It is unreal when you think about it. However, I remember the first few weeks of release here in Australia where stores had rows of television screens hooked up to Mario 64. All that was playing was repetitive footage of Mario running in circles (even though that *does* still look hilarious), backflipping, diving etc. Still, there were always crowds of people around looking absolutely gob-smacked at what they were seeing.
...scary to think this was less than ten years ago.