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Dated visuals you still think look amazing

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Baten Kaitos, especially, as you see above, Parnasse. I know static background cheating, but well, the thread is about dated visuals you still think look amazing.

And it looks goddamn amazing.

Bonus

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I still love the world design for FFXII. It does look a bit shit on the PS2 but if you clean it up with an emulator there's some really nice artwork to be found and considering the scale of the areas the assets in particular can be pretty impressive at times. Can't find any good screens but I can't be the only one to emulate that and see what lies beneath the blur.
 
I've always thought Maken X on the Dreamcast looked great even after all of these years. Would love to see Atlus do a sequel at some point.
 
I have such a big soft spot for prerendered graphics. DKC games, Oddworld games, Age of Empires 2, REmake, PS1 FFs. They all look so good
 
Halo 2 still impresses me.

Golden Sun is charming as ever, and the combat looked amazing for a GBA game.

FFIX will be the most beautiful game I have ever played for all eternity. Best art style I have seen. It has a special place in my heart.


I also really like AoE and AoM.
 
the true test with any of these art styles is if a company would actively elect to make a game with that identical art style now or in the future.


obviously a lot of great examples here, but IMO there's some that I seriously question if they deserve to actually ever be mentioned in a conversation of timeless graphics/art styles.
 
I have a soft spot for the GameCube/PS2 era polygonal work that was done during that console generation. I still think it looks good, even if it is a bit blocky.
 
I keep posting the same Ridge Racer Type 4 gifs every time a similar thread pops up, man it just looks so fucking great to this day. It just has a timeless aesthetic.

Gameplay & control-wise I still feel that R4 was the weakest in the series, but presentation was fantastic all around, and the graphics that game produced were some of the best the PS1 ever made.

Vagrant Story also, wonderful.

I add to the conversation: Bushido Blade. Maybe dated-looking by today's standards but the wonderful environments just transported you into those life-or-death duels. It's a crime that Squeenix hasn't revisited this franchise yet.

Plug a VGA box into a Dreamcast, and what comes out is nothing short of amazing. What doesn't make any sense to me is how much of it doesn't feel dated at all. Ferrari F355 Challenge looked fantastic then and still does. Sonic Adventure 2 in motion is gorgeous. Both games reinforce just how much a bit of anti-aliasing and a constant 60fps frame rate can do for your presentation.

Even 10 years later I can't believe how good the Rockstar Table Tennis characters look in motion.
 
Silpheed (SEGA CD). Totally blew me away at the time. Still pretty cool to see ships disintegrate into chunky triangles.

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Unfortunately those backgrounds are just one huge FMV. The Sega CD wasn't rendering polygons or anything like that, you're just moving your ship on top of an FMV.

This game right here. Remember this released a few weeks after Star Fox did on SNES.

Silpheed is actually much older than Star Fox, from 1986 to be exact. However, the Sega CD remake did come out near Star Fox's date.
 
Wished these type of games were ported to tablets, some of the classics that would actually play well aren't on the market.

I'd be curious as to whether or not they're as difficult as I remember them back in the day. I couldn't beat those games for the life of me without looking up walkthroughs...
 
Definitely one of the best looking RPGs of the era.

Oh and check out this climactic cutscene from Lunar: Eternal Blue on the Sega CD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubrPmysYDDc

Looks like a pretty standard anime cutscene, doesn't it? Then you do a little research and find out that the cutscenes in Lunar:EB on the SCD aren't pre-recorded FMVs. Yes, the Genesis+SCD are actually animating that whole thing on-the-fly - it's the reason why the cutscenes in Lunar:EB are so clean compared to what you see in other Sega CD games.

Lots of Turbografx-CD/PC Engine CD games were doing that years before the Sega CD.
While it looks great, it's not something that requires power to do. The NES could have done that (with fewer colors obviously) if it had the storage space to hold huge sprites like that.

How you people get through life with such petty perturbations, I do not know.

If the shoe fits...
 
Ultima 8:Pagan still appeals a lot to me to this day. Sure there was a lot of grey rock areas, but the colourful areas are great. Beautifuly detailed graphics in my opinion.

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Also Blade Runner still oozes atmosphere from it's graphics. It really captures the mood from the film.

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Slap Happy Rhythm Busters (PSX)

I think it was the first time I saw cell shaded graphics. It's on the japanese PSN if anyone is interested.

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Thank you!

Slap Happy Rhythm Busters was the first thing I thought of with this topic but I couldn't find good pictures quickly.
 
I keep posting the same Ridge Racer Type 4 gifs every time a similar thread pops up, man it just looks so fucking great to this day. It just has a timeless aesthetic.

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R4 remains one of my most beloved games to play on the PS3. It's such a blast to plya even today.
 
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