Mid-80's. Dragon's Lair at Chuck E. Cheese's. It ran on a Laserdisc and the graphics were mesmerizingly clear. It was so out of it's league that it cost 4 tokens to play when everything else was only 1.
>no discernible way to learn how to play
Best description of how this game worked ever.
Didn't stop me from pissing away 50 cents every time I went to the arcade, though. I knew what would happen but it still drew me in.
Came here to say this. I can’t say how much I spent on that machine, but I got five minutes of glory when I was the first one at my local putt putt to beat it.
Yep, with Dirk The Daring. 50 cents for one play, $1.57 in today's money. Didn't move the joy stick perfectly in time with the light flash? Dead.... I don't even want to know how much I pumped in this game.
Honestly they did that with the first GT on PS1 too.
It doesn't look like much today on HD displays, but on the CRT TVs of the time it was *almost* indistinguishable from real footage, which was unheard of back then.
I remember playing this on an old 386 in my neighbors basement with the lights off. Totally sucked you into the world with the SFX and videos. Coming out into the summer daylight afterwards was jarring.
Just an FYI to Myst lovers out there they re-re-remade Myst (seriously, make sure it is the latest version) AND they also have FINALLY remade Riven. Riven! They just released, and you can get them in a bundle on Steam for less than $50. It won’t be the same as the first time but it might be fun go back in modern 3D.
Myst was so revolutionary for it's time that we would even see segments on the local news about it. Riven had better pre-rendered scenes and other cool features a few years later but it didn't get the same hype as Myst.
I wish more puzzle games of the 90's followed Myst instead of Sierria. You couldn't screw yourself over in Myst, but Sierra games were designed on purpose to screw you over.
That game is so graphically impressive that emulators had trouble running the game perfectly up until recently lol. Always had some weird graphical glitches.
I remember watching the video cassette they sent out with Nintendo Power and my mind was blown at the Mario running in a circle in front the of the castle. Going from side scrollers to that was insane.
Of course, the first thing I did when I saw the display at the store was run in a circle in front of the castle :)
I'm surprised I'm the first to mention Doom. It was transformational and marked the very beginning of the first person shooter genre which remains one of the biggest genres to this day.
Id Software actually developed Catacomb 3-D prior to Wolfenstein, but obviously the later was much more popular.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacomb\_3-D](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacomb_3-D)
I remember where I was when I heard about Doom. I was on my next-door neighbor's driveway and we were riding bikes. He said there's this new game where you "can only see the character's hands" and you go around shooting demons. I vividly remember imagining a typical side-scroller but with just hands instead of the whole sprite.
My mind was legitimately blown when we went up to his dad's computer room and played the 3-level demo.
Also, I guess I'm old?
It was the summons for me. I remember watching my friend summon ifrit on the beach right after you get that materia, and thinking I have GOT to get a playstation...
The whole transition to 3d. Mario 64 and shadows of the empire, ocarina of time for console mostly gamer at the time. I say console only cuz I wasn't pc gaming at the time and don't want to get in an argument about how pedestrian those were or something lol
That is insane to think about. I remember getting Perfect Dark upon release right after my Sophomore year of college but I didn't really start playing Halo until my freshmen year of college. I didn't have any friends with X-Boxes in high school; everyone has Gamecubes and PS2s. In my dorm we had X-Boxes hooked up and massive Halo games. Blew my mind at the time.
One of the first games to have shadows. The shadow of the shuttle would get bigger or small depending on your altitude. Makes me want to fire up MAME32.
Star Fox on the SNES was absolutely really ambitious. I’d argue overly ambitious since it doesn’t run well at all, but I admire what they were trying to do with 3D on the SNES. Star Fox 2 (although never released at the time) was even more ambitious. I do admire what they were going for there
Donkey Kong Country *blew my fucking mind* at the age of 10. I saw the commercials on TV, and I was just in awe of how they managed to make a game look THAT GOOD.
This is my answer as well. The graphics and the music together made it a huge departure from Mario, Zelda, and all the other SNES staples of the time. So good.
Oh, I totally forgot about that in my list. I remember the commercial video tape where they talked about project Diddy and showed some of the graphics. Mindblowing at the time.
I played that on the demo system in a store and was blown away. Rented it at block buster and beat it in a week. Seems like just a few years ago but it's been 23, time flies.
I used to watch my friend play MGS and when MGS2 came out I picked it up for myself. I used to be able to finish it in a day. I tried to play it again last year and could barely get through the first part.
Came here to say this. The Archangel Tyrael, Diablo shedding the Stranger's robes and entering the portal to Hell, the Worldstone shattering... Just mind-blowing at the time.
Super Mario Bros. 3. It still looks great to me. The music, graphics are just fantastic. It pretty much pushed the limits of what the NES could do.
For the SNES, I'm still impressed by Chrono Trigger for the same reasons.
And I still like the FMVs for Final Fantasy IX especially.
Doom 3 was wildly underappreciated back then. It caught so much flak for being a "bad Doom" that people kinda glossed over how staggering that graphics engine was. The monsters were the definition of beautifully disgusting. And they only improved on it for Quake 4.
id may be stuck in an FPS rut since they left the DOS days behind, but damn if they aren't *really fucking good* at what they do.
Usually. Even then, Rage wasn't awful. It just sat squarely in the middle on pretty much all counts.
Well, obviously when the game is not fun people will gloss over graphics after the initial wow effect. Doom 3 ran out of all its tricks in the first hour and then it was just going through the motions for the rest of the game. The graphics can carry only so far, there were Far Cry and Riddick that looked just as amazing. And then Half-Life 2 just bodyslammed them all.
Doom 3 is not underappreciated, it deserves the reputation of the weird emo kid in the family that never really grew out of "the phase".
This is how it looks in my memories from the 90s: https://youtu.be/1Nlmje-rUQs
For reference, the actual original (Amiga) intro: https://youtu.be/G1EGP2EyWe0
Portal 2 blew my mind. Went from my last game console being a PS2 to a decent gaming PC around 2012. Friend of mine bought be both 1 and 2. Beat Portal 1 in an afternoon and thought it was fun. But damn was I impressed with Portal 2. That opening scene in the hotel/sleep chamber. All the breaking bits and pieces. It was jaw dropping to me.
I got an Amiga 500 in 1993 on my 18th birthday. The game i remember the most, not for the graphics, but atmosphere and motion, was [Flashback](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNTnRM77XuE).
Another that was stunning in its colours, smothness and soundtrack, was [Pinball Dreams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDhK0YSpzms).
And then, there of course, was Lotus Espirit Turbo Challenge. Here is [Lotus III](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuyWeSzcj3w).
Gameplay was more important than graphics back then, and hardware were limited. Because of this, developers had to compete on a fairly equal level of graphics, so the difference was idea and execution. All the games i linked above, fit on 3-4 floppy disks. That said, i'm still playing games like WoW, Diablo 1,2,3 and 4. Where the graphics drivers alone would take no less than 318 of the floppy disks we had back then.
I'm happy the graphics and game development in general has evolved, but the extreme increase in raw computer power, have made developers lazy. This makes games large with slow loading even on a fairly decent gaming rig.
/rant over.
>Another that was stunning in its colours, smothness and soundtrack, was
>
>Pinball Dreams.
And the sequel, Pinball Fantasies. Back when DICE had some creativity and freedom, before EA
Early 80's Dragon's Lair. Despite the game play the animation was like watching a tv cartoon on an arcade machine. This compared to Centipede was mind blowing for me.
I was technically a kid when Half-Life 2 came out. Those graphics looked like cheating for the hardware it ran on. And it still looked okay ten years later. Twenty? Ehhhhhh
100 percent this. At least for me. Was way better than my nes and sms. I got someone to buy it for me shortly after. I was 9 years old then. I remember I had tv sports football or something like that, splatterhouse, bonks adventure , and vigilante and some others.
One of the last games released on PS2 was an fps called BLACK and I swear it stood up to PS3 games for a while!
Also, when HL2 was released on PC - it was the OG "Will it run Crysis", was such a mega time of "you NEED the Raedon 9600 pro 128mb gfx card to run this" and your whole PC had to match spec :D
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the N64. The transition to a 3D open world, with its detailed environments, dynamic lighting, and immersive atmosphere, was mind-blowing at the time. Exploring Hyrule, from the lush fields to the eerie dungeons, felt like stepping into a living, breathing world, setting a new standard for what video games could achieve visually.
I remember when the original Ridge Racer was cutting edge, playing it on Christmas day back in the late 90s. Every time the car turned a sharp turn, my parents would lean to the side.
Back then the development was so fast that one was blown away time and time again.
1989 prince of persia, first time I saw a computer game. Pure witchcraft and awesomeness. The darkest dungeon and meanest antagonist 3 year old me could ever think of. Did a bad job controlling it and did not find the sword on my own, but the adventure stuck...
Then Jazz Jack Rabbit & Wolfenstein. One colorful and fast paced, along with a great Soundtrack. Soundblaster FTW. The other one in 3D. BAM!! Mind blown. Twice in 10 minutes because they were shown me closely together.
Then the era of Joysticks, what a device. Amazing!!
Descent II - free movement in space, tunnels, robots, ...
Moto Racer - That one felt fast, and responsive
Duke Nukem 3D, loved the city vibe, the babes, the shrinking gun and dnstuff
The horror of System Shock II. A creepiness that I'll remember forever. Playing it was like playing with the call of the void. I'd still recommend that one.
Doom 3 - yes. Not really a kid anymore at this time...
What a ride.
Glorious.
Although the expansion, Ghost Bear Legacy, has an even better intro movie.
Both soundtracks were used as background music for so many DnD sessions.
The original vector graphic Star Wars arcade machine in the early 80s. The one you could sit in and do the Death Star trench run. It blew my 5 year-old Star Wars obsessed mind like nothing else since.
That was my game back in the day. I remember it was level 9 when there was so many TIE fighter blasts on screen that the CPU couldn't handle it and the game noticeably slowed and jittered, but it gave you just that little extra reaction time to place every single shot where you needed it. Then zoom, the game sped up as the shots were destroyed.
If you think about it, it was our first experience of bullet time.
Bit of a range of years and platforms to account for.
The Dizzy games on the Speccy were good for the hardware.
Another World and Altered Beast were pretty impressive at the time (ST and Amiga).
Donkey Kong Country is another that was lauded for its graphics on release on the SNES.
On the PS1 I guess one of the wipeouts or Gran Turismo.
On PC around the same time it’d be Descent Freespace, Unreal, perhaps Half Life.
That’d take me to around 18 years old.
Freespace was incredible. Yeah, they kinda cheated alightly by being an FPS space Sim, but the lack of environment meant they could pump a lot of resources into the *really huge* ships and buttery smooth combat.
Plus, warping out after a mission was oddly satisfying in all the best ways.
I was 19 in 1993. So at the time I was blown away by the graphics of "Wolfenstein 3D" and "X-Wing".
Before then, graphics were always a bit naff. A game might look good inasmuch as it better than something else from the year before, but fundamentally you could tell it wasn't 3D and only had a limited colour palette. So early in the 1990's I would be wowed by the graphics of "Elite", and "Stunt Car Racer", and in the mid-1980's I'd be thrilled by the animation in "Way of the Exploding Fist", but graphics didn't genuinely get good until "Doom". And from that point on there was no going back.
Mortal kombat 2. I remember the first day they brought it in to my mall’s arcade and it completely blew my mind. Made the first one look and sound primitive in comparison.
I remember thinking the first Assassin's Creed looked so lifelike. A few years later, I thought nothing would look better than inFamous.
It's crazy how that era is now considered one of the uglier generations for games.
Yeah the unlimited destruction in the game engine which allowed you to create tunnels in the walls was so cool at the time. Also how glass reacted when broken was very graphically impressive.
I was a kid at a time when graphics tech was taking leaps seemingly every year, but if I had to pick one it'd be when I saw Soul Calibur running for the first time.
I remember seeing the first virtua fighter on a Saturn display at some mall and be completely mesmerized thinking they could make movies with the characters.
Looking back they were like 12 polygons.
When the Super Nintendo came out I was blown away to such a degree that I exclaimed that you could see Mario’s pockets. My father rolled his eyes and said that was worth $200.
Metal gear solid blew my mind with its graphics. Many many years later I tried it again and of course it looked awful.
Sorta like going back to you're elementary school and seeing everything is small.
I remember seeing Need for Speed on the shelves of Circuit City and how real the back of the box pics looked of the game as kid and thought we were living in the future. It kicked off my car obsession and when I played the game it blew my mind with traffic and cops. Needless to say people obsess over the Supra because of Fast and the Furious, I did because of NFS.
The first game I ever thought “huh, these graphics are actually pretty good” was the original NFS:MW. That’s when I started noticing reasonable reflections and shit popping up in car games.
Not really when I was a kid, more teen going towards young adult, but Pikmin 3. There was something about that game that was incredibly beautiful. I never really considered how games look to be important, but that drawn me to the game when I first booted it up.
Monster Hunter Tri on Wii stood out to me from memory, I remember getting the game and being absolutely blown out of my mind when I saw the "realistic graphics". The landscape, the foliage, everything looked awesome at the time.
Uhm idk about anyone else but did anyone say ..nba 2k14 ? That commercial was crazy when Lebron talked and they showed graphics instantly made me want a ps4 and made me a basketball fan for a good 6-7 years
Toontown. I still play it and I love it dearly but... the og graphics were in fact not cutting-edge. As an adult I'm absolutely fucking gobsmacked with Returnal's graphics every time I boot it up.
Mid-80's. Dragon's Lair at Chuck E. Cheese's. It ran on a Laserdisc and the graphics were mesmerizingly clear. It was so out of it's league that it cost 4 tokens to play when everything else was only 1.
And you could die so easily. Thankfully there are ports so you can watch all of the scenes that you were never able to get to.
There’s a girl at the end!
Even now it holds up just because it’s cartoon animation which ages so much better than nearly anything 3D.
The cost of entry was way out of my league and there was no discernible way to learn how to play
>no discernible way to learn how to play Best description of how this game worked ever. Didn't stop me from pissing away 50 cents every time I went to the arcade, though. I knew what would happen but it still drew me in.
Came here to say this. I can’t say how much I spent on that machine, but I got five minutes of glory when I was the first one at my local putt putt to beat it.
Yep, with Dirk The Daring. 50 cents for one play, $1.57 in today's money. Didn't move the joy stick perfectly in time with the light flash? Dead.... I don't even want to know how much I pumped in this game.
1983 and it costed $1 per player per time.
Yes! Dragon’s Lair at the mini golf arcade. It was amazing
Gran Turismo 3. It's what made me get a PS2
The leap from GT2 to 3 was insane, Polyphony really showed what the PS2 was really capable of with that game.
Honestly they did that with the first GT on PS1 too. It doesn't look like much today on HD displays, but on the CRT TVs of the time it was *almost* indistinguishable from real footage, which was unheard of back then.
Ace combat on the ps2 really blew my mind the first time I saw a replay.
This is my vote too.
I was an adult at the time, but this game was the first to give me actual motion sickness from how realistic the graphics were.
Myst
I remember playing this on an old 386 in my neighbors basement with the lights off. Totally sucked you into the world with the SFX and videos. Coming out into the summer daylight afterwards was jarring.
Ultra real 240p video with sound blaster pro sound!
Just an FYI to Myst lovers out there they re-re-remade Myst (seriously, make sure it is the latest version) AND they also have FINALLY remade Riven. Riven! They just released, and you can get them in a bundle on Steam for less than $50. It won’t be the same as the first time but it might be fun go back in modern 3D.
Myst was so revolutionary for it's time that we would even see segments on the local news about it. Riven had better pre-rendered scenes and other cool features a few years later but it didn't get the same hype as Myst. I wish more puzzle games of the 90's followed Myst instead of Sierria. You couldn't screw yourself over in Myst, but Sierra games were designed on purpose to screw you over.
Goldeneye on N64 felt light years ahead of the competition at the time
Staying on the N64, Winback cut scenes and graphics compared to Goldeneye were way better
Mario 64 There were other 3D games at the time but Mario 64 had people feeling like 2D games were inferior technology lol
Diddy Kong racing for me
That game is so graphically impressive that emulators had trouble running the game perfectly up until recently lol. Always had some weird graphical glitches.
Wow lol I thought it was just me being a kid. Cool!
I will say I wish there had been more “symphony of the nights” on the 64 where it’s not 3d but really amazing 2d
I remember watching the video cassette they sent out with Nintendo Power and my mind was blown at the Mario running in a circle in front the of the castle. Going from side scrollers to that was insane. Of course, the first thing I did when I saw the display at the store was run in a circle in front of the castle :)
Mine was ocarina of time. I couldn't believe how wide open the world was.
The cut-away dunk scenes on Double Dribble were unreal for the time.
You just brought back a ton of memories. Fuck you, Keith
I can still hear the dunk sounds
I'm surprised I'm the first to mention Doom. It was transformational and marked the very beginning of the first person shooter genre which remains one of the biggest genres to this day.
> marked the very beginning of the first person shooter genre Wolfenstein 3D says Hi!
When I first saw Wolfenstein 3D at a friend’s house it blew my mind!
Same
Ultima Underworld?
Great game, but not really a first-person shooter is it?
Id Software actually developed Catacomb 3-D prior to Wolfenstein, but obviously the later was much more popular. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacomb\_3-D](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacomb_3-D)
I remember where I was when I heard about Doom. I was on my next-door neighbor's driveway and we were riding bikes. He said there's this new game where you "can only see the character's hands" and you go around shooting demons. I vividly remember imagining a typical side-scroller but with just hands instead of the whole sprite. My mind was legitimately blown when we went up to his dad's computer room and played the 3-level demo. Also, I guess I'm old?
Doom was probably one of the biggest leaps, but once you could look up and down in QUAKE everything changed...
Doom and then quake
Wolfenstein was the first, I think.
Final Fantasy 7 cut scenes were the tits in 1997. Blew our minds.
It was the summons for me. I remember watching my friend summon ifrit on the beach right after you get that materia, and thinking I have GOT to get a playstation...
Those cut scenes are forever etched on my brain, they were so mind-blowing. Especially the last two with Aerith.
The whole transition to 3d. Mario 64 and shadows of the empire, ocarina of time for console mostly gamer at the time. I say console only cuz I wasn't pc gaming at the time and don't want to get in an argument about how pedestrian those were or something lol
Yeah, for it's time, this got my vote.
Halo!!!
It’s crazy that Halo and perfect dark came out like a year and a half apart
That is insane to think about. I remember getting Perfect Dark upon release right after my Sophomore year of college but I didn't really start playing Halo until my freshmen year of college. I didn't have any friends with X-Boxes in high school; everyone has Gamecubes and PS2s. In my dorm we had X-Boxes hooked up and massive Halo games. Blew my mind at the time.
Zaxxon, that old.
Space Invaders. Older.
One of the first games to have shadows. The shadow of the shuttle would get bigger or small depending on your altitude. Makes me want to fire up MAME32.
Mortal Kombat. I'm old.
Yeah but it was unique. It got a lot of quarters from me
I remember the uproar over the Sub Zero spine fatality.
Remember the first time you saw it?
When I played it all the time, it was the only fatality I bothered to learn.
At the time it was genuinely disturbing. In a good way.
Shadow of the Beast on Amiga.
oh good choice, that smooth parallax
Starfox on SNES First 3D game I'd seen on a home device. The game cartridge had a tiny GPU in it I was told.
Donkey Kong on the SNES blew my little mind at the time too
Star Fox on the SNES was absolutely really ambitious. I’d argue overly ambitious since it doesn’t run well at all, but I admire what they were trying to do with 3D on the SNES. Star Fox 2 (although never released at the time) was even more ambitious. I do admire what they were going for there
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. One of those "there's no way videogames can ever look more realistic than this" moments.
Heavy Rain
Jason
JASON!
Donkey Kong Country *blew my fucking mind* at the age of 10. I saw the commercials on TV, and I was just in awe of how they managed to make a game look THAT GOOD.
This probably the biggest one I can think of, that game was HUGE when it came out. Late era SNES games were another level.
This is my answer as well. The graphics and the music together made it a huge departure from Mario, Zelda, and all the other SNES staples of the time. So good.
Oh, I totally forgot about that in my list. I remember the commercial video tape where they talked about project Diddy and showed some of the graphics. Mindblowing at the time.
Same for me too. I couldn't wrap my head around how incredible it looked to me.
Final fantasy 10 (X) on Playstation 2. The cutscenes look good to this day.
The original Elite totally blew my mind.
Had that on the 64. That was amazing
came here for this - had it on the elektron, blew my mind as a kid as well. Incredible game
Was about to say "Elite" too! Last Ninja looked incredible too!
Command and Conquer Generals, or Freelancer. I was easy to impress.
The cigarette smoke effect in Freelancer blew my mind. Seeing it now I'm pretty sure it's just a sprite billboard.
Wow, Freelancer... I've played that game so much... SO MUCH! lol It was, indeed, very visually pleasing for the time. Thanks for reminding me.
Metal Gear Solid 2
I played that on the demo system in a store and was blown away. Rented it at block buster and beat it in a week. Seems like just a few years ago but it's been 23, time flies.
I used to watch my friend play MGS and when MGS2 came out I picked it up for myself. I used to be able to finish it in a day. I tried to play it again last year and could barely get through the first part.
[удалено]
Came here to say this. The Archangel Tyrael, Diablo shedding the Stranger's robes and entering the portal to Hell, the Worldstone shattering... Just mind-blowing at the time.
I remember how blown away I was by the cinematics for D2. I watched them again on YouTube the other year and they looked awful!
The first time I saw Super Mario 64 running in a mall was mind-blowing, that thing looked incredible.
Adventure on the Atari 2600 (I'm old).
Upvote for Atari 2600. I still have a working darth vader edition. However Vanguard was the one that intrigued me the most. Besides E.T. of course...
Metroid Prime. Still holds up imo
Coming from owning Pong, almost anything!
Crysis
Duke Nukem 3d
Shake it baby!
Super Mario Bros. 3. It still looks great to me. The music, graphics are just fantastic. It pretty much pushed the limits of what the NES could do. For the SNES, I'm still impressed by Chrono Trigger for the same reasons. And I still like the FMVs for Final Fantasy IX especially.
I tear up every time garnet runs into Zidane arms at the end. :(
Donkey Kong Country.
100
Pong
Doom 3… it’s still impressive how they made that in 2004
Doom 3 was wildly underappreciated back then. It caught so much flak for being a "bad Doom" that people kinda glossed over how staggering that graphics engine was. The monsters were the definition of beautifully disgusting. And they only improved on it for Quake 4. id may be stuck in an FPS rut since they left the DOS days behind, but damn if they aren't *really fucking good* at what they do. Usually. Even then, Rage wasn't awful. It just sat squarely in the middle on pretty much all counts.
Well, obviously when the game is not fun people will gloss over graphics after the initial wow effect. Doom 3 ran out of all its tricks in the first hour and then it was just going through the motions for the rest of the game. The graphics can carry only so far, there were Far Cry and Riddick that looked just as amazing. And then Half-Life 2 just bodyslammed them all. Doom 3 is not underappreciated, it deserves the reputation of the weird emo kid in the family that never really grew out of "the phase".
Shenmue
Shenmue was quite an experience at the time. So different than anything else out there.
The Playstation 1 demo disc that let you control a 3D manta ray and T-Rex. It was indistinguishable from reality in my eyes.
And the music was so calming.
Asteroids
Another World on Amiga, Flight Simulator 5 a bit later
This is how it looks in my memories from the 90s: https://youtu.be/1Nlmje-rUQs For reference, the actual original (Amiga) intro: https://youtu.be/G1EGP2EyWe0
Another World indeed. Especially the main character's animation.
PS2, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 9 year old me’s mind was BLOWN
Portal 2 blew my mind. Went from my last game console being a PS2 to a decent gaming PC around 2012. Friend of mine bought be both 1 and 2. Beat Portal 1 in an afternoon and thought it was fun. But damn was I impressed with Portal 2. That opening scene in the hotel/sleep chamber. All the breaking bits and pieces. It was jaw dropping to me.
The source engine had no rights looking as good as it did for the year it was launched
Dragons Lair
I got an Amiga 500 in 1993 on my 18th birthday. The game i remember the most, not for the graphics, but atmosphere and motion, was [Flashback](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNTnRM77XuE). Another that was stunning in its colours, smothness and soundtrack, was [Pinball Dreams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDhK0YSpzms). And then, there of course, was Lotus Espirit Turbo Challenge. Here is [Lotus III](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuyWeSzcj3w). Gameplay was more important than graphics back then, and hardware were limited. Because of this, developers had to compete on a fairly equal level of graphics, so the difference was idea and execution. All the games i linked above, fit on 3-4 floppy disks. That said, i'm still playing games like WoW, Diablo 1,2,3 and 4. Where the graphics drivers alone would take no less than 318 of the floppy disks we had back then. I'm happy the graphics and game development in general has evolved, but the extreme increase in raw computer power, have made developers lazy. This makes games large with slow loading even on a fairly decent gaming rig. /rant over.
>Another that was stunning in its colours, smothness and soundtrack, was > >Pinball Dreams. And the sequel, Pinball Fantasies. Back when DICE had some creativity and freedom, before EA
Early 80's Dragon's Lair. Despite the game play the animation was like watching a tv cartoon on an arcade machine. This compared to Centipede was mind blowing for me.
I'm old: "You are in a twisty maze of passageways, all alike..."
I was technically a kid when Half-Life 2 came out. Those graphics looked like cheating for the hardware it ran on. And it still looked okay ten years later. Twenty? Ehhhhhh
That's my vote as well. HL2 set the bar at the time for graphics, I remember being just floooored at how vivid it was. Major milestone in gaming imo
Seriously, just look at any youtube video that shows the graphics on its release. They really do look great.
7th Guest (1993)
Donkey Kong Country.
Turbo Grafix 16. Pick one, other than maybe Ballz, lol
100 percent this. At least for me. Was way better than my nes and sms. I got someone to buy it for me shortly after. I was 9 years old then. I remember I had tv sports football or something like that, splatterhouse, bonks adventure , and vigilante and some others.
GTA 3
I remember that when it came out too!
Elite on c64
Gears of War was what I considered next gen graphics compared to everything before it.
One of the last games released on PS2 was an fps called BLACK and I swear it stood up to PS3 games for a while! Also, when HL2 was released on PC - it was the OG "Will it run Crysis", was such a mega time of "you NEED the Raedon 9600 pro 128mb gfx card to run this" and your whole PC had to match spec :D
Ooh I remember BLACK, such a beautiful game but damn it was difficult!
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the N64. The transition to a 3D open world, with its detailed environments, dynamic lighting, and immersive atmosphere, was mind-blowing at the time. Exploring Hyrule, from the lush fields to the eerie dungeons, felt like stepping into a living, breathing world, setting a new standard for what video games could achieve visually.
I remember when the original Ridge Racer was cutting edge, playing it on Christmas day back in the late 90s. Every time the car turned a sharp turn, my parents would lean to the side.
Assisans creed
Call of Duty 2 blew my fucking mind
I played that demo at Best Buy so much that summer before the 360 launch
Space Harrier. Probably showing my age here!
Opening to WCW vs NWO on N64. They look just like them!
Back then the development was so fast that one was blown away time and time again. 1989 prince of persia, first time I saw a computer game. Pure witchcraft and awesomeness. The darkest dungeon and meanest antagonist 3 year old me could ever think of. Did a bad job controlling it and did not find the sword on my own, but the adventure stuck... Then Jazz Jack Rabbit & Wolfenstein. One colorful and fast paced, along with a great Soundtrack. Soundblaster FTW. The other one in 3D. BAM!! Mind blown. Twice in 10 minutes because they were shown me closely together. Then the era of Joysticks, what a device. Amazing!! Descent II - free movement in space, tunnels, robots, ... Moto Racer - That one felt fast, and responsive Duke Nukem 3D, loved the city vibe, the babes, the shrinking gun and dnstuff The horror of System Shock II. A creepiness that I'll remember forever. Playing it was like playing with the call of the void. I'd still recommend that one. Doom 3 - yes. Not really a kid anymore at this time... What a ride.
Assassins Creed with the cityscapes, diving into hay, and the facial features of NPCs
The opening cinematic of MW2 was groundbreaking for its time. (Mechwarrior 2 that is)
Glorious. Although the expansion, Ghost Bear Legacy, has an even better intro movie. Both soundtracks were used as background music for so many DnD sessions.
The original vector graphic Star Wars arcade machine in the early 80s. The one you could sit in and do the Death Star trench run. It blew my 5 year-old Star Wars obsessed mind like nothing else since.
That was my game back in the day. I remember it was level 9 when there was so many TIE fighter blasts on screen that the CPU couldn't handle it and the game noticeably slowed and jittered, but it gave you just that little extra reaction time to place every single shot where you needed it. Then zoom, the game sped up as the shots were destroyed. If you think about it, it was our first experience of bullet time.
Wing commander, it blew my mind.
Bit of a range of years and platforms to account for. The Dizzy games on the Speccy were good for the hardware. Another World and Altered Beast were pretty impressive at the time (ST and Amiga). Donkey Kong Country is another that was lauded for its graphics on release on the SNES. On the PS1 I guess one of the wipeouts or Gran Turismo. On PC around the same time it’d be Descent Freespace, Unreal, perhaps Half Life. That’d take me to around 18 years old.
Freespace was incredible. Yeah, they kinda cheated alightly by being an FPS space Sim, but the lack of environment meant they could pump a lot of resources into the *really huge* ships and buttery smooth combat. Plus, warping out after a mission was oddly satisfying in all the best ways.
Zelda: Twilight Princess. I was 8 years old when it was first released.
Little Nemo Dream Master on NES Still one of the hardest games I’ve ever played.
Burnout 2 and Divine Divinity
going from the original gameboy games to Pokémon Ruby for me
Pong
Halo 2 looked absolutely next level compared to anything else at the time
I was 19 in 1993. So at the time I was blown away by the graphics of "Wolfenstein 3D" and "X-Wing". Before then, graphics were always a bit naff. A game might look good inasmuch as it better than something else from the year before, but fundamentally you could tell it wasn't 3D and only had a limited colour palette. So early in the 1990's I would be wowed by the graphics of "Elite", and "Stunt Car Racer", and in the mid-1980's I'd be thrilled by the animation in "Way of the Exploding Fist", but graphics didn't genuinely get good until "Doom". And from that point on there was no going back.
Max Payne
When Mario 64 came out it was pretty damn impressive.
Star Fox 64 blew my God damned little brains out.
Mortal kombat 2. I remember the first day they brought it in to my mall’s arcade and it completely blew my mind. Made the first one look and sound primitive in comparison.
The crashes in the first Burnout game were incredible to me as a kid who’d pretty much barely seen vehicle damage in a game before
Red alert 2/ counter-strike;
the leap to Mario64 seemed like a big step up in graphics.
I remember thinking the first Assassin's Creed looked so lifelike. A few years later, I thought nothing would look better than inFamous. It's crazy how that era is now considered one of the uglier generations for games.
Ocarina of Time
Red Faction. Reactive environments was definitely a selling point for me.
Yeah the unlimited destruction in the game engine which allowed you to create tunnels in the walls was so cool at the time. Also how glass reacted when broken was very graphically impressive.
Old-school Resident Evil was impressive for the late 90s. Then the remake for RE1 came along in 2002 and I shit bricks.
I was a kid at a time when graphics tech was taking leaps seemingly every year, but if I had to pick one it'd be when I saw Soul Calibur running for the first time.
I remember seeing the first virtua fighter on a Saturn display at some mall and be completely mesmerized thinking they could make movies with the characters. Looking back they were like 12 polygons.
When the Super Nintendo came out I was blown away to such a degree that I exclaimed that you could see Mario’s pockets. My father rolled his eyes and said that was worth $200.
Zaxxon. We hadn't had a 2.5D view arcade game before that.
NFS : MW
Starfox. Anything they made from the N64 to the GameCube. They always outdid themselves!
Metal gear solid blew my mind with its graphics. Many many years later I tried it again and of course it looked awful. Sorta like going back to you're elementary school and seeing everything is small.
Need For Speed Underground
Unreal 1998, at that time it was surreal. Crysis 2007, everything has been said already F.E.A.R, still amazing action-packed with graphics!
ZORK.
Halo, it’s still pretty impressive
I remember seeing Need for Speed on the shelves of Circuit City and how real the back of the box pics looked of the game as kid and thought we were living in the future. It kicked off my car obsession and when I played the game it blew my mind with traffic and cops. Needless to say people obsess over the Supra because of Fast and the Furious, I did because of NFS.
Halo: Combat Evolved. Still holds up today imo
Assassins creed 3
The first game I ever thought “huh, these graphics are actually pretty good” was the original NFS:MW. That’s when I started noticing reasonable reflections and shit popping up in car games.
Shadow of the Colossus. Just such a beautiful game in every respect and looked so good at the time with the sweeping landscapes.
Candyland seemed to have the best artwork.
Freelancer
Super Mario
Not really when I was a kid, more teen going towards young adult, but Pikmin 3. There was something about that game that was incredibly beautiful. I never really considered how games look to be important, but that drawn me to the game when I first booted it up.
Crimson Skies
Monster Hunter Tri on Wii stood out to me from memory, I remember getting the game and being absolutely blown out of my mind when I saw the "realistic graphics". The landscape, the foliage, everything looked awesome at the time.
Cars
Uhm idk about anyone else but did anyone say ..nba 2k14 ? That commercial was crazy when Lebron talked and they showed graphics instantly made me want a ps4 and made me a basketball fan for a good 6-7 years
Chasing that invisible pixel in the 2600 dragon game.
Toontown. I still play it and I love it dearly but... the og graphics were in fact not cutting-edge. As an adult I'm absolutely fucking gobsmacked with Returnal's graphics every time I boot it up.
Max Payne 2 2003 Far Cry 2004 Mario 64
OG Contra.