Old games you recall that had great graphics at the time

[brianmanahan]

While not graphics per say the look was cool at the time and the size of the game levels was mind boggling at the time. Plus you could fall & swim!

that was awesome! i had a 2600 until i was 6 or 7, and had tried to find my way around that game a lot of times, but i never came close.

 

[Starbuck1975]

If we really want to turn on the wayback machine, there was Return to Zork, the old Sierra games like Black Cauldron and the original Space Hulk.

 

[jpiniero]

NASCAR 1994. Another good one.

Eh, Daytona looks way better than that. Looked up it's release date and says March 94.

 

[Commodus]

If we really want to turn on the wayback machine, there was Return to Zork, the old Sierra games like Black Cauldron and the original Space Hulk.

The Black Cauldron was the first game I played at home, so I was definitely impressed by that.

 

[MrSquished]

descent games were amazing

me and my buddy would use our modems to connect directly via phone, then play 1v1 or co-op in favorite levels (like descent 1 level 7)

or occasionally we would play hide-and-seek in huge levels haha

descent and warcraft used up so much of our time in the summers

The first descent I remember not only being amazing to look at, but kind of groundbreaking in gameplay style. I had a lot of fun playing that one.

 

[oslama]

Myst

 

[pmv]

Well, if we are really going back, there's Asylum (first '3d' graphic game I ever encountered, though a pretty tenuous meaning of '3d') and Midi-Maze (perhaps the first multiplayer LAN 3d death-match game? Admittedly I only ever played it once)

MIDI Maze - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Asylum (1981 video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Starbuck1975]

The Black Cauldron was the first game I played at home, so I was definitely impressed by that.

Watch a full video walkthrough, the puzzles were surprisingly clever and the environments made great use of color to overcome what graphics could not.

 

[Starbuck1975]

oh shoot, thief games were so good

"huh.... killer bears!"

I liked how the Thief games introduced the notion of lighting as a gaming element. One of my favorite things to do was extinguish flames and torches to further the stealth aspect of the game.

 

[mikeymikec]

'Walker' for the Amiga (1993) had pretty good graphics for its time (the thumbnail looks awful yet the video looks far better):

 

[TXHokie]

For me the big graphic jump was going from Wolf-3D to Doom, Battlefield 2 to BF2:Bad Company, CS to CS:GO.
But if we're talking old school, going from Space Invaders to Galaga was huge.

 

[Fritzo]

Interstate '76

That game needs to be remade ASAP. Awesome story, lots of fun...kind of like Mech Warrior with muscle cars and porn 'staches.

I mean...LOOK at this:

 

[JeepinEd]

Well, if we are really going back, there's Asylum (first '3d' graphic game I ever encountered, though a pretty tenuous meaning of '3d') and Midi-Maze (perhaps the first multiplayer LAN 3d death-match game? Admittedly I only ever played it once)

MIDI Maze - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Asylum (1981 video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ha! I worked at Hybrid Arts when we released MIDI Maze. We all wore the "Kill a happy face" pins. I was in charged of assembling their ADAP systems at the time. The good old days.

 

[Hans Gruber]

Test Drive by Accolade for the Commodore 64
Crysis and Far Cry original titles for PC
Baseball Stars for Neo Geo
Tecmo bowl for NES
Any of the Coleco Vision Arcade Perfect titles

 

[dasherHampton]

Another one that comes to mind: Tiger Woods 2003 for PS2. 2004 was a much better game but used basically the same graphics.

What those developers did on that hardware back then was truly amazing. PS2 deserves the title of best console ever, and its not close.

 

[Captante]

I had just started playing a Mech-Warrior knockoff game called Heavy Gear when I finally received my Canopus Pure 3D Voodoo 1 add-in card and installed it in my Dell Pentium Pro 200. (96mb's EDO RAM, a #9 Imagine-128 video card, Creative AWE-32 ISA audio AND a 28k ISA modem .... smokin!)

While pathetic by todays standards, back in 1997 it was mind=blown! (also budget=blown ... I paid over $3k for it with a 17 inch Trinitron monitor in 1996!)

 

[Papagayo]

Quake with 3DFX card was a game changer for me..

 

[ponyo]

I remember Links 386. I loved that game. Access Software made some groundbreaking games like Links and Under the Killing Moon. I remember their games had good sounds/music even using regular PC speaker without a sound card. This was when most PCs didn't have sound card and only made beep beep sound. What Access Software was able to do with regular PC speaker without a sound chip was amazing.

The game that really blew me away was Doom. I remember downloading the game in 1993 and marveling at the graphics. And playing on LAN with my dorm mates. It was the first network multiplayer game and we were just amazed when we saw other players on our screen.

Virtua Fighter 2 came out in 1994, and I remember just staring at that game at the student center because it was so gorgeous with mind-blowing 3d graphics and physics. I bought Sega Saturn because of that game and spent years trying to master all the characters. To this date, VF2 is still my favorite fighting game.

 

[Captante]

Virtua Fighter 2 came out in 1994, and I remember just staring at that game at the student center because it was so gorgeous with mind-blowing 3d graphics and physics. I bought Sega Saturn because of that game and spent years trying to master all the characters. To this date, VF2 is still my favorite fighting game.

Beating the entire game with the Drunken Warrior is still a dream of mine to this day!

I played this game in Disney Epcot pre-release on a huge HD projection screen with individual control "podiums". I was pretty much the only adult playing who was actually ABLE TO WIN and Sega had people there checking in for reactions/opinions. (plus I got a bunch of free plays)

I beat up on on one of the teenage Japanese staffers too much to his chagrin ... it was a LOT of fun!

 

[pmv]

Quake with 3DFX card was a game changer for me..

Heh - quite literally a 'game changer'!

 

[nakedfrog]

I played Quake II all the way up until the end before I managed to get my Intel i740 set up correctly for it to get hardware acceleration

 

[ponyo]

Beating the entire game with the Drunken Warrior is still a dream of mine to this day!

I played this game in Disney Epcot pre-release on a huge HD projection screen with individual control "podiums". I was pretty much the only adult playing who was actually ABLE TO WIN and Sega had people there checking in for reactions/opinions. (plus I got a bunch of free plays)

I beat up on on one of the teenage Japanese staffers too much to his chagrin ... it was a LOT of fun!

I beat the game with every character. My characters were Kage, Sarah, and Jeffrey. I joined Japan Club in college just to play VF2 with all the Japanese exchange students. Some of them were really good. They practically lived at the arcade playing this game in the summer when they went back home to Japan.

 

[Captante]

I beat the game with every character. My characters were Kage, Sarah, and Jeffrey. I joined Japan Club in college just to play VF2 with all the Japanese exchange students. Some of them were really good. They practically lived at the arcade playing this game in the summer when they went back home to Japan.

Jeffrey was the only character I was able to finish with for whatever reason... with Drunken Warrior I could never get past this one girls flying kick!

Sounds like you were more into it than me! I only played a few times after that Disney trip. (in 1993 I believe)

 

[nakedfrog]

Oh man, did anyone else play Sega's "hologram" game, Time Traveler? It was a really cool effect. Gameplay was more or less like Dragon's Lair or Space Ace though (which were also mind-blowing next to Galaga and Pac-Man).

 

[local]

Consoles - Star Fox - The Super FX chip thing they used to give 3d acceleration to the SNES was just nuts. I also competed in a local tournament right after it came out and won a shirt. To this day it is the only game I can play from start to finish on the hardest mode without breaking a sweat, usually.

PC - I played way too many games to remember which ones really wowed me. Freespace, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Indianapolis 500, European Air War and so on. It seems like every six months something would be released that surpassed everything before it and I suppose that isn't far from the truth.