Best looking games of all time for when they came out

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-01 11:37am

What are your nominations for Top 10, Top 5, Top whatever games with the best graphics relative to other games at the time? Here are a few of mine, with links to pics of the more obscure ones.

Doom 3, Half-Life 2 - It's been 2 years now, and only in the last couple months have they been topped graphically (by Dead Rising). Oblivion had the amazing outdoors, but HL2 was graphically better in other respects.

Chronicles of Riddick - This one came out about 6 months or a year before Doom 3, and while the latter game definitely topped it, it was the first game to have the advanced models and lighting that we've come to associate with modern games and looked completely beyond anything else at the time.

Dragon's Lair - This game came out in 1983 and today's games still don't look quite as good. Of course, that's because it used FMV, but that was a damn impressive feat back then. FMV didn't really come to the consoles or PC until a decade later. It wasn't just the fact that it was FMV, the artists who drew and animated it were very talented. It looked almost Disney quality.

Bioforge - This one came out in 1995, and looked absolutely amazing with full 3D graphics. Nothing else even came close. It was a very linear game, but very fun and cinematic. The story was interesting, and it had features like your character appearing visibly damaged, and the ability to use anything as a weapon, most notably the way you can beat the first guy you meet to death with his own severed arm.

Metal Gear Solid - Just when nobody thought the aging Playstation could contend with the newest PC games, along came the first MGS in 1998 and blew everything out of the water.

Donkey Kong Country - On the eve of the transition to the next-gen consoles (the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation), this game came out for the SNES and was just as graphically impressive as any of the new consoles' launch titles, if not more so, using pre-rendered 3D graphics.

Wing Commander 3 - Boasting a full movie's worth of well-done, well-acted FMV with people like Mark Hammil and Malcom McDowell, the game portion of WC3 also looked absolutely incredible, with full 3D graphics in 1994, including bubble shield effects upon each hit.

Spacewar - This game would have looked right at home on the Atari 2600 in 1977, but it was actually released in 1962, when most computers were still outputting to punch cards. This is sometimes credited as the first video game, but it is probably the fourth, behind 1958's Tennis for Two, 1952's oxo, and 1948's unnamed missile game.

What are your nominations for best graphics of all time, adjusted for inflation?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-10-01 11:43am

Final Fantasy 7. It looks a little dated nowadays graphics wise, but when it first came out the general opinion of FMV was that it mostly sucked. Until Squaresoft pulled out the stops and sunk a lot of work into making quality FMV cutscenes for FF7.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2006-10-01 11:50am

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Wing Commander 3 - Boasting a full movie's worth of well-done, well-acted FMV with people like Mark Hammil and Malcom McDowell, the game portion of WC3 also looked absolutely incredible, with full 3D graphics in 1994, including bubble shield effects upon each hit.

It always struck me as odd that they made a WC movie but didn't put Mark Hammil or Malcom McDowell or John Rhys-Davies or Biff Tannen (ok, the dude who played Biff Tannen, I mean) in it. Utterly absurd.

Sorry about the hijack, please carry on.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-10-01 12:28pm

God I miss Bioforge. I wish theyd' make those old classics Windows compatible.

Star-Blighter · Post by **Star-Blighter** » 2006-10-01 12:37pm

Homeworld sticks out for me because when looking at the previews I thought the graphics were rather lackluster at the time. After playing a demo of it I changed my mind considerably and found my favorite 3D RTS franchise even when knock-offs like ORB were trying to compete.

Never liked the Doom 3 engine for graphics, everything looks like clay to me.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-10-01 12:40pm

Homeworld 2 still looks great, but that may be because not many space games have competed with it.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-10-01 12:51pm

Star-Blighter wrote:Homeworld sticks out for me because when looking at the previews I thought the graphics were rather lackluster at the time. After playing a demo of it I changed my mind considerably and found my favorite 3D RTS franchise even when knock-offs like ORB were trying to compete.

Homeworld and Homeworld II were (and still are) very pretty. I think the 3-d combat aspect of the original game was more revolutionary than its graphics, but Homeworld II really refined Homeworld's graphics and the engine still makes for really awesome eye-candy (check out Warlords).

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-10-01 12:59pm

Unreal. The first one.

Back in the day, all it had to compete with was Quake. And Quake was all brown.

Unreal was gobsmackingly, insanely pretty, you spent half your time trying to collect your jaw and the other half wiping dribble off your keyboard.

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2006-10-01 01:50pm

The Particle effects and Scale/Explosions of the Freespace games (Mainly 2) were amazing for their time (1996, 1998).

The CGI movies of The Blizzard games are outstanding as well (Even WC2 for example, not to mention the 1997 Starcraft or Diablo 2)

DocHorror · Post by **DocHorror** » 2006-10-01 02:03pm

I always liked the Metal Gear games, they where the best things on the PS & always pushed the system to it limits.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2006-10-01 02:35pm

Goldeneye for the N64. A game that was ugly as heck by todays standard but then, it was frigging amazing visuals and a launch title as well.

UT pretty as heck if a crappy game for it's time

Deathstalker · Post by **Deathstalker** » 2006-10-01 02:55pm

The original Metroid for the NES. After coming off Atari games, Metroid was awesome> I liked it even more than Zelda.

Count Dooku · Post by **Count Dooku** » 2006-10-01 03:28pm

Nowadays, Gears of War looks pretty decent. Does anyone remember the original Doom for N64? I remember that being a pretty sweet game.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2006-10-01 03:55pm

Sonic the Hedgehog on Genesis

Street Fighter II on SNES

Mortal Kombat II on SNES

Soul Calibur on Dreamcast.

Soul Calibur II on Xbox.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-10-01 04:36pm

Wing Commander, FF6... oh, and Raptor: Call of the Shadows. It has better sprites than Starcraft, and came out in 1994.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2006-10-01 04:38pm

Descent: Freespace

At the time, fantastic. Nothing could compete.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-10-01 04:39pm

Hotfoot wrote:Descent: Freespace

At the time, fantastic. Nothing could compete.

I dunno. WC:P was about the same graphically. Slightly less... the main difference was the better models in Freespace, and the siiiiiize. Everyone gooogoo over the size.

I guess having really slow ships also helped for that. <3 FS.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2006-10-01 04:58pm

WC:P wasn't even close graphically. The WC:P demo and the FS demo were on my computer at the same time while I was deciding which to pick up, and FS was leagues ahead of WC:P. FS had better shields effects, weapons graphics, engine trails, explosions, and jump effects. The only good thing that could be said about WC:P's graphics is that they were still better than X-Wing Alliances.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-01 05:59pm

I'd add Virtua Fighter 2 in the arcades. Damn that looked good for its time. Especially since its contemporary was the comparatively blocky and ugly Tekken.

Davis 51 · Post by **Davis 51** » 2006-10-01 06:18pm

I remember wen the original Unreal came out, some PC game magazine had to include a footnote to let people know it wasn't pre-rendered.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2006-10-01 07:20pm

When I first saw Soul Calibur on my friend's Dreamcast it totally blew my fucking mind. I couldn't believe I was watching a console game. I thought he had to have a Cray in his closet or something.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-10-01 07:39pm

When the original Castle Wolfenstein 3D from Id Software came out, it was a real revelation. It may look primitive now, but you had to be there at the time it came out.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2006-10-01 07:45pm

I'd say each the first three Wing Commander games (not just WC3) were awesome in their day. Hell, I still enjoy playing them.

Shogoki · Post by **Shogoki** » 2006-10-01 07:48pm

When it comes to sheer contrast against everything else available at the time on every genere, the best looking game ever was probably Wolfestein 3d, it pretty much redifined what videogame graphics ment, since then everything has been a more gradual evolution.

The next real big contrast was probably brought by Farcry, which released before HL2 and Doom 3 yet keeps up with them real nice and looked like nothing else when it was released, plus the engine has patched a few times to increase graphic quality.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-01 07:48pm

Yes, Wolf 3D was awesome when that came out. I remember chattering excitedly about it with my classmates and scheming about how to get our hands on it without our parents finding out.

EDIT: But if Wolf 3D is to be mentioned when talking about graphics, its lesser known but better looking contemporary Ultima Underworld can't be ignored.

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Best looking games of all time for when they came out

Best looking games of all time for when they came out

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