wasn't aware of before.

Honorable mention to the first civ which was, for me, what the Risk boardgame had prophecied.

Deus Ex touched on a lot political issues. Another game from that era with a similar feeling of having to fight against the government is Nomad Soul. It's not as good as Deus Ex, but it features David Bowie which is a plus.

I would say Descent and Doom early on, Skyrim and Mass Effect later. Unfortunately, games don't blow my mind nearly as much as they used to.

Mass Effect definitely up there. Everything was right with that game (perhaps not the excessive time in the lifts). The story line and sound tracks were beyond amazing.

Myst is the one that stands out for me.

Maybe too retro for "PC" gaming, but Ultima III on the C-64. To have a huge explorable world full of details and people to talk to sucked me right in. Others did a better job later in graphics, size, and details, but Ultima was the first.

For RPGs for me it was Ultima VII - it was the first truly open world game I'd come across, with freedom and so much to do (for the time). I still think it's a great game to play even now.

I thought Ultima 3 was "big" to explore, then I played Ultima 4.

It was ultima online for me. Slightly less retro, but damn if Ultima isn't the most slept on truly dead gaming series. So many good games over two decades in the 80s and 90s and then basically shelved since 2000. UO still exists, particularly in private servers, but I would love to see the IP revived in the 2020s. So much potential.

UO would be my next pick in that it blew open the door of the MMORPG concept. EverQuest was next and introduced me to the need for a video card, but UO was simple yet complex at the same time.

For me it was World of Warcraft. First time experiencing an MMO, so that was magical in it's own right but the fact that there were so few loading screens in that game despite it's size was just 🤯

i was tied between WoW and Diablo 2 for what blew my mind the most. WoW was also my first MASSIVE multiplayer game, i am still amazed my mom's laptop actually ran it XD

World of Warcraft for sure. My brother and I had downloaded the trial as a joke between us, making fun of the nerds... Next thing you know we could not log off. The size, the community, the music was just so captivating; I can still hear the score in my heard when I think of Teldrassil. The friends I made in game became closer than anyone I knew prior and some I still know and see today! It was lightning in a bottle for me and once my enthusiasm for WoW finally drained years later, no other MMO could really replace it.

really dating myself here, but I could not get enough of the OG Sims game. I used to play until I fell asleep at my keyboard. It felt so innovative at the time.

I got back into the sims 2 recently and it's kind of remarkable how the game hold up. First of all it's complex as hell there are just so many variables, and things to do, and ways for sims to interact and live and die and grow and build. In a lot of ways sims 2 is more complex than its sequels in terms of personality traits.

Second is how pleasant the game looks. Its stylized and cartoony and not high res but its a sharp looking game. Textures are clear and detailed, there are reflections in mirrors, and items and sets are well modeled and detailed. Its not something I thought of when it came out because of course a new game would look good, but with more than a decade and a half of hindsight behind me it's actually kinda surprising how well it holds up.

"Another World", on Amiga.

Never experienced anything similar, ever again.

Amiga fan here. Dungeon Master was amazing for its time.

Half Life 1. Never before and never again I've got so totally immersed in the plot.

I think it was Morrowind for me. I walked all the way to Balmora and I distinctly remember how astonished I was when I saw the starry night's sky. It was truly a magical experience.

GTA3 for me. I didn't even care about the missions, I was just blown away by the open world. I remember spending a whole summer just exploring Liberty City.

I was a console gamer until the late 00s so by the time I was on PC we'd already had our major mind blowing landmarks.

I guess Bioshock was one of those games of the late 00s that was gorgeous. one of the best looking games at the time and it had a story and setting that matched the visuals.

Civilization 2. I was watching my brother-in-law playing it, thinking this must be some sort of simulation that was part of his college homework. After all, I had played F16 Fighting Falcon in my middle school science class as part of an assignment.

But, no, it was a game for fun. I became enamored with it and it began my love for 4X games that continues to this day.

Ha I love this. Early Civ games definitely looked like they could be homework.

Sim City - I loved that on my Amiga and played it to death.

Also Secret of Monkey Island, first game that was fun and funny - opened my eyes.

Diablo 2. I remember being a little kid and seeing my friends older brother playing it on his PC and being completely enamored with it. I mean, you could shapeshift into a werewolf ffs! I ended up getting D2:LoD a few years later when I was old enough to play it and man it blew my mind. Still my absolute favorite game of all time

I cannot choose between Diablo 2 LOD, Age of Empire 2 and Counter Strike 1.5. Multiplayer with my friends online was really an awesome experience at the time :).

I was born in 85, so old enough to have seen games like Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem 3, Rise of the Triad, and Shadow Warrior. Those games were all amazing and certainly captivated me. However, the game that did me in as a life long gamer was certainly Quake 1. First real 3D FPS game engine, it was crazy to me how detailed and immersive it was at the time. Quake locked me in as a life long gamer. I even have a giant Shub-Niggurath artwork hanging next to my computer, draw by Nick Derington (From Boss Fights 2 - Ode to ID).

That's a tough question! I would have to say it's a toss up between MechWarrior 2 and the original Half Life. I spent so many hours customizing mechs and tearing stuff up. There was something magical about the first Half-Life game though. So good and led to so many mods that I played for such a long time (CS, TFC/2, DoD).

the first half life blew my mind, so far off anything i had experience. IT WAS AN FPS WITH ACTUAL STORY!

I'm gonna go with world of warcraft. The idea of a persistent online MMO was entirely new at the time (at least for me and most people I think) and it just blew me away that it was basically just a virtual world that was going 24/7, entirely 3D too. I got into mmos a bit after that and got really into ragnarok online which is now a fond memory for me.

World of Warcraft.
It was my first online game after trying Habbo Hotel.
It blew my brains out. Such good times.

Honestly? For me I'd have to say Commander Keen. I spent an hour on a long distance BBS to download the 1MB demo with a 2400 baud modem just to try it. It was totally worth it (to me, not my grandma's phone bill) and absolutely blew my mind at the time. Seeing that smooth scrolling and having a platformer like SMB on the PC was seriously crazy at the time.

Plus eventually that led me to Wolfenstein 3-D which was mind-blowing itself, and then of course Doom.

Myst blew my mind as a kid, and World of Warcraft made me fall in love with PC gaming for life.

It was Lemmings. It's the first game that I saw on an Amiga computer. Adorable game, good music, fun gameplay.

If we're talking IBM PC, I can't pick between Diablo, Doom and Dune 2. I was so young and there were so many games created that would define genres to come.

Dungeon Keeper I would say. Possessing a fly for the first time what quite a surprise.

Probably Rome: Total War in 2006... After being used to normal RTSs, the scale and complexity of the battles in RTW blew my mind, I couldn't understand how it was technically possible.
Still a fan of the series so many years later, so great.

STALKER. The A-Life AI system is something else, and the open-ended survival gameplay and atmosphere are really in a league of their own. Similarly, as a latter-day choice, INFRA. That's a Source engine total conversion that has a similar uncanny and immersive atmosphere where you are just blown away at the total package, map design, and the thought process that went into it. Those are easily the two most immersive games I've played.

Chuck Yeager Air Combat..there were torque curves and stall vector charts for all the aircraft and I had no idea what those stupid lines meant..it was amazing lol!

DOS Doom! (I'm old). I remember we couldn't load it on Windows 3.1 and had to wait until Windows 95 to run it without exiting to DOS...those were the times.
Quake was spectacular back then. Discovering Strafe-jumping and using multiplayer was a whole new thing.

Same here. That was also my first experience saving up for and building my own PC. Simpler times.

SkiFree, I thought it was a serious simple sports game until the Yeti appeared!

Other than this, DOOM/DOOM2 for sure! They were the first games that made me feel like I was actually there and part of the action.

Gonna date myself a bit, but the Original Descent and MechWarrior 2. The seemless use of a z-axis in a shooter was for some reason mind blowing, and the combination of resource balancing and evaluating pros/cons for how to approach a mission was amazing. TIMBERWOLF is the real Og.

Trite, but probably the original Wolfenstein, quickly followed by DOOM.

Thief: The Dark Project is probably the first time I spent an entire game going "I didn't know games could be like this!"

Day of the Tentacle! Going from Maniac Mansion on the NES to the graphics, voice work, and interactivity on this CD-ROM - I’m still in awe decades later.

Shogo: Mobile Armor Division by Monolith Production, before they made moved on to only making Middle-earth games they made some very interesting games, and Shogo was one that I fell in love with. The thing that really blew my mind, is that when you are in the mech parts of the game, which looks and feels like the same first person as on foot but with mech walking sounds and mech weapons, but then suddenly you see teeny tiny humans that shoot at you (sometimes with rocket launchers), literally shrunk down, you could even step on them lol. (and the blood effects on them were a bit comical considering how small they were)

The original Kings Quest that came on TWO 3.5" floppy discs! This melted my brain at the time. Amazing game.

Half Life 2.
Bought it, and ended up having to bypass steam to play it on my garbage machine at the time.

The first game that blew my mind was a pirated copy of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in my older brother's computer. Back then I was intimidated by big and "complex" games like that. I was only playing mainstream online multiplayer games, particularly shooters, that are trending in my country (Crossfire, CS 1.6, etc.). I was bored that time, don't know what to play and decided to try this game. It blew my mind that games could be like this, and it's not complex than I thought. That was the first time I've played a "modern" game and made me fell in love with gaming.

Quake 3 Arena. When I was a wee laddie during the early stages of internet adoption, it about blew my young mind that I could play with somebody on a different computer.

Definitely not the first, but I took acid and turned on Mass Effect for the first time back when it came out and it (probably literally) blew my mind. I think I played for 8 hours straight and I think most of it was walking around talking to every single NPC I could lol.

Has to be The Sims. I remember going into Toys R Us with my best friend and we each picked up copies of the base game with the Livin Large expansion (remember toy stores and when you had to go and pick up physical copies of games?!)

Say what you will about The Sims but it was my first real exposure to just how expansive, creative, and immersive games could be. The possibilities felt endless!

Unreal. At the time Quake II was the most popular FPS and the colors and atmosphere of Unreal really were a new experience. I remember the graphics card wars at the time too. Really fun times for computer tech.

I remember playing online on Unreal Tournament on the first iMac. it was a blast.

I had to stop playing for my parent to make a phone call tho.

Why do people consider Doom 2 so much better and more groundbreaking than Doom 1?

Honestly I would lump doom1/2 together. For me it’s also Doom but really either one. Blew my mind.

Might be because it was actual 3D whereas Doom was more 2.5D

The Secret World.

I loved the spooky Lovecraftian vibe and the stories.

The Siren Song is still stuck in my head.

The first two PC games I ever played - Blood 2: The Chosen and Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive

Little Big Adventure 2: Twinsen’s Odyssey

X-Wing Alliance. I loved playing around in skirmish mode and just acting like I was in the movies by flying through trenches in a super star destroyer. Shame about the meh campaign though. Definitely going to reinstall when I get enough physical space for a new flight stick.

I’m in my 40’s so I grew up on all the classics like Wolfenstein, Doom, Apogee based games (Jazz Jackrabbit, Duke Nulsen, ROTT, etc) but the game to truly blow my mind came later when I first played Half-Life.

Playing a game which had such a compelling story had me hooked. I felt so invested in the plot and character development.

I'm in the same age group. Wolfenstein 3D and Doom are the ones I grew up on as well, but the first game that really blew my mind was Microsoft Flight Simulator 4. It was especially cool to me that I could easily fly around the area I grew up in from the starting position at Meigs Field in Chicago.

Total Annihilation. This game also got me into StarCraft, which got me into Diablo II, which got me into EverQuest, which got me into World of Warcraft. But the Total Annihilation was the RTS that started it all, and gave me a taste of competitive video games.

First time I played Skyrim I was blown away. The Xbox Kinect had just come out as well and you could shout the shouts. It’s was amazing.

One thing I clearly remember was walking up the mountain to Bleak Falls Barrow for the first time and the weather changing from clear and sunny to heavy snow and no visibility. That was wild to me at the time.

I remember my father bringing home Wolfenstein and being blown away.

More modern playing WoW as my first MMO was mindboggling - I couldn't believe how big and seamless the world was as well as seeing all the RTS games in a 3d world.

Road Rash was the first game that made me love games then it was Need for Speed II I could replay those games for hours. nowadays the only game that gave me good replayability was Hades and live-service games like Valorant.

Wolfenstein back in '93 or so. My buddy down the street was the only one in the neighborhood with a PC that was able to run it and we spent weeks straight playing that thing. I must have pushed on every damn wall in that game looking for secret areas.

Next would be Homeworld in '99, the story and the music are still amazing. Just listen to this choral version of adagio for strings and tell me it's not fucking epic.

https://youtu.be/XyyL\_TICbrU

Quake. With a 3dfx card was the biggest bump for me in fidelity it blew me away.

Warcraft 3 probably. I played the demo at a friend's house and then saved up my pocket money to buy it. I would have been about 10 or 12 at the time. Absolutely loved the campaigns even though I sucked at them.

Still waiting for Warcraft 4.

Is sad blizzard will probably never do it:/ what they did do wc3 with reforged was awful. And continues to be awful... because it's been years and stuff is still broken -.- 24 player maps is dope though

Probably Warcraft III

I did not grow up with a console. Pretty much just floppies with TLC games on them. My grandma introduced me to Sierra and Blizzard games, and they were exciting yeah but not mind blowing.

But then warcraft III (didn't play Starcraft much at this time, was young) introduced the concept of custom maps to me. Basically going from having one game to dozens. Tower Defenses, RPGs, genres that basically either didn't exist yet or don't exist anymore (rip Enfos...and RP maps seriously wth)

It pretty much shaped my childhood, friends, and all that stuff. Really sad that SCII never really became what Warcraft III was to me.

Unreal. The graphics and the large open levels were jaw dropping when I played it as a kid.

Ooh the first game that really blew my mind on the PC was Homeworld Cataclysm. I spent so many hours as a kid just going back and forth in the tutorial section of the demo, making a huge space fleet with no pressure, just gawking at the beautiful space backgrounds, the cool spaceships and their visual effects of thrusters, lasers and beam cannons.
It's still one of my favorite strategy franchises and games of all time.

I remember when DOOM came out. There was a little crowd of maybe 8-12 people at the computer huddled around a 486 demo running the shareware version of the game, I think it was at Fry's Electronics, everyone was entirely stunned by how good the graphics were.

Seeing DOOM for the first time was amazing. I'd seen Wolfenstein 3D, but I couldn't stand the graphics and it made me nauseous. DOOM looked much better and the music was cool too. I would watch my dad play for hours but I didn't play it myself until my dad gave me the cheat codes (As an 8 year old girl, I was too scared to play without invincibility lol, I'd panic and quit as soon as I was taking any damage). I loved exploring the levels and trying to find the secret areas.

There were a lot, but probably MechWarrior 2 with a joystick. I feel like that was probably the first game I played that had true 3D elements. Such a fun game. After that, Air Warrior was my first time playing a game online, cooperatively, with people I knew.

Turrican 2 on the Amiga 500. What A Game! Yes I'm old lol

I just posted about turrican 2 somewhere else. It was non-stop action. Totally amazing. I need to play it again, it's been over 20 years.

For me I'd say it was probably playing Carmageddon 2 at my friend's place. I think that was also the first time I played a 3D-accelerated game (Voodoo).

This is a good question; thank you for posting. For me it was probably the original Unreal and having a dedicated 3D graphics card for the first time to play it on. I of course had played its historical predecessors in Wolfenstein 3D and Doom and such, which also amazed me at the time. But Unreal felt like a magical leap forward.

Wolfenstein 3D

The graphics and gameplay were mind blowing at the time.

Final Fantasy 8 for me. It was the first FF series I played and even after trying many others, still my favourite.

Squall was a moody douche but I still loved him.

It might have been the first far cry game or possibly doom 3, I forget what came first.

Doom truly blew my mind when it got released. Graphics were so good that it felt like black magic.

I’d have to say the original Half Life. First time I ever felt like I was actually part of the story.

Siege of Avalon. I had played a few RPGs but SoA blew my socks off with the graphics and everything at the time.

Return to Krondor will always have a soft spot in my heart.

I distinctly remember "Redneck Rampage" being the first game I'd ever played with an install over 100MB and it blew me away - that felt absolutely MASSIVE at the time.

The physics engine in "Jurassic Park: Trespasser" also knocked my socks off. I wish that one would get a re-release on GOG or something; it's terrible, but I've got a lot of fond memories bumbling my away around that island.

Doom, no question. I was an Amiga owner at the time, and we were used to being the go-to platform for computer gaming. Then Doom came along and pretty much sent the Amiga scene on a quest for a "Doom clone" that it would never achieve.

The first one that really got me and I just couldn't stop playing was Fables: The lost Chapters (the PC-Port of Fables 1)

Jane’s ATF. I’m sure it hasn’t aged well.

EverQuest completely blew my mind as a younger teen.

Earthsiege 2. It had branching mission structures based on previous successes or failures, great resource management mechanics, and a fun plot. I'd love to see a remake.

Dungeon keeper 1. Real time strategy and first person shooter at the same time. Its like playing strategy game with a view from the top and then you can switch to Minecraft mode, dig the walls, build things, fight enemies.

Wolfenstein 3D. It was an incredible leap from what I'd played before.

Habbo hotel followed by Runescape. Habbo hotel was my first intro into PC games then Runescape consumed my life.

Half-Life playing deathmatch for the first time on a 56k modem, lagging like hell but when i saw someone else for the first running around my mind was blown haha

When I finally upgraded from my ultra-budget NVIDIA GT710 to a GTX 1060, the Tomb Raider reboot blew me away from how good it looked

Either Mechwarrior 2 or Star Wars X-Wing, probably. Can't really remember that far back but I remember watching my dad play those on his computer, which probably got me into gaming from that moment.

I don't remember exactly if it was a DOS game but I really liked Dangerous Dave 2

Age of Mythology for me after my first ever game of Age of Empires 2 AOK

The first 3d(not top down) GTA game...the freedom to explore was epic

Diablo 2 absolutely blew my adolescent mind. It was also my first PC game!

Hmm, not sure... possibly something from my childhood. Star Control II (now available free/open source as The Ur-Quan Masters is one of my absolute favorites, but I first played it at 6-7 years old -- and English is not my native language, so I can't imagine I understood anything at all about the story at the time.

That or Half-Life is what I usually point to as my all-time favorite games. Half-Life was pretty mindblowing; me and my friends spent a ton with it, so I think it's the best answer for this thread.
Not to mention that we played Counter-Strike so much that even 23 years later, it's likely to be the game I've played the most, despite barely playing at all after my teens.

Minicar racing. My brother and I used to play split screen multiplayer on the pc for hours. Having mostly only played 2d games before, the 3d aspect of it really blew my mind

The top-down one? Ooh that's a hit of nostalgia. I've been playing Reckless Racing 3 on Android recently which scratches a similar itch.

The very first Sim City. Before that? Pong. I'd never even seen or heard of a video game before that.

Little Big Adventure. That's the first one which looked so far and beyond what a console could do, in my mind.

Ultima Underworld for me. Coming from simple 2D NES games, a 3D world populated by NPCs you could hold conversations with and items that respond to rudimentary physics was mind-blowing.