I remember watching an episode of the UK videogame TV show Gamesmaster, and in their news section they mentioned this console called the Playstation had released in Japan, and showed some footage of Ridge Racer running on it. The concept of being able to play something looking like THAT on my TV at home absolutely floored me.
I also remember reading a magazine when the release of the PS2 was imminent, and they had printed some screenshots of PS2 games (I believe Final Fantasy X was one of them), and I thought "nah, those have to be fake, games can't look that good".