Games that looked awesome back then, but look terrible nowadays.

[Laivasse]

I stand corrected. But that's not the only thing Tutu does - I was oversimplifying in order to summarise the fact that Tutu allows you to play BG1 with the BG2 interface, the new BG2 kits, classes, races, inventory tweaks, etc... It's well worth trying out for any BG fan who hasn't heard of it.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Oh, another exception - old ass adventure games. A friend just picked up the Quest games (King's/Space/Police), and damn they ugly. The art style is fine, what there is of it, but it's so grainy and colourless as to drain it of any life.

Also, PC sound is a mortal sin against humanity and should be treated as such.

 

[StardogChampion]

Mario 64
HL1
Flight Simulator 95
GTA3
Starwing

And Die By The Sword...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z1HWiTv5Yk

 

[StardogChampion]

Time Commando

I remember when my friend and I fired up the demo for this game. We thought we were watching an FMV but suddenly we were attacked and died. Around that time we realized it was actually in-game.

Btw...best...old...game...ever.

Legendary game. Do you remember the name of a similar game from that time with 3D guys on 2D backgrounds where you played a guy in a gray suit? He was doing a kick on the front cover.

 

[Warbie]

Random snes awesomeness:

When the 2d revolution begins I shall be in the front line, brandishing a heavily pixelated spear.

 

[Rapstah]

Operation Flashpoint.

 

[Sheepo]

I remeber getting my N64 and turning on Mario. I believe my exact words were, "We're living in the future, it just can't look any better".

:upstare:

 

[Trevelyan]

I remember Flashback way back in 1992 on MS-DOS and me and my mates were like holy s**t!

I remember the Sega CD seemed really groundbreaking at console level and I remember the games looking amazing

I think one of the biggest sufferers in the future with regards to this kind of discussion will be N64 and games from its library. Though i think they play amazingly well, so i dont mind:E.

Half Life shocked me recently which I had not played in a year or two, but maybe its because it was the Source version which freaked me out. Im v surprised at how well some PC fps's stand up to the test of time tbh.

 

[Homless Snark]

Anything that's not 2d or "Styalized."

Games like Wind Waker / Killer 7 / Final Fantasy Tactics / Takes of Symphonia / Viewtiful Joe / Paper Mario / Okami / Shin Megami Tensei Games / Street Fighter / Worms etc etc etc

Will always look a lot better in the years to come because that style doesn't look "less realistic" than the style did when it originally came out, because it's just that, a style, it's not trying to emulate reality.

3D Games will always be constantly getting closer to reality in terms of graphics, and as a result past generations will pale in comparison.

 

[Tagaziel]

I remember how I considered GTA 3 impossible. There was not a 3D engine that could render such a monstrous game area on a PC, much less a console.

 

[Shippi]

.

 

[Absinthe]

I don't care how bad it looks. Force pushing storm troopers off of those cliffs was endless fun and it will never stop being fun.

 

[PvtRyan]

Operation Flashpoint.

Ah yeah, I remember downloading the 60 MB (!!) of that, and just be awe-struck by the texture on this officer's face when you sat in the car next to him. It looks horribly low res by today's standards. That was an awesome demo, I remember every bit of it.

I'd like to add:
Unreal and Unreal Tournament. Of Unreal I was amazed by a brick texture on a wall that I saw on a screenshot in a magazine. I thought we had achieved photorealism. With UT, I can remember the faces of the models being "extremely detailed", for the time.

 

[Loke]

Jedi Knight
I adored this game, I thought it looked incredibe I replayed through it recently and... yuck! Still awesome though

MotS looked worse tbh.

Unreal and Unreal Tournament. Of Unreal I was amazed by a brick texture on a wall that I saw on a screenshot in a magazine. I thought we had achieved photorealism. With UT, I can remember the faces of the models being "extremely detailed", for the time.

Well, I think both those games aged pretty well.

 

[Bad^Hat]

I remember running Unreal Tournament on my brand new, state-of-the-art Geforce MX440 (okay, a budget card, but damnit it ran MAX PAYNE :O:O). I was all like "HOW IS THSI POSIIBEL?!?!?!?"

Anything that's not 2d or "Styalized."

Games like Wind Waker / Killer 7 / Final Fantasy Tactics / Takes of Symphonia / Viewtiful Joe / Paper Mario / Okami / Shin Megami Tensei Games / Street Fighter / Worms etc etc etc

Will always look a lot better in the years to come because that style doesn't look "less realistic" than the style did when it originally came out, because it's just that, a style, it's not trying to emulate reality.

3D Games will always be constantly getting closer to reality in terms of graphics, and as a result past generations will pale in comparison.

Well said, agreed.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

I remember Flashback way back in 1992 on MS-DOS and me and my mates were like holy s**t!

Awesome awesome awesome AWESOME game! I had that on the Genesis back in the day.




Shit was hard too.

 

[Saturos]

Idunno, I'm not normally off-put by older-than-granny's-tits graphics, but there are exceptions. One of the biggies is 3D low-poly characters over pixellated 2D backgrounds. It was fine at the time, but playing them again today at higher resolutions looks baaaaad. Case in point: Grim Fandango, the PS1 Final Fantasies (wait, doesn't pluralising that make it an oxymoron?).

The PS1 "Final Fantasy games" (that's how I say it ) is definately one of the series that got hit hard with the ugly stick by father time.

Hell, that series got "grand-slammed" by father time with the whole damn ugly tree. :cheese:

I popped in FFIX several months ago and I nearly wanted to hug my pillow, curl into a ball, suck my thumb, and break down crying. It's gotten that ugly. Really.

FF7/8/9 Still look great imo.

Your so silly Kyo.

Well, in some weird way what I'm saying is... Uhh... It wouldn't be Deus Ex somehow if it didn't have crap graphics.

Does that make sense? =P

Makes perfect sense. Your saying that because Invisible War had crappy gfx too, it just feels too much like a Deus Ex wannabe. Ammirite? :|

Crappy gfx is indeed a trademark of Deus Ex, but it's incredibly engaging story, which leaves the player with a sense of despair and sorrow, was so engrossing that I hardly noticed the muddy textures or jaggies.

Like superior artwork, a superbly written story can save a game from being criticized by graphic whores like me, and that's saying something because story has never been my biggest motivator for playing games in the first place. Deus Ex = the most superbly written video game story of all time. :thumbs:

 

[Letters]

I remember the cutscenes in Final Fantasy 8 being amazing... not seeing them anytime recently I still picture them as amazing... are they not really?

 

[Cornerstone]

Zork...

 

[theotherguy]

Eh, I beg to differ on a few of those. The Nintendo 64 Zelda games still look pretty good today, especially if you have them on the Virtual Console or one of the GameCube re-releases that runs at a higher resolution. Half-Life has aged well, too, though the High Definition Pack helps a lot. It's all about art style.

On the other hand, GoldenEye and Perfect Dark look like ass today... I remember only a few years ago being amazed by the snowstorm in that one level...

Aye, but the framerate is locked at like 20 FPS on the virtual console. You never notice how slow the game actually played until you compare it to the newer ones.

 

[Saturos]

I remember the cutscenes in Final Fantasy 8 being amazing... not seeing them anytime recently I still picture them as amazing... are they not really?

Yes, FF8's real-time cutscenes were awesome. Too bad the rest of the graphics have rusted out from underneath it. :/ I hope FFXIII cutscnenes are something like those in FF8.

I hate "sitting and watching" rather than "playing".

FF8 wouldn't have been so bad to begin with if not for the stupid junction system, which I loathed.

 

[Raziaar]

I hate "sitting and watching" rather than "playing".

I really liked the Sitting and Watching aspect that was part of Final Fantasy X. I really liked that one. And the only other one I liked prior was Final Fantasy 1. Oh god I loved that game for the NES.

 

[bigpapa400lb]

Perfect Dark is still the best and better than X360.
Definetly the best soundtrack at the time(maybe still is)
Youtube search Perfect Dark Ending

 

[99.vikram]

Half-life, Deus Ex and GoldenEye have acceptable graphics by any standards. I'm sure I could enjoy them even 10 years from now.

 

[Jintor]

FFVIII transition cutscenes wonderfully. Pity about the sprite-based characters on top of it.

 

[Naph]

Morrowind

 

[Pesmerga]

Crysis

 

[highlander]

Operation flashpoint i remember going HOLY MOTHER****ING SHIT @ the soldier's faces and the way their jaw's moved.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

Crysis

Ooh, low blow!

 

[Viperidae]

I remember Flashback way back in 1992 on MS-DOS and me and my mates were like holy s**t!

Two years ago I discovered I had Flashback on my Amiga and had a 'how the **** did they do that?' moment when I watched the intro.

EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyd99ucRJIg&feature=related

Hellz yeah.

DOUBLE EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUoJBerFDsA

Most of those have aged well. /nostalgia

 

[Moto]

You know what game still looks amazing and is really fun?

Donkey Kong Country

 

[Gorgon]

KingPin, one of the best criminal games.

I believe KingPin2 is in the making ???

 

[Kadayi]

The more sophisticated media becomes the more discerning and desensitized to it we become over time. It's the same with special effects in films. One of the first big CGI effects in a film was the water tentacle in The Abyss and that scene pretty much blew peoples minds, but now you look at it and it's so blatantly CG it doesn't impress so much.

 

[Saturos]

I was just playing through The Gamecube Resident Evil remake not long ago and wow. :O That game still amazes me. I've saved at a certain point when I played though long ago just before the laboratory area and I've killed all the monsters, just so I can tour through that awesome mansion from time to time. God, If I was a billionaire, I'd so build a place like that. :E

Anyhoo, I don't think The RE remake is gonna age ripely anytime soon. That's for sure. If only they can make FPSs look as good as those pre-rendered GC RE camera shots one day. :upstare:

The original RE on the other hand. Bleh! I can still remember being amazed by the original PS version back when it came out in '97 though.

 

[Cavalry]

Tokyo Xtreme Racer

 

[CyberPitz]

That RX-7 looks horrible..

I'd still have sex with it.

 

[Wanted Bob]

Morrowind

Totally. I look back now and realize without the mods, character models and textures look HORRIBLE.

However, one N64 game I thought aged well was Kirby 64. Sure, its cartoonish but I think it still looks pretty nice.

 

[Dalamari]

Splinter Cell:

Then

Now

 

[highlander]

Black and White. Thought it looked like sex. Yeah, not so much now.

 

[Vegeta897]

Half-Life not only looked real, but felt so real that I had dreams about talking with the scientists. Having NPCs in a game look at me and talk to me was like holy shit.