I turned 10 in 1995, and had a decent (for the time) gaming PC. Quake, and Quake 2, were a huge part of my childhood.
I’d agree that Q1 is probably the better game all-in-all, especially for single-player. But for internet multiplayer, Q2 was genre-defining. It was the fast-paced arena FPS by which literally all games were compared until like UT2003.