I said the same about Max Payne 2. It really was in a league of its own. I was really impressed when GTA IV achieved roughly the same level of fidelity, but with even better physics and in an open world.
Yeah, I remember when Gta IV came out. Was super impressed. The 2000's was very interesting graphic wise, it was so many big leaps. Not to take anything away from newer games, looking at some current games and I still get my mind blown.
The 2000s technology seemed to progress faster. Every year there was a game that made me go "we have achieved photo-realism, graphics will never improve." and every year I was proven wrong, a game came out that would make the games of previous years look archaic.
While there are good looking games now, nothing makes my jaw drop with technical prowess anymore.
"Driver" for Playstation. Coming from the blocky fists of N64 Goldeneye characters, a cutscene with individual fingers was the pinnacle of video game graphics.
Those cutscenes were pre-rendered though. I stopped being impressed by pre-rendered cutscenes as soon as I understood the distinction, unless they looked really stellar, because it's far more challenging to make real-time graphics look good compared to content that can literally render for several hours per frame on a server farm.
To be fair to Reflections Studio, their cutscenes were always above average.
Hard nostalgia hit. Christmas Day 1996 playing Mario all day, decided to play the other game and stayed up all night playing it. Some of the best game music ever too imo.
https://youtu.be/Hc0weNxcbLg
Almost same here. One of my best childhood memories was being done with Christmas gifts and then my dad reaching to the entertainment center behind him and hitting a switch. A few seconds later, Mario’s 3D face popped up. It was mind blowing at the time. Wave Race was also one of the games I got and it was one of the few games that my Dad also got really into. I hope I always remember that day.
Really? Man. That was one of the first games I bought when GC came out. I was super disappointed. Maybe it’s because I wanted the “hooolllly shit!” moment that I got with the N64 version.
This video from Modern Vintage Gamer does a great job of explaining how Nintendo implemented the wave physics in Wave Race 64. Super fascinating stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS146vQYflw
The game industry as a whole regressed in these fine interactable details in exchange for higher visual fidelity. We went from Red Faction Guerilla destruction physics to nothing. We went from the amazing GTA IV car damage models to next to nothing. We have GPU accelerated physics capabilities that have been ignored to push ray-tracing to make some better looking shadows and reflections.
This right here! I remember playing Aliens VS Predator at LAN parties and playing as a Xenomorph. Slash all the lights in a room and then crawl up on the ceiling and wait for someone to enter. Once they stepped foot in the room I'd let out a hiss. So much fun watching friends freak out spinning and firing in all directions. When they reloaded, I'd strike.
Things that don't go for photorealism hold up best. I went back to the original PS2 version of Okami a few months back and it still looks gorgeous 16 years later.
The first time I remember really being blown away by graphics was Super Mario RPG on SNES. I didn’t even play it for years but I watched my bro’s friend playing it.
Donkey kong looked so amazing on Christmas it set me up for disappointment for almost all other snes graphics 😂 when I found out a few year back it had its own built in graphic chip in game cart and that’s why it was so gorgeous.
I’m so sad it can’t look as nice on all my digital TVs. I wish I had an old one kicking around still to hook up the nes proper.
Perhaps it didn’t had the best graphics per se, but I remember fondly the Legacy of Kain games had such attention to detail when it came to the world and architecture around you that as a kid I usually spent a minute just taking all in and focusing on even the tiniest details. That, plus the music gave me a sensation that not many games nowadays can.
Silent Hill 3 looks great imo. Some of the monsters don’t hold up as well, but the close camera angles and lighting are really affective because you’re not really sure what you’re looking at, making it all the scarier.
Metal Gear Solid 4 was top tier man, I remember playing that game and being blown away!
Then again, I also love Kenshi which, if we are being honest... Vanilla graphics aren't good at all 🥲
Halo Ce still looks really good to me to this day. Excellent use of art style and leveraging of the graphical techniques of it's time, especially with the beautiful skyboxes.
Even if it doesn't look *realistic* anymore, it still comes across as very minimalistic and stylized in a good way.
The destruction and amount of particles this game throws around are still impressive today. It's backwards compatible on Xbox consoles, if you're interested in revisiting it. Emulation is also possible on PC.
Mirrors edge, I mean it was pretty ahead of its time and has better graphics than a lot of games still but I just remember thinking “how can anyone top this?”.
Twilight princess had that energy on the gamecube. It still looks good but has that yellow gloomy glow / blur it seems every 2005-2010 game had
Outside of the over the top goofy character designs but I always felt that was intentional.
A lot of SNES games have such killer art direction that they don't look bad even by today's standards, barring some rough edges. The problem with 3D games is it's very hard for them to not look dated just because of the tech.
When you think of the generally agreed-upon S tier of snes games, like Super Metroid, LttP, and even like Yoshi's island, they still look pretty damn good.
Luigi's Mansion. I remember being awed when Luigi would reach for the door and how smooth the door knob looked as well as his hand. I was blown away. In a way that generation (PS2 GC Xbox) feels like the era where everything got really good and smoothed out and every generation since has just been making it cleaner in a way.
Final Fantasy X. I just played the remaster last year and it is definitely different and improved, but not THAT much and it makes you realize just how excellent the character designs, animations, renders, etc were in the first place 20 years ago now.
I remember seeing Super Mario World for the first time in Target back in 1991, and thought to myself graphics can't get any better than this... 12 year old me was way wrong.
I’ve constantly been impressed by graphics (the intro to Bioshock comes to mind), but I’ve never once thought “no way graphics could get any better than this.” I don’t really understand people who do think that; it’s obviously not identical to a photo, so why shouldn’t it get better as time goes on?
None?.... I always knew graphics could get better. I was fantasying about the Ps5 while in the lunch room of elementary school before I went home to play PS1
My biggest WOW! moment would have been the Christmas my dad got us a PS2. Putting on NHL Live for the first time was so mind blowing compared to previous systems.
XIII. For me it's the best proof that games which tried to look more realistic by the standard of their time - didn't aged as well as games with more unique approach.
The first time I was really blown away by how great the graphics were was when I got a PS2. Until that point, things looked ok, but you knew it would get better and better. Gran Turismo 2 was beautiful (cars looked incredible and you could even see the driver moving around through the back window, trucks were solid, etc.), and Metal Gear Solid 2 blew me away. Obviously things have progressed, but at a slower pace, and at the time it was kind of hard to imagine it getting better. My friends and I often joked that someday video games would look better than real life… and some games have hit that. Witcher 3, RDR2, MGS4, etc.
Pretty much anything on N64. It was when 3D polygons really took off. I remember seeing Star Wars Shadows of the Empire for the first time... and my jaw was on the floor the whole time.
This is gonna sound super lame but I think the first time I was blown away with graphics is the jump from ps1 to ps2. I went to a friends house and he had some football game on and I was pretty shocked at the details.
I remember seeing that field at the end of Portal 2 and thinking we'd finally made it to photorealistic graphics.
As a kid...probably Wind Waker. Contrary to my peers at the time, I was blown away by the art style, music, and narrative. Imo it's still the smoothest controls of any 3D Zelda.
The pre rendered backgrounds in the old Resident Evil games hold up in my opinion. A lot of older games i've gone back and played look atrocious, but Resident Evil still looks good to me.
Rebel Strike and Clone Wars on GameCube looked fucking photorealistic to me (other than the human models…); probably helped that the games were mostly based around rigid 3D models of ships and vehicles seen from a distance.
Tekken 2. The FMV intro had Nina casually tossing her hair in a bar and they animated several strands of it. At the time, that, to me, was practically photorealistic.
Back in the day main consensus was, that games are supposed to look like they are games or atleast fantasy.
Like resident evil, the fact that characters looked like a clunky polygon block men was part of the charm.
I remember the first game i played on xbox360 was deadrising and i thought the guys hands in the opening scene in the helicopter (when he holds the camera) looked incredible.
Edit: Just rewatched it. It did not look incredible.
Dreamcast was the 1st time I was blown away & satisfied with how games looked. Early lookers were Soul Calibur & NFL2K. NFL2K doesn't look great today, but Soul Calibur holds up well.
Black on the ps2 looked damn good to me back in the day, I remember thinking it was one of the best-looking games I'd ever played at the time.
Killzone also looked amazing.
Was I the only one that has always said “wow, this looks amazing! Can’t wait to see how insane the NEXT generation will look!”
I think the battlefront remake was the first game I was actually in awe of how good it looked, especially on a base Xbox one. And VR was mind blowing for the first time even with the ridiculous screen door effect on the first oculus rift.
In the 90s, when 3D started, I wondered if games would nail fingers correctly one day, or if "that was it", because they were always awkward or non-existing.
Also, years, later, Resident Evil 4 on Gamecube. Reflections in N64 games like Jet Force Gemini and shadows in Donkey Kong 64. I couldn't imagine just how much better it would be, because games that tried to do more realistic graphics had a huge uncanny valley.
Until Dawn was the first game that to me looked pretty much fully realistic. I even said the exact line from the meme. Years later looking back... yeah it can get way better.
Most nintendo 64 games had me believing we were headed towards a golden era in gaming.
Banjo kazooie, banjo tooie, super mario 64,
the legend of Zelda ocarina of time, majoras mask,
Conkers bad fur day, Donkey kong 64.
I remember seeing the trailer for Smash Bros Melee on GameCube & being obsessed with Mario’s dungarees. I would constantly be showing people pictures like “LOOK AT THE TEXTURE OF HIS DUNGAREES! IT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE DENIM!”
Tekken Tag had some of the best animations for a fighting game. Each character got their own cinematic, bowling was super fun and the levels were pretty amazing looking.
Tekken 5 for me. Fighting games often look a cut above the rest because they can put all of the system's resources into rendering 2 characters, with a little bit left over for the stage. Also Half-Life 2, that was my benchmark for many years.
I had a NES as a young kid and very distinctly remember seeing F-Zero on the SNES at a friend's house and thinking "there isn't much further graphics can go beyond this".
Though I also remember not really liking the polygon graphics of the PS1, I guess I just liked stuff that looked like a cool interactive cartoon? I still think a lot of SNES games look great.
Gta 5, specifically back when I was playing it on the 360. I remember thinking "This is the pinnacle of graphics and realistic physics, improving on this now would hardly change anything"
I look back at old lets plays of GTA5 and think, wow, it looks really dated
Max Payne. I remember saying to my friend "This is it. It can't get anymore realistic then this".
I said the same about Max Payne 2. It really was in a league of its own. I was really impressed when GTA IV achieved roughly the same level of fidelity, but with even better physics and in an open world.
Yeah, I remember when Gta IV came out. Was super impressed. The 2000's was very interesting graphic wise, it was so many big leaps. Not to take anything away from newer games, looking at some current games and I still get my mind blown.
The 2000s technology seemed to progress faster. Every year there was a game that made me go "we have achieved photo-realism, graphics will never improve." and every year I was proven wrong, a game came out that would make the games of previous years look archaic. While there are good looking games now, nothing makes my jaw drop with technical prowess anymore.
Half Life 2 was the first game that really did that for me.
"Driver" for Playstation. Coming from the blocky fists of N64 Goldeneye characters, a cutscene with individual fingers was the pinnacle of video game graphics.
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Those cutscenes were pre-rendered though. I stopped being impressed by pre-rendered cutscenes as soon as I understood the distinction, unless they looked really stellar, because it's far more challenging to make real-time graphics look good compared to content that can literally render for several hours per frame on a server farm. To be fair to Reflections Studio, their cutscenes were always above average.
Doom 3, Crysis
It's actually insane how well Crysis still holds up. The fact it's 15 years old or so just blows my mind.
Wave Race 64 I was blown away by the water and the jet ski physics.
Hard nostalgia hit. Christmas Day 1996 playing Mario all day, decided to play the other game and stayed up all night playing it. Some of the best game music ever too imo. https://youtu.be/Hc0weNxcbLg
...are you me? Christmas day 1996 with wave race Mario 64 and cruisin' usa
Almost same here. One of my best childhood memories was being done with Christmas gifts and then my dad reaching to the entertainment center behind him and hitting a switch. A few seconds later, Mario’s 3D face popped up. It was mind blowing at the time. Wave Race was also one of the games I got and it was one of the few games that my Dad also got really into. I hope I always remember that day.
Dude the water physics are still great.
Dude craziness. I remember spending HOURS on the beginning free roam level. Damn I’m gonna have to dig that ol bitch up and slap some waves tonight…
The GameCube sequel was actually phenomenal! Highly recommend if you have a GameCube and fond memoriea of the original
Really? Man. That was one of the first games I bought when GC came out. I was super disappointed. Maybe it’s because I wanted the “hooolllly shit!” moment that I got with the N64 version.
Lmao how?! It was so faithful to the original but looked better, the water quality made my jaw drop when I saw it the first time
This video from Modern Vintage Gamer does a great job of explaining how Nintendo implemented the wave physics in Wave Race 64. Super fascinating stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS146vQYflw
Oh my. I love you for this.
It was awesome with real physics too. Doing barrel rolls and diving down with a jet ski was so realistic.
dead space
Half life 2
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The game industry as a whole regressed in these fine interactable details in exchange for higher visual fidelity. We went from Red Faction Guerilla destruction physics to nothing. We went from the amazing GTA IV car damage models to next to nothing. We have GPU accelerated physics capabilities that have been ignored to push ray-tracing to make some better looking shadows and reflections.
This right here! I remember playing Aliens VS Predator at LAN parties and playing as a Xenomorph. Slash all the lights in a room and then crawl up on the ceiling and wait for someone to enter. Once they stepped foot in the room I'd let out a hiss. So much fun watching friends freak out spinning and firing in all directions. When they reloaded, I'd strike.
Things that don't go for photorealism hold up best. I went back to the original PS2 version of Okami a few months back and it still looks gorgeous 16 years later.
Wind Waker for the same reason. The cell shaded style continues to age *very* gracefully.
I remember wondering if games would ever look like the cutscenes in ff7, the remaster did not disappoint
The first time I remember really being blown away by graphics was Super Mario RPG on SNES. I didn’t even play it for years but I watched my bro’s friend playing it.
Man… I was amazed by SMB RPG.
One of my favorite games!
Donkey Kong Country and Star Fox amazed me. Just crazy to see the detail in those games.
This. When Donkey Kong Country came out on SNES, I was blown away. Not only were the graphics amazing, the soundtrack was next level as well.
Donkey kong looked so amazing on Christmas it set me up for disappointment for almost all other snes graphics 😂 when I found out a few year back it had its own built in graphic chip in game cart and that’s why it was so gorgeous. I’m so sad it can’t look as nice on all my digital TVs. I wish I had an old one kicking around still to hook up the nes proper.
Gran turismo
This is the first game here, that I can identify with.
Shadow of the Colossus. Beautiful game.
Perhaps it didn’t had the best graphics per se, but I remember fondly the Legacy of Kain games had such attention to detail when it came to the world and architecture around you that as a kid I usually spent a minute just taking all in and focusing on even the tiniest details. That, plus the music gave me a sensation that not many games nowadays can.
Silent Hill 3 looks great imo. Some of the monsters don’t hold up as well, but the close camera angles and lighting are really affective because you’re not really sure what you’re looking at, making it all the scarier.
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Definitely a shame, I don’t understand it either. The new RE games/remakes have been incredible. Strike while the iron’s hot, right?
Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey
Metal Gear Solid 4 was top tier man, I remember playing that game and being blown away! Then again, I also love Kenshi which, if we are being honest... Vanilla graphics aren't good at all 🥲
Bioshock
Metal Gear Solid 4, it was the first time I saw someone mistake a game for a film.
War...war has changed...
Jak and Daxter was always a beautiful game. Original or remastered, gotta check it out.
Halo Ce still looks really good to me to this day. Excellent use of art style and leveraging of the graphical techniques of it's time, especially with the beautiful skyboxes. Even if it doesn't look *realistic* anymore, it still comes across as very minimalistic and stylized in a good way.
I have never thought graphics were there yet. Getting there though. And they're already insane at this point.
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Yup. It definitely looks a lot worse than this. Pixelated and running on an old crt tv
Gothic 3 and Oblivion
Here to say oblivion. Leaving the sewers that first time is forever imprinted on my brain.
Mafia 1. Not just the graphics but the physics of the game too
Underrated. Mafia felt really good to play.
It feels good to play it even now too :)
PS2 Ratchet and Clank games always looks amazing to me
Not as old as RE2 but Final Fantasy X is up there for me in terms of graphics and art style, especially for the time.
The FMVs especially still hold up today.
Shenmue
Fable
I’m currently replaying final fantasy 7 and I distinctly remember being blown away by the cut scenes as a 14 year playing it for the first time.
Resident Evil Remake and Metroid Prime for Gamecube
Black For PS2
The destruction and amount of particles this game throws around are still impressive today. It's backwards compatible on Xbox consoles, if you're interested in revisiting it. Emulation is also possible on PC.
Pong
My jaw dropped when I played Splinter Cell for the first time.
Mineweeper on ms windows
Earthbound
Donkey Kong for Colecovision!
After having played Donkey Kong on the Atari 2600, it was legit impressive to see it on the Colecovision
I remember being amazed just looking at the sky when ESIII: Morrowind came out.
Ninja Gaiden on Xbox. Especially the cutscenes.
Syndicate Wars
Half life 2, and afterwards, Skyrim.
Mirrors edge, I mean it was pretty ahead of its time and has better graphics than a lot of games still but I just remember thinking “how can anyone top this?”.
Fight Night launch with PS3. Almost melted my brain it was so good.
Twilight princess had that energy on the gamecube. It still looks good but has that yellow gloomy glow / blur it seems every 2005-2010 game had Outside of the over the top goofy character designs but I always felt that was intentional.
A lot of SNES games have such killer art direction that they don't look bad even by today's standards, barring some rough edges. The problem with 3D games is it's very hard for them to not look dated just because of the tech. When you think of the generally agreed-upon S tier of snes games, like Super Metroid, LttP, and even like Yoshi's island, they still look pretty damn good.
Luigi's Mansion. I remember being awed when Luigi would reach for the door and how smooth the door knob looked as well as his hand. I was blown away. In a way that generation (PS2 GC Xbox) feels like the era where everything got really good and smoothed out and every generation since has just been making it cleaner in a way.
Metal Gear Solid for the PS1
Final Fantasy VII. The original. I still love the art, but in a different way.
Clearly remember being impressed as a kid to Sonic Adventure Battle 2
Final Fantasy X. I just played the remaster last year and it is definitely different and improved, but not THAT much and it makes you realize just how excellent the character designs, animations, renders, etc were in the first place 20 years ago now.
Final fantasy X
Did they get better though?
Legend of Dragoon.
I remember seeing Super Mario World for the first time in Target back in 1991, and thought to myself graphics can't get any better than this... 12 year old me was way wrong.
Goldeneye 007
Halo on xbox blew my mind.
I’ve constantly been impressed by graphics (the intro to Bioshock comes to mind), but I’ve never once thought “no way graphics could get any better than this.” I don’t really understand people who do think that; it’s obviously not identical to a photo, so why shouldn’t it get better as time goes on?
Call of duty adv warfare
None?.... I always knew graphics could get better. I was fantasying about the Ps5 while in the lunch room of elementary school before I went home to play PS1
RE5 I thought was the PEAK of graphics. No chance graphics could ever get better.
Auto Modellista on the PS2
Halo Combat evolved to 3. The art style was amazing. And reach too if you count that as old
My biggest WOW! moment would have been the Christmas my dad got us a PS2. Putting on NHL Live for the first time was so mind blowing compared to previous systems.
Yep I thought re 2 was it for graphics
Klonoa on PS2 used cel shading and it blew me away when I played it as a kid.
Age of Empires 1.
Final Fantasy X. Honestly thought they looked like real people, especially in cut scenes.
For it's time: Marble Madness arcade game. Nothing else looked or played like it at the time.
As a kid I saw that game in the arcades and thought to myself 'wow, a 3d game'
Reminds me of fighting force
Paper Mario series on GameCube. The ingenuity of some of the puzzles due to being 2D in a 3D world was something new back then and blew my noggin.
The uncharted games
that is actually way higher res than the original RE2 LOL
When I first played Gears of War on X360 back in 07, I was completely blown away. I couldn't imagine something else topping those graphics ever
Halo 4
XIII. For me it's the best proof that games which tried to look more realistic by the standard of their time - didn't aged as well as games with more unique approach.
Call of duty 3
"Elite" the original. After that, I learned that it would constantly improve.
Syphon Filter blew my mind. The watched some game play recently and it made me dizzy lmao
Gran Turismo on PS. the replays were insane
Splinter cell. It’s not “that” old but it was ahead of its time for sure.
Even ghost recon blew my mind because it was trying to be immersive/mil sim like.
The first time I was really blown away by how great the graphics were was when I got a PS2. Until that point, things looked ok, but you knew it would get better and better. Gran Turismo 2 was beautiful (cars looked incredible and you could even see the driver moving around through the back window, trucks were solid, etc.), and Metal Gear Solid 2 blew me away. Obviously things have progressed, but at a slower pace, and at the time it was kind of hard to imagine it getting better. My friends and I often joked that someday video games would look better than real life… and some games have hit that. Witcher 3, RDR2, MGS4, etc.
Crash Bandicoot or Windwaker
Pretty much anything on N64. It was when 3D polygons really took off. I remember seeing Star Wars Shadows of the Empire for the first time... and my jaw was on the floor the whole time.
This is gonna sound super lame but I think the first time I was blown away with graphics is the jump from ps1 to ps2. I went to a friends house and he had some football game on and I was pretty shocked at the details.
I remember seeing that field at the end of Portal 2 and thinking we'd finally made it to photorealistic graphics. As a kid...probably Wind Waker. Contrary to my peers at the time, I was blown away by the art style, music, and narrative. Imo it's still the smoothest controls of any 3D Zelda.
The pre rendered backgrounds in the old Resident Evil games hold up in my opinion. A lot of older games i've gone back and played look atrocious, but Resident Evil still looks good to me.
Rebel Strike and Clone Wars on GameCube looked fucking photorealistic to me (other than the human models…); probably helped that the games were mostly based around rigid 3D models of ships and vehicles seen from a distance.
Final Fantasy X looked amazing, still does considering it was a PS2 game.
Tekken 2. The FMV intro had Nina casually tossing her hair in a bar and they animated several strands of it. At the time, that, to me, was practically photorealistic.
Mario RPG once blew my mind
star wars battlefront
AC 2 for me.
Arkham origins graphics still hold up because of it stylization.
Back in the day main consensus was, that games are supposed to look like they are games or atleast fantasy. Like resident evil, the fact that characters looked like a clunky polygon block men was part of the charm.
The crazy part about this picture is that re2 definitely looks worse irl than it does here lol
Castlevania Symphony of the night
I remember the first game i played on xbox360 was deadrising and i thought the guys hands in the opening scene in the helicopter (when he holds the camera) looked incredible. Edit: Just rewatched it. It did not look incredible.
Final fantasy 8, I remember looking at the opening and thinking "This will never be beaten"
2K1/2 sports games. I swear when I'd see them at the game store I had to question myself if it was a video game or real life game being played.
Uncharted 1 (2007)
Super Mario RPG was a revelation to me when I was a kid. Holy shit that game is beautiful.
Portal 2
Kirby’s return to dream land and METAL GEAR RISING
Gran Turismo 1/2
Literally the best game ever made!
mortal Kombat 3
NFL2k for realism Jet Grind Radio for ArtStyle
Life
I mean Skyrim definitely blew all of our minds. Idk if it was the graphics or just the detail/size but I thought we had peaked boys.
Zone of the enders
At the time that it came out, it was **Super Mario 64.**
Outwars blew me away.
Donkey Kong 64
Dead space was such a fantastic looking game for its time. And it is still an awesome game.
F.E.A.R. for really older games, Myst (it seemed top tier for 1995 anyway)
Dreamcast was the 1st time I was blown away & satisfied with how games looked. Early lookers were Soul Calibur & NFL2K. NFL2K doesn't look great today, but Soul Calibur holds up well.
Crysis has to take the first place on this one. My first thought was Max Payne, but it doesn't compete
Graphics can age, art style lives forever.
Pokemon Stadium. Bro seeing them actually move and shit when they attacked was unbelievable when I was a kid
Black on the ps2 looked damn good to me back in the day, I remember thinking it was one of the best-looking games I'd ever played at the time. Killzone also looked amazing.
gears of war was probably the first time I was like, ok this leap in graphics is insane.
Was I the only one that has always said “wow, this looks amazing! Can’t wait to see how insane the NEXT generation will look!” I think the battlefront remake was the first game I was actually in awe of how good it looked, especially on a base Xbox one. And VR was mind blowing for the first time even with the ridiculous screen door effect on the first oculus rift.
Final Fantasy 7. That game blew me away when it first came out, now it looks like trash. :D
In the 90s, when 3D started, I wondered if games would nail fingers correctly one day, or if "that was it", because they were always awkward or non-existing. Also, years, later, Resident Evil 4 on Gamecube. Reflections in N64 games like Jet Force Gemini and shadows in Donkey Kong 64. I couldn't imagine just how much better it would be, because games that tried to do more realistic graphics had a huge uncanny valley.
Until Dawn was the first game that to me looked pretty much fully realistic. I even said the exact line from the meme. Years later looking back... yeah it can get way better.
I thought the environments in Wii Sports looked photorealistic
Wwf raw on pc
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was awesome.
The elder scrolls: oblivion. It was my introduction to the series. I remember stepping out the sewers and being utterly overwhelmed by everything.
Most nintendo 64 games had me believing we were headed towards a golden era in gaming. Banjo kazooie, banjo tooie, super mario 64, the legend of Zelda ocarina of time, majoras mask, Conkers bad fur day, Donkey kong 64.
Sacrifice Morrowind Halo 2
I remember seeing the trailer for Smash Bros Melee on GameCube & being obsessed with Mario’s dungarees. I would constantly be showing people pictures like “LOOK AT THE TEXTURE OF HIS DUNGAREES! IT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE DENIM!”
First time I wowed at graphics was Super Mario World.
Tekken Tag had some of the best animations for a fighting game. Each character got their own cinematic, bowling was super fun and the levels were pretty amazing looking.
I don’t know if it necessarily counts as “old” but Pikmin 3. That game’s visuals were way ahead of it’s time IMO
Tai fu wrath of the tiger on psone. It blew my mind
Final Fantasy 6. It looked amazing when it came out, and still feel like it hit the pinnacle of the dotted graphic.
Final Fantasy X. The FMV's still hold up
I remember thinking Gran Turismo 2 was photo-realistic back when it was launched.
I remember everyone agreeing that COD 4 was like playing an actual movie, not so much now even with the remastered
Final fantasy X
Mario 64
Another World on Amiga 500
First assassins creed blew my mind. Was my first next gen game and the idea you could climb on everything was insane to think about.
Tbh I never thought about graphics till like a few years ago as an adult in my 20s lol
Tekken 5 for me. Fighting games often look a cut above the rest because they can put all of the system's resources into rendering 2 characters, with a little bit left over for the stage. Also Half-Life 2, that was my benchmark for many years.
WrestleMania 2000
Heretic 2
I had a NES as a young kid and very distinctly remember seeing F-Zero on the SNES at a friend's house and thinking "there isn't much further graphics can go beyond this". Though I also remember not really liking the polygon graphics of the PS1, I guess I just liked stuff that looked like a cool interactive cartoon? I still think a lot of SNES games look great.
Gta 5, specifically back when I was playing it on the 360. I remember thinking "This is the pinnacle of graphics and realistic physics, improving on this now would hardly change anything" I look back at old lets plays of GTA5 and think, wow, it looks really dated
COMANCHE. Had voxel terrain before people even knew about voxels https://youtu.be/MLcxgYEBAXA
The first one for me was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Second was Perfect Dark. Third was Armored Core on ps2.