Tomb Raider was my Mario 64.

I keep seeing that Mario 64 was the first true 3D platform game, for the consoles at least. However in Europe Tomb Raider was released in 1996 and Mario 64 was released in 1997, so my first experience of a game of this type was Tomb Raider. I just remember being amazed by it and all my friends being amazed, I remember pubs and stuff (my dad dragged me to) had Playstations with it installed and the game was a massive hit at the time. Mario 64 came the next year and it was a big hit because people loved Nintendo, but it never had the same impact as Tomb Raider here... at to me and where I was brought up in the UK.

Nintendo never really had a big impact for me, I had a Sega Megadrive as a kid but I was never truly in love with games back then. 2D graphics never clicked, I remember finding the games rather boring and wanting to play outside instead. It wasn't until the playstation came, that I found games to be amazing and the Playstation had the more mature games. As a kid I wanted to be an adult, the more realistic tones just appealed to me more and I saw the N64 as this crappy kids toy. I went to Disney in Florida as a kid and hated it because it felt like it was for little kids and I felt all adult lol.

Nintendo always had this kid vibe, why I had the Megadrive because it had games like Streets of Rage. Then why I was into the Playstation, it had all these mature games that Nintendo would never allow...

I just see today how big Nintendo are and they've never really appealed to me at all. I see how Mario 64 and Zelda OoT were like so massive and I just feel left out of the loop, that wasn't my experience as a kid. Mine was one of games like Streets of Rage or Stealth Fighter on my Dads Amiga, then it was one of Resident Evil, GTA, Gran Turismo, Tomb Raider and MGS.

This is just something I had to share because it seems like everyone grew up with Nintendo, yet I didn't.

I don't remember many people in the UK having a Nintendo system other than the Gameboy. Everybody had either a Sega or Sony system.

I can't remember what my first 3D platform game was sadly, maybe it was also Tomb Raider.

Yeh I had a Gameboy for Pokemon and that was it lol.

I loved the original Tomb Raider (I'm actually about 80% through a playthrough of the gog version today) but really what made Mario 64 so revolutionary was the control and camera system you could use to move Mario around the 3D environment so effortlessly. The same can't really be said for the original Tomb Raider

I always find it fun when kids feel the need to play 'mature' games, not realising that the obsession with looking mature is a very immature attitude to have.

I also don't quite understand the view that Nintendo only catered to kids back then.

Firstly, the first party Nintendo games tend to cater to people of all ages. I mean, people didn't just love Super Mario 64 because they grew up with Mario or they thought it was cute - the game revolutionised 3D platforming with its excellent controls, great camera and open design. Ocarina of Time was a similar masterpiece in terms of the underlying mechanics. Their games are great because, beneath their cutesy-ness or colourful wonder, they're great *games*.

Secondly, Nintendo had heaps of games catering to older audiences back in the SNES/N64 days. They had the Resident Evil series, the amazing (and gory) Turok series, plenty of shooters (Perfect Dark, Goldeneye), games with adult humour (Conkers Bad Fur Day), games with 'mature' storylines (Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, etc) or darker themes (Majora's Mask), gory fighting games (Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct), serious racers (F-Zero X), and so on and so on. Perhaps they were less prominent than cute games like Yoshi Story (which was brutally difficult, btw), but there was certainly enough to keep adult gamers happy...when they weren't enjoying the hell out of Nintendo's other games.

Oh, and I should add that where I lived...everyone had a SNES, N64 and Gameboy. I honestly can't think of any single one of my friends off the top of my head who had a Playstation, and they were certainly never played at parties (unlike the N64).

I only had a Nintendo, but i remember how amazed i was playing that game

Over here TR was seen as a significantly scaled down sort of Mario 64 like game with really bad controls. (and triangular boobies) I did think it was neat for the exploration aspect though, still consider it one of the better TR games because of that, much more so than the new game, which to me, felt like Gears of war with an occasional extremely light puzzle. Honestly, the tomb's in the new game felt like an afterthought to me.