My parents were very anti-console at that point in time, didn't see the point in a dedicated gaming device. They were happy for me to have a decent PC because they recognised I could use it for educational purposes too. I don't really remember anybody at school being big into gaming either and I had no idea about the saturn, n64 or playstation at the time. Friends I knew who had consoles either had a mega drive or a game boy.
From what i recall at the time I was running a Packard Bell PC with a 120mhz processor. It came with some Sega games installed and I remember I spent a lot of time playing Comix Zone and Ecco the Dolphin on it back then although they weren't actually released that year.
Little Big Adventure 2, one of my favourite games ever, came out that year but I don't really remember whether I first played it in '97 or' 98.
What I do remember though is playing Dark Forces 2 an awful lot, I'd only just got into Star Wars a year or so before and this was my first Star Wars game, first proper 3D game and really first brand new release I'd played. I was pretty awful at it truth be told, got lost a lot and had to resort to using no clip cheats to fly through parts of levels but I had a hell of a lot of fun with it.
I also remember playing a fairly obscure, quite rude but also very fun rts game called beasts and bumpkins. I spent more time playing Civilisation 2 though which I was thoroughly addicted to.
I also got a kings quest collection and played through the first 4 games of that thanks to a lot of patience and the help of a guide. I'd owned the first two when I was younger but as anybody who has played them knows they were so obscure at times that without a guide it was very easy to get completely stumped. Felt like a hell of an achievement.
I'd go as far as to say 1997 was the year that really stared getting me into gaming on a wider scale and being more aware of new releases, not just old shareware from discs my dad had picked up.
Love the thread idea by the way