I dunno. I may just have been the right age for it but loved DK64 as one of my top games of the era even after B&K and a couple of DKCs. There were still innovative parts, new takes and iterations and a new scale, the collectathon (loathed by some, enjoyed by 11yo me).
I found the endgame and last boss fight particularly memorable.
You do have a point but with very few exceptions every innovative game after the 80s is in some sense an iteration on existing concepts.
Indeed. Seeing, for example, how some otherwise balanced adults easily get sucked into sinking thousands of hours into incremental clickers while some find them incredibly boring and pointless tells me it just might be due to different "player styles" as well
I found the endgame and last boss fight particularly memorable.
You do have a point but with very few exceptions every innovative game after the 80s is in some sense an iteration on existing concepts.