Donkey Kong Country 2 and Open Bus

DKC 1 with the SGI prerendered 3d graphics was cutting edge stuff. Vector Man on the Genesis did something similar to less acclaim.

I was a kid right in the target demo for DKC circa 95 or so — 11. That game absolutely blew our socks off. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. I remember I had a videotape that they sent out (probably a send-away promo from a box of cereal or something) that teased the game around the time of its release and showed some behind the scenes stuff from the game’s development. I definitely watched that tape many times. I didn’t even get to own DKC, but I did get to play it at a friend’s house.

As a kid, that look felt somehow off to me because I could sense that it was at some level "fake". The various magazines at the time could be kinda wooly on the subject and imply that the power of the SNES was rendering the characters etc in realtime (rather than it essentially being flipbook animation).