Mario 64 was two years ahead of its time, at a time when two years was like 10+ years now. Hardware acceleration, colored lighting, skeletal animation, free camera*.
Quake (World) was a huge achievement graphically but I feel like its real contributions to history ended up being internet play and WASD
Both games were mind-blowing then and are still fun now.
* It's nuts to me that we had to wait until 2004 with San Andreas to get a modern "left stick moves, right stick looks" in third person games. The N64 was 90% of the way there, but didn't stick the landing for whatever reason.
Quake (World) was a huge achievement graphically but I feel like its real contributions to history ended up being internet play and WASD
Both games were mind-blowing then and are still fun now.
* It's nuts to me that we had to wait until 2004 with San Andreas to get a modern "left stick moves, right stick looks" in third person games. The N64 was 90% of the way there, but didn't stick the landing for whatever reason.