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Play a little thought experiment with us: what if Sony never shipped the PlayStation, and the Sega Saturn went head-to-head with the Nintendo 64 on its own? That single question opens a surprisingly sharp look at March 1997, when sales charts, developer support, and hardware choices were quietly locking in the future of the console wars.

We start with the games we’d actually want to play from the month and why they still matter. Lost Vikings 2 reminds us how strong puzzle platformer design can outlive hardware cycles, while Micro Machines V3 is a love letter to couch co-op chaos and the way a CRT could make backgrounds feel “photorealistic” at the time. From there we hit the N64’s weird and wonderful side with Blast Corps, a Rare standout built around destruction as a mechanic, then compare Turok Dinosaur Hunter’s big, foggy ambition to the tighter focus of other shooters that would define the era.

The back half goes deeper into retro gaming history: PlayStation vs N64 vs Saturn sales numbers, the sheer impact of a huge software library, and why openness to third-party developers changed everything. We also laugh at the accessory arms race with the macro-heavy PsychoPad Junior, then connect a bizarre Bandai toy-and-memory-card fighting game to the future of toys-to-life, amiibo collecting, and the “friction” problem of extra peripherals.

If you love retro gaming, 1990s console history, and honest takes that separate nostalgia from reality, you’ll feel right at home. Subscribe, share this with a friend who lived through 1997, and leave us a review with the one game you’d rescue from that month if you could only pick one.

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