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[kenjigreat]

It's called the efficiency of a closed box system that nearly get's double the performance of PC equivalent hardware. It's been said time and time again by various developers that work on both PC and Console games.

Aka PC Optimization is mediocre.

 

[10k]

Metroid Prime is the point where graphics don't impress me anymore.

It was the best looking game ever for me and when I see some new games today, I just say well that's nice, but it's no Metroid Prime. It still looks better then some games today.

The game also fantastic.

Metroid Prime for its time was fantastic. The shine, textures, detail, environments, condensation on the visor, fog, etc. I was amazed that tiny purple cube was outputting those kinds of visuals.

But let's not pretend graphics haven't improved since then.

 

[saska]

for its kind ... uh ... all of them?

Every 3D game for me. I just don't understand the calculations.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

Whatever wizardry Rare did with Donkey Kong Country on the SNES. Even with the accompanying VHS that I'm sure I still have on how they made it, I'm pretty sure there are tiny people inside the cartridge making things work.

Yeah, that game really made me marvel SNES. The closest I saw something like that on Genesis was Doom Troopers: Mutant Chronicles.

 

[Breads]

Yeah it's amazing that they took the effort to distort the charcters/ background to simulate lens/ camera placement/ perspective effects. It did a ton to alleviate the stiffness 3d animation often has when simulating 2d design.

 

[Lebneney]

God of War: Ghost of Sparta

When paired with the Vita 1000 screen, I sometimes forget that it was a PSP game. Absolutely phenomenal.

 

[JNT]

Dreams coming up looks absolutely insaaane. The materials tech they've built is unlike anything ever done before. Not polygons or sprites or voxels but something entirely new. Watch this talk by one of the devs to see more.

Nice example.

 

[kess]

This is going back pretty far, but I've always wondered how on earth HAL managed to simulate so many layers of parallax on the NES during the final battle of Kirby's Adventure. Nothing on the system even touches this.

 

[Dame]

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater in the PS2. Still to this day. Just...how?

Lately ill say it has been "The Order 1886" for me.

(Almost) Every AAA exclusive from Sony starting at 2007 to now still baffles me. Kill zone and the order are just graphically insane.

 

[chaosblade]

Metroid Prime for its time was fantastic. The shine, textures, detail, environments, condensation on the visor, fog, etc. I was amazed that tiny purple cube was outputting those kinds of visuals.

But let's not pretend graphics haven't improved since then.

I think what he's getting at is that was the point of diminishing returns for him. Things have gotten better, but the improvement has been a lot more gradual.

I'm kind of in agreement, that generation was a huge leap from the PS1 and N64. There was still plenty of improvement left to be had, but the leap from the early, crude 3D to decent 3D was nearly as huge as the 2D -> 3D jump in the first place. Generations since then haven't really offered that.

 

[dragonzdogma]

SNES Mode 7 blew my mind as a kid, the first time I saw it. Can't remember which game, but I think it was ActRaiser.

This....my first experience was when you beat bowser and he flies towards the screen.Also castlevania 4 room that rotates and those giant chandeliers.

 

[LewieP]

I'm pretty sure Thumper works by remotely triggering a synaptic response similar to an acid trip.

 

[Dicer]

Many PC Engine shooters, for a system with one layer of parallax via hardware, they certainly pushed way past that with sprites all over the damn place and generally not a hint of slowdown or flicker...

Gate of thunder
Lords of Thunder
Coyroon
Air Zonk

Those 4 stick out as really decent sprite/scroll pushers, there are many more.

 

[TatteredHat]

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron.

 

[justsomeguy]

You've got to go way back.

Elite on the BBC Micro - 3d graphics in 32k of ram.

Exile on the same machine - a huge, procedurally generated world. Unbelievable for its time.

 

[pottuvoi]

You've got to go way back.

Elite on the BBC Micro - 3d graphics in 32k of ram.

Exile on the same machine - a huge, procedurally generated world. Unbelievable for its time.

Great choices.

I would add Elite 2 Frontier.
Quite incredible accomplishment
Lots of info.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqhP_e855C4

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

For its time, Donkey Kong Country. Blew me away back then. It looked "CG" and I couldn't comprehend how the SNES was doing it. Ditto Virtua Racing on Megadrive.

 

[orava]

Zarch/Virus was just just baffling back in the 80s/early 90s. It was one of the first 3D games and actually used 3D lighting effects like shadowing. It was first released as a exclusive graphics demo to expensive archimedes computer and later ported to amiga, atari st and pc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNXypBxNGMo

 

[dead_lighter]

The goddess at the end of WiLD trailer:

I really would like to know how they made it. The first time I saw her moving, it is so realistic that I fought it was a mix between CGI and a video shot.

So beautiful!

 

[justsomeguy]

Zarch/Virus was just just baffling back in the 80s/early 90s. It was one of the first 3D games and actually used 3D lighting effects like shadowing. It was first released as a exclusive graphics demo to expensive archimedes computer and later ported to amiga, atari st and pc.

Great choice - and made by david braben (mr Elite) too...

 

[Iriscomeback]

Xenoblade Chronicles X

How the hell did they do this on the WiiU?! The draw distance is insane.

 

[NinjaBoyLao]

I always have a fascination to amazing game running on limited hardwares so Animal Crossing Wild World is always been my "how did they pull this game off?" gamewise(not just graphically).

The sea animation(and how it touch the shore), the amount of expresion of almost a hundred character, almost a hundred Music(including KK slider live music and the radio versions) all fit into a 32 MB total file size is amazing

And Kirbys Epic Yarn still boggles me(on a technical level).

 

[Shuggananas]

Metroid prime and rogue leader on gamecube
Put anything to shame back then, that shit was SMOOTH

 

[Mr. Crow]

First minutes of God of War III. other sections of the game was amazing too, but first boss fight was something out of console's power!

 

[Zojirushi]

I was thinking The Order but then again you see the "how" right on your screen.

For me probably God of War 2 on PS2.

 

[mrklaw]

All the old, pre-polygonal racers used the same psudo-3d technique for the road. It's not sprite scaling for the road, but a raster effect. Only other cars and roadside objects use sprites.

http://www.extentofthejam.com/pseudo/

Thanks for posting this. I remember reading that from a previous thread. Also thank you to whoever originally discovered the technique and thank you for CRTs using raster scanning - without which we would not have had many amazing games, which relied on fucking about with it

 

[justsomeguy]

Just thinking... The demo scene on the amiga was something to behold when it comes to graphics...

 

[mrklaw]

Xbox version of Wreckless Yakuza made me ask that question. Had lots of particle effects, vehicle damage, realtime reflections, etc etc. The replays looked too good.

There's also the sequel which seems to improve on the tech they had with the previous game. I think they had tone mapping + hdr there amonh other effects on the xbox and it was 720p too.

Wreckless on Xbox looked like magic - I think a combination of the focus effects and lighting absolutely blew me away when I first played it. It honestly looked like nothing else on the machine at the time.

 

[nephilimdj]

Bullfrog console ports amazed me, powermonger with the 3d terrain

 

[Vintage]

Delta Force 2: Voxel-based terrain, all covered in grass, almost unlimited draw distance. That was really mindblowing at the time.

Ori and the blind forest: All the effects are so organic, natural, almost never feels like ordinary particle stuff you see in most games. And the cutscenes that run real-time, but look like animated movie.

GTA 5 - stained glass window: Couldn't find the image, but in Michael's house there's a stained glass window that reacts to light as it should: it illuminates not only the room, but also the character. If you move close to it, you can see different coloured shapes on yourself, but moving further the shapes start to blur, while eventually all blend into white colour. It's amazing how they managed to add this into a huge open world game while other linear games don't even consider doing it.

 

[Pantaghana]

For those interested in modern(ish) graphics rendering, there's this blog post about Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
It's a very detailed breakdown of what happens each and every frame.

 

[pupcoffee]

Why, exactly, is the frame rate so bad in Blight Town? Other big places works just fine so wtf is so demanding?

 

[Pantaghana]

Why, exactly, is the frame rate so bad in Blight Town? Other big places works just fine so wtf is happening?

From what I heard it's enemy pathing that's the problem, specifically the flying mosquitoes. So not really a graphics problem.

 

[Lord British]

Someone's probably said this, but Adventures of Batman & Robin for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.

I also wonder how they did the music.

 

[Pankratous]

Prince of Persia 2008.

First time I saw a game like that. And it still looks beautiful today and likely always will.

 

[Forerunner]

Battlefront, people were calling them bullshots and didn't believe it. Can't wait to see what DICE does for the next Battlefield.

 

[twobear]

The Last of Us didn't impress me as much as Uncharted 2 and 3. Those game running on PS3 is completely insane imo.

 

[Lord British]

Oh, Uncharted 2, yeah. That village.

 

[El_Chino]

Crysis 3 on last-gen

 

[StrawberryJam]

Last of us on PS3.

Still don't know how they pulled off those visuals on that hardware.

First post got it.

 

[Shuggananas]

Why, exactly, is the frame rate so bad in Blight Town? Other big places works just fine so wtf is so demanding?

From what I heard it's enemy pathing that's the problem, specifically the flying mosquitoes. So not really a graphics problem.

Draw distance is pretty insane and the area is HUGE, not surprising it shits the bed that much

 

[maverick40]

The Uncharted 4 story trailer.

Christ

 

[TissueBox]

Only game that made me reel back then and reel back now with equal levels of spat-out water is, forever and always, Silent Hill 3 for the PS2.

Seriously. It's a piece of work, that one. Team Silent weren't just wizards -- they were got-damn architects.

 

[orava]

The Uncharted 4 story trailer.

Christ

In "how it was done" perspective, i don't really find this or most other new games difficult to understand at all. It's just iteration from earlier graphics heavy games. Higher quality assets, image post-processing, motion capture etc.

 

[Mdk7]

Recently, Unravel.
It looked real, at times.

 

[Graphics Horse]

All the old, pre-polygonal racers used the same psudo-3d technique for the road. It's not sprite scaling for the road, but a raster effect. Only other cars and roadside objects use sprites.

http://www.extentofthejam.com/pseudo/

Yep. (good page that, not seen it for a while).
If you want to see sprite based road, you have to look at Powerdrift or, not quite as obvious, Radmobile.

 

[EdLin]

Final Fantasy 12. How Square managed to do that on a PS2....

 

[Rudimental]

 

[Grudy]

I don't think the OP was asking about how some games managed to produce good graphics quality on limited hardware.

 

[darkwing-buck]

Lots of good posts in this thread, my vote goes to Killzone Mercenary. The graphics in that game were INSANE for a handheld title.

Mercenary is the bottom picture.