Support NeoGAF

[Ithil]

In Ocarina of Time, if you stand sidewards on stairs, Link puts one of his feet up on the higher step. I was actually impressed, given most games at that time would just have the model stand straight with one leg floating above the ground.

Now such things are standard, of course.

 

[SpookyFries]

The year was 1991. I was approaching my 10th birthday, and rented a gem for the SNES, Hal's Hole in One Golf. I rode my bike home, slapped it into the console and jumped in with both feet. On the first hole I had a par putt, and I ran it in. As the ball approached the hole, the game flipped over to a cutscene of a ball rolling into a hole, and my life changed. It looked so lifelike, so real, I wasn't sure how video games could look much better than this.

Roughly a quarter century later, I believe that impression still holds up. Maybe not.

I was just listening to the OST for this game the other day. It's one of those games that I still remember vividly to this day for some reason.

Also my vote goes to the original FarCry. I remember being blown away by the graphics

Hot diggity damn!

 

[Accoun]

Ragdoll: The Thread? At least the early examples look HILARIOUS in hindsight, but it was hugely popular from the beginning.

 

[SpaceDrake]

Moving mouths when characters talked in Half-Life.

I feel like this one needs to be emphasized for younger readers. This was mind-bending in 2002, when Valve first started showing it off in a big way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdbhr2pZUgg

Like the video itself shows the difference between G-man in HL1 and HL2, but the real amazing part was the lip synching. It was utterly flawless-looking compared to previous attempts, and was an enormous leap forward for facial animation. In general the facial animation was great, but in the biz, what everyone flipped a shit over was the lip-sync, and how it could even work across languages.

It was even used as a selling point for Source, back when Valve was interested in licensing out Source as an engine ala Unreal and Quake. Stuff like this is why Vampire Bloodlines went Source instead of some other engine.

It doesn't look as impressive today because everyone and their mother's dog immediately researched their own version of the tech, but it was Valve who made it big and Valve who (as I recall) made the first truly impressive use of it.

Hell, Half-Life 2 in general is really good for this sort of thing. It's so hard now to appreciate just how big a deal HL2 was when it came out.

 

[nOoblet16]

The water in Outcast was mind blowing when the game was released. But it looks still nice.

The thing about Outcast was that game had extremely poor textures even by 1999 standards. It literally looks like the terrain lacks textures and is just full of coloured height maps.

Shenmue, Alien vs Predator, Quake 3 and Swat 3 came out the same year. Deus Ex came out in 2000 and looked dated even that year and yet it had better textures.

 

[specdot]

This is cheating fam. Yoshi's Island still looks amazing.

 

[Capra]

Ragdoll: The Thread? At least the early examples look HILARIOUS in hindsight, but it was hugely popular from the beginning.

Yep. The only thing that comes to mind immediately for me is firing a super-missile at a space pirate in Metroid Prime and watching them fly across the room. Or killing one on the edge of a platform and seeing them slump off onto the floor. It blew my mind back in the day and it's actually an example that still holds up well today.

 

[Koren]

Seamless transition between day and night during race in Burnin Rubber (GX4000/CPC circa 1990)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGABpnE9x7I

 

[lazygecko]

The thing about Outcast was that game had extremely poor textures even by 1999 standards. It literally looks like the terrain lacks textures and is just full of coloured height maps.

Shenmue, Alien vs Predator, Quake 3 and Swat 3 came out the same year. Deus Ex came out in 2000 and looked dated even that year and yet it had better textures.

It was only the terrain that was made out of voxels though. Character models, trees, buildings etc. were made out of polygons and looked fine or better than what you'd expect at the time fidelity-wise. What made the overall presentation stand out was the world felt more natural geometry-wise thanks to the voxel terrain. Typically large outdoor areas at the time made with standard polygons had to resort to very flat and jagged lowpoly terrain, and that was a problem texture mapping could not fix.

 

[mdzapeer]

Far Cry 1 had this. Obviously carried over into Crysis.

Crysis had true god rays on the ultra and high settings, Far cry 1 only had a type of bloom around the sun.

 

[Branduil]

This:

Not just the scope, but the real-time day/night cycle, dynamic camera, etc.

OoT also had lots of impressive particle and lighting effects for the time.

The early MGS 2 screenshots were stunning for their "realistic lighting":

 

[Maroon Gamer]

The destruction in Red Faction blew me away back in the time.

 

[shouamabane]

Most of the time, good then = good now.

 

[Phreakuency]

[The open world of Oblivion:

It has aged rather poorly...but back then it was my first open-world game ever and I thought it was the most amazing and beautiful thing ever.

To this day, no moment in gaming has wowed me like exiting the sewer and seeing the open world.

It also happened to be running on my first ever HD tv (720p CRT - just gorgeous).

Unless something VR blows me away, I don't see this moment ever being topped.

 

[Novocaine]

Also my vote goes to the original FarCry. I remember being blown away by the graphics

Hot diggity damn!

I remember watching a tech demo of the level editor and being totally blown away at how easy it was to manipulate the in game world. In the same demo I remember I was also super impressed by them tossing a smoke grenade into a pile of guys, popping a thermal visor and killing them all.

Also the water was fucking amazing.

 

[Ithil]

In Jet Force Gemini on the N64, when you're on the ice planet, you can see your character's breath. Hadn't seen that in a game before.

 

[SomTervo]

Crysis had true god rays on the ultra and high settings, Far cry 1 only had a type of bloom around the sun.

Aha, think I misread the poster - thought they were talking about rays of light through bullet holes.

edit: re-reading their post it's really, really obvious

 

[Mental Atrophy]

Perfect Dark Zero's bumpmapping

That's parallax mapping that's impressing you.

 

[Mr. Crow]

The early MGS 2 screenshots were stunning for their "realistic lighting":

I remember I saw this screenshot and thought that soldier is a character with supernatural powers who wants to electrify Solid Snake! lol

 

[banefirelord]

To this day, no moment in gaming has wowed me like exiting the sewer and seeing the open world.

It also happened to be running on my first ever HD tv (720p CRT - just gorgeous).

Unless something VR blows me away, I don't see this moment ever being topped.

Amen. I got into gaming pretty late and this was my first big open world game. Played the opening on my friend's 50 inch HDTV and my jaw was hanging open. It was hands down the most pleasurable moment I've ever had in gaming.

 

[-griffy-]

I always thought EverQuest spell casting/animations looked amazing growing up.

Oh this is a good one. I remember thinking it must be super impressive because every time it happened my crappy PC slowed to a crawl.

 

[Freeman]

I remember looking at the combine models in HL² and I just couldn't believe. They still look good tho. Mattresses floating(any of the game physics implementations really) and the paint buckets where also mind blowing(I wasn't used to shaders).

Little Big Adventure 2. The rain looked so good at the time for me, I couldn't believe one game could have all of that(was my first CD game).

GTA3 reflections when it was raining and just the overall scale.

GTA4 physics.

REmake. Looked real at the time.

GT5. Looked real at the time.

 

[d00d3n]

Also my vote goes to the original FarCry. I remember being blown away by the graphics

Hot diggity damn!

Doesn't look that bad in screenshots imo. The limitations of Far Cry graphics are more apparent in motion than in screenshots (more specifically, the distant parts of the world are very static, which doesn't translate to screenshots but looks bad in video form).

 

[eloxx]

Everything in MDK2. Was so impressed by this game. It still looks good actually.

Also Messiah. Loved the looks of that game.

 

[dancrane212]

"It's like a cutscene but I'm still playing!"

 

[Daingurse]

Sonic Adventure character models. "THEY HAVE A POLYGON MOUTH !!!!". It sold me on buying a Jp Dreamcast.

This is hilariously bad looking now, but I remember when it was impressive too haha.

 

[SigSwat551]

That water that let me thirsty every time I play.

These separate fingers.

This. The water was mindblowing at the time.

 

[Denzar]

The destruction in Red Faction blew me away back in the time.

It still blows me away, especially considering the hardware it first launched on. You could dig tunnels for chrissakes. I remember just carving out a tunnel along the ridge from base to base on the warlords map. Or I dug a giant hole in the ground and all bots got trapped in it.

 

[Daingurse]

It still blows me away, especially considering the hardware it first launched on. You could dig tunnels for chrissakes. I remember just carving out a tunnel along the ridge from base to base on the warlords map. Or I dug a giant hole in the ground and all bots got trapped in it.

Me and brother loved making tunnels with rocket launchers. I honestly thought Geo-Mod level destruction would become standard in games going forward back in the day, it's actually pretty disappointing that nothing like that occurred. Which makes Red Faction still very impressive to me to this day.

 

[ASIS]

The water in Super Mario Sunshine.

I thought about this, but then I realized that it still impresses me to this day, it looks so refreshing!

 

[Brerlappin]

Quake 3 was one of the first games to have (near) perfect circles. Seems so mundane now, but seeing a circle that actually looked like a circle and not an octagon was insane

 

[TheYanger]

The thing about Outcast was that game had extremely poor textures even by 1999 standards. It literally looks like the terrain lacks textures and is just full of coloured height maps.

Shenmue, Alien vs Predator, Quake 3 and Swat 3 came out the same year. Deus Ex came out in 2000 and looked dated even that year and yet it had better textures.

Outcast was Voxel based, wasn't it?

 

[sikkinixx]

To this day, no moment in gaming has wowed me like exiting the sewer and seeing the open world.

It also happened to be running on my first ever HD tv (720p CRT - just gorgeous).

Unless something VR blows me away, I don't see this moment ever being topped.

Man oblivion was so damn amazing. Ugly character models and all, it was so cool to get lost in.

 

[Chamber]

The lights and stadium being reflected off the helmets in Madden 2001. This game blew me away as a kid.

 

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

Another vote for Morrowind's water. Crazy good at the time.

 

[PeskyToaster]

Oblivion's sewer exit moment was magical and beautiful. It was like here's the world in all its glory, go have an adventure. It's the magic of Bethesda games captured in a single moment, the reason they are so popular.

 

[Jobbs]

This still looks really cool though

8 and 16 bit games aged without a problem; ps1 through ps3 gens aged terribly

 

[Zombine]

Honestly...still kind of awesome.

 

[Torokil]

Mario Sunshine water

Everything in Fallout 3 save for the character models

I'm amazed at how mediocre Shadowfall looks after just 3 years

 

[RobotMoses]

I remember the textures in Rune were super impressive. To this day, my dad will say that a game "doesn't look as good as Rune".

 

[Wray]

Colored Lighting in Quake 2. Blew my mind. Thank you 3dfx Voodoo 2 card.

 

[Ragnorok64]

Magus' Dark Matter attack in Chrono Trigger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbkEF139D4k#t=8m44s.

 

[Tahnit]

Asherons Call 2. At the time i have never seen graphics that good in any game ever. Especially the water effects.

its too bad the gameplay didnt live up to the graphics.

 

[Azoo]

Sonic Adventure had lots of tiny details and realistic textures that blew me away after only knowing the Genesis and N64. Nowadays I find it's less realistic textures and environments much more enjoyable to look at, but some shots (like this one) still have it's charms. The water splashing effect in particular is still pretty rad.

 

[derwalde]

The water in Morrowind on Pc blew my mind...

This so much.

 

[CrazyHorse]

The whole of DKC?

Still impressive considering the hardware.

Also many Sega AM games.

 

[deadscreensky]

Actually a fighting game would have to cut down on this image in all areas by significantly more than half, since a fighting game has to run at 99% locked 60fps and has to also have low rendering /input latency (Some post FX solutions are handled in such a way that they add latency, among other things)

Meanwhile other genres can get away with running at sub 30fps once the action gets started and having tons of latency due to their mechanics etc.

I love 60+fps myself, and what you say used to be standard, but I'm not convinced it actually matters anymore. Both Tekken and Street Fighter are leading the way with unresponsive controls, there's actually no reason they couldn't be running at 30fps. 30fps games exist which already have more responsive controls than Street Fighter 5 manages with its 133ms of input lag. Pretty sad.

I agree with 60fps as an ideal -- hell, let's go 120fps as standard now! -- but the bigger fighting game developers don't seem to particularly care about responsive controls. Namco could totally make Tekken 8 30fps and not lose out on any of their current 118ms 'responsiveness'.

Anyway, a lot of people posting stuff that still looks nice. Maybe not "impressive", but also not "now-unimpressive". Like that Dead or Alive 3 Japanese castle floor reflection still looks pretty damn good!

 

[pottuvoi]

Outcast was Voxel based, wasn't it?

Voxel polygon hybrid.

Tiled heightmap voxels with support for vertical textured voxels for walls and stairs.

Characters and items were textured and bumpmapped polygons.

http://francksauer.com/index.php/games/test/15-games/published-games/47

 

[Carnby]

The mountains in Doom. Or was it Doom 2?

Me too. "They look like photographs!!!"

 

[WordsintheWater]

The part in Max Payne 2 where you first shoot someone in the hospital. The way the body hit the shelf and all the boxes crumple on top of him in a dynamic way. I know we had ragdoll physics then, but this was on another level for me.

https://youtu.be/O9ulK0fJljU?t=6m23s