Late 90s PC, because anything was possible. 2D? Yeah, go wild, it’ll be fast. 3D? Software rendering is the wild west! Voxels, polygons, texturing, raycasting, every game looks unique because they’re all making it up as they go. Even consoles were on PC because emulation was faster and better than owning a PSX or N64.
These were not the best games of all time. Most sucked. You can get a taste of that in PC Gamer demo discs, or like half of Civvie11’s videos. But it was an era where nothing was easy, so people reached for the fucking stars.