As someone who went from C&C to Red Alert, the Tesla Coil was deeply unsatisfying. Not only did it look silly, it was weaker (albeit with a faster rate of fire) than the Obelisk of Light, which was truly menacing in appearance. Plus, the sound of it charging up was terrifying :D I still remember the first time I encountered an Obelisk of Light. I was doing some recon with my GDI humvee and I see this tall black structure that started humming as I approached. Ooh, what's this? ZAP! It destroyed the vehicle in one hit and I was left thinking "What the hell was that?!". I finished the level by amassing an army 3x bigger than was necessary because I was so fearful. Nothing in an RTS has made me feel that way since.

Also, GDI had Mammoth Tanks...

I would go with System Shock 2, didn't seem very popular here, The Longest Journey would also be a contender I think.

I should have been lucky, because I had very different gamers as friends, before the internet era. Adventure lovers, Space Sim lovers, FPS lovers, and so on. I was one of the strategy 'specialists' in my classroom, even though I wasn't really aware of many wargames, and I obviously enjoied many other genres. And I remember some reviews in magazines.

Here, Starcraft was really popular because of the 'little war' between Westwood and Blizzard fanboys since Dune II and Warcraft. But it was a time when RTS was king, and overwhelmed in numbers almost every genre (except FPS). In 1999, I remember a full 3 parts preview with C&C: Tiberian Sun, Age of Kings and Total Annihilation Kingdoms, and the reviewer of TAK thought that GT Interactive would turn Warcraft II into shame, just like TA did with Starcraft even if TA was released before... I personally liked better TA than Starcraft, but all of this era was fanboys sayings ^_^ But that 3 previews in one (with a different reviewer for each game, and a 'little war' to anticipate future games) was a good way to represent that.
So it was easy to not be aware of some game's popularity if some of your friends were skipping some of them or just trying other games. There was so much choice back then, and not enough coverage if you didn't take the time to do some research.

Fallout was a bit popular in cRPG fans circles, but not really in the whole PC gaming one. It hadn't the fandom that Baldur's Gate had. Because back then, there were so many pen&paper RPGs 'gurus' who thought that Science Fiction couldn't exist in RPGs, and declared that Fallout was just a 'Crusader clone', 'RPGs with guns cannot exist, there are only action shooter games'... -_-

Planescape: Torment wasn't well received because it didn't use the 'almighty' Forgotten Realms setting, or maybe because in the Planescape setting, moving from plane to plane was very close to some Science Fiction setting (like the Sliders series). Again, some RPG gamers 'openmindness'...

In the other hand, after 1998, every FPS that wasn't Half-Life was poorly received, even if it was good. Except Quake 3 and the UT series.

In the end, there were so many video games which hadn't what they deserved, because there was so much choice and so few places in magazines, and because sadly there were many 'video game journalists' (not all of them) who were just some fanboys.

PS: I remember that the Secret of Monkey Island wasn't so well received back in 1991. It was well noted or moderate received but it hadn't been clearly received as the cult classic we know now.

I had personally internet access when Morrowind was released so I was aware of that popularity, and IIRC it was one of the first games which had a GOTY edition, and back then 'Game of the Year' was clearly a proof of popularity (not just a 'bundle' as we have now, since there are too many 'games of the year' per year :D )

There was a Microprose sim called 1942 - The Pacific Air War that wasn't very well received (at least in Germany). It used the same engine as F14 Fleet Defender and F15 Strike Eagle 3 but incorporated a whole strategy game at the same time. I loved it, but everybody else, including gaming press liked Aces of the Pacific more - which I found pretty shallow.

It's successor European Air was actually pretty successful - not a monster hit in general but one of the most popular games in the simulation community. Later IL2 took over the crown of simulations in that era. And while the IL2 series has a lot more detail and tremendous amounts of content I still think EAW had more charm to it.

As for Morrowind - I can remember that everyone that was into RPGs was fascinated by it, but most people didn't have a computer to run it.

I don't know how it was for others, but it was like that for me and Deus Ex.

I loved it when it came out, and tried to get others into it but to no avail. A few people knew it, and they loved it, but most people either never heard of it or would reply with "isn't it that really bad shooter?". I never had the feeling of it being a popular title.

Then I started posting in GOG, and everybody (except triock, may he burn as the heretic he is) seems lo love it. I still find few people IRL that like it, so it may be simply that I now hang out with the cool kids, but I get the feeling DX is more popular now than what it used to be.

This. All of this. I never even mention my love of Morrowind to anyone anymore. I swear every time I bring up all of the great mods, and play through stories it gets twisted into someone with nothing to say about TES except Skyrim this, and that. Let me throw out I do like Skyrim, but it is completely different than Morrowind. I've also had people say that samething to me about starcraft. The thing is I did play WoW for a long time however I remember playing the original strategy game over and over for a year straight, or more when I was a kid. Then I played the hell out of the other two games too when they came out.

<span class="bold">Arcanum</span>

Didn't know anyone who played this until I joined GOG and saw how popular the game is here. On its release, the game was a buggy mess, I was in the unfortunate position of reviewing it for a gaming website. They sent me an original copy of the game (for free of course since it was a job assignment) so at least I didn't have to pay for it. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and a cult classic nowadays but it's simply beyond me how one can release a product in such a condition. Almost as bad as the first release of Daggerfall which was basically unplayable until a patch was available.
How can you even review games like that properly, painful to figure out how to give them accurate fair ratings. Post patch it's a different story but many if not most people don't need magazine/website reviews anymore at that point

Nobody I knew was particularly impressed by the Obelisk of Light. Unlike the Tesla Coil It, just, didn't look so iconic. You are correct though; GDI indeed had Mammoth Tanks.

Swing and a miss on both in my opinion... Morrowind and SC were huge. I vote for mind going.

As for the question... I would say Grand Theft Auto. The first was a good game and got some press, but the forthcoming editions blew away all expectations anyone may have had.

I think the difference in a game being popular then and now is the size of the industry.
Morrowind and Starcraft were both popular back then.

When Starcraft came out the industry as a whole was smaller, as someone mentioned, game magazines and word of mouth ruled and we didn't necessarily follow a games development from its early stages.

The industry is huge now, the line is blurred between gamer and non-gamer with all of the casual games.
Companies now build anticipation of games through developer blogs and releasing art and videos (as was done with Starcraft 2) which didn't happen back then with Starcraft (at least at that level).

Skyrim had national TV commercials, Morrowind obviously didn't, the gaming would has changed into this massive thing.

For better and worse.

1998 to 2006 or so, Greece had a booming business of Net Cafes, mostly for the purpose of LAN playing. Residential broadband was almost unknown at that time, so places with 100+ computers that charged €5 for 7 hours (or €7 for 00:00 - 12:00) were quite common.
That is where you went to play video games with your friends, and the places usually had quite a huge selection of games. So the multiplayer staples would spread, especially because each group had a few people that were almost living in those Cafes, and would look around to see what the other people were playing.

Fun times.

LAN Party!!!

Those were the times, man. Good times.

Not to mention advertising in movie theaters.

Though the first time I ever saw a game commercial in a (German) cinema was for Wing Commader 5 back in '97. It's kind of funny that I clearly remember that ad but not the movie that it preceded. Anyway, that certainly was highly unusual in those days.

Hmm, around this time the Wing Commander movie came out. So it`s more likely that you saw not the ad for a Wing Commander game, but for the Wing Commander movie. In a cinema, this would make more sense imho.