The thing that bothers me--and this is something I should use to revive my "astroturfed by the internet" topic... I don't particularly have a memory of Quake and DK64 being revered at the time.
Quake is a funny thing to me. My first exposure to it was just as a demo included with some magazine. It wasn't advertised or anything... I just installed it, played it, beat the demo and went about my day. I liked it well enough but it wouldn't be until a few years later I decided I wanted to own the full game....
But thing is, I actually remember a large contigent of people arguing Quake was kinda disappointing, even at launch, and some magazines I had even had "Quake vs Duke 3D" articles, which usually wound up saying that sure, Quake is technically impressive, but Duke is more colorful (in more ways than one), had a better variety of weapons, etc....
Nowadays I hear that Quake was universally beloved from the word go. Something seems wrong here.
As for Donkey Kong 64, I don't recall anyone praising that when I was a kid. Not just my friend groups but I recall even magazines and such saying it was mid, average or above-average at best, and one of the lesser of Rare's platformers. But again, now it seems like I always hear it described in positive terms.
I actually never played DK64 myself... by the time it came out I had jumped ship to the Playstation, and I just wasn't into collectathon platformers. I was in a snobby phase at the time and saw games like DK64 as beneath me.
I'm mixed on the SNES Donkey Kong Country games. Like, they were neat at the time, but now I find their gameplay a bit too basic. There's a long-debunked rumor that Shigeru Miyamoto once said DKC proved Americans will put up with mediocre gameplay for the sake of graphics. Sad he didn't really say that, because well... it wouldn't have been incorrect.
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