I had a friend who would get deep into MMOs and kept trying to convince me to join. When I eventually said OK to giving one a go his next move was sending me a textbook sized guide on game’s meta. Having to start studying to play a game was a step too far for me.
Toy Story came out in 1995 but nobody then expected we would have graphics like that in real time for a long time to come. There were claims made at the time comparing the graphical abilities of the PS2 and Xbox generation to films like Toy Story and they were widely derided at that time.
M2 EXCLUSIVE! Full specifications of 1997’s hottest new 64 bit game machine
To think what might have been. The M2 would have tough competition against the PlayStation and N64 but it would have been interesting to see what a 3DO successor would have done to the market at the time, especially if 3DO had stuck with the hardware licensing model.
Spyro the Dragon launched in 1998, a year and bit after that issue of Next Generation linked. Spurs was one of the first games to make use of varying levels of detail to expand the view distance.
The level design of Spyro took advantage of this to encourage the player to explore the levels with Spyro’s glide jump by making interesting areas of levels in the distance more visible.
The game received a lot of praise at the time for its graphics and gameplay.