I am probably not the right person to answer this, since I got to play Computer games in '98, but I remember those last two years of the 90s very well when it comes to video games. I grew up in a small, peaceful town in Germany though, so maybe I got a different experience from everyone else here...

The end of the 90s that I was a part of was the time of Compilation Discs! Lots and lots of random games shoved together into one disc. Those could be games from a single series, kind of like the stuff you still see nowadays. For example, I remember going into a electronics store that had a small video game section, and my father saw (and then bought me) the Monkey Island CD compilation that came with the first three Monkey Island games ( The fourth one wasn't a thing yet ). The more interesting Compilation Discs, though, were the ones that were just full of randomly selected games! My mother used to have a membership at a store that mostly dealt in books but also a small assortment of video games, and every year they would sell a collection of games on one or two discs. My favorite one came with games like some random Game Dev simulator, crappy sports games, city builders and etc. It might sound like a rip-off, but my 6-7 year old self couldn't have been happier about getting 60-80 games in one collection!!

Besides that... Lots of Edutainment Games!! I would say Germany was the king of edutainment, as it had both the excellent American games, as well as a bunch of German-exclusive ones that were, sometimes, creepy as heck! I played some American games like Billi Banni Mathe ( Pretty sure it's called 'Reader Rabbit' in America ) and a few Micky Mouse games, but games like Addy Mathe (a game about an alien that teaches you math, but also allowed you to fly around in his spaceship and build your own room), Loewenzahn (based on a german TV series of the same name) and a bunch of Myst clones like Chemicus (which came much later and scared the heck out of me) were only sold in Germany, as far as I know. It was a great time to be a kid!!

Also, since the internet was still something novel, but advanced enough at that point that even 7 year old children could use it, there were a bunch of awesome websites related to edutainment that I used to visit. Also, in the early 2000s, game devs would start making free-to-download games and offer them on AOL, and it was a blast to play something new but generally low-budget every week/month.

The best part going into the early 2000s was that Computer games were still not all that scary to adults (in Germany at least... The scare began around the mid 2000s), so Elementary School teachers and stuff would let you play semi-educational games like Zoo Tycoon and stuff after you finished doing your school work. It was a greeeeeat time to grow up with a computer as a kid, at least where I grew up.

Really, my most memorable moments were definitely playing Monkey Island 3, edutainment games, Sims (later in 2000), city-builders like Caesar, Gothic (also 2001) and etc. For me, this whole period was defined by a lack of worry, since nobody was really all that scared of me playing Computer games like I mentioned above. Brutal games definitely started to become more prevalent after Doom's success, but for some reason, there was still more kid-friendly stuff to make it seem safe. Store clerks wouldn't look at you like you were a delinquent if you bought a PC game, and surfing the web was considered an educational experience (if you remained safe and used the school's designated search engine).

... As a side note, buying Computer Games in Germany now is a terrifying experience, man! It is harder to buy games than it was to buy cigarrettes or alcohol, I am pretty sure ( i have been living in the U.S for the past four years, but just as I left, it got really insane).

I hope children nowadays still enjoy Computer Games just as much as I did, but I fear that parents just don't seem to care enough to look for nice, kid-friendly games for their kids.

Oh, I forgot to mention... Lot's of cd burning was going on! If one of my friends got a cool new game, they would always be nice enough to make a copy for me. It was great.

Sorry for the long post!! I just have so many wonderful, nostalgic memories ~