What was the first game you saw that really impressed you visually?

Mine was Alone in the Dark.

http://www.fresh99.com/images/videogametoilets/Alone_In_The_Dark_Toilet.jpg

probably quake 1

Spectre VR on an LC575

http://static.flickr.com/40/97423539_795392fcdf_m.jpg


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(computer_game)

last edited by maxe at 07:12:19 26/Feb/08

mechwarrior (the first one... with ega graphics) 1989
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/5098/96764690900lz5.th.gif

edit/add: either that or a cg video, "beyond the mind's eye". (1991)
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/9303/modmindsiux2.th.jpg

last edited by Fish at 03:31:59 26/Feb/08

added: screenies

last edited by Fish at 23:25:26 26/Feb/08

the marble madness on the omega2000

The 7th Guest

First graphics that made me just stop what I was doing and watch were:

1. seeing the demo of Doom running on the big screen at Games r Us on the mall,

2. seeing a Voodoo 1 powered Turok at a QGL lan (I went and bought a card the next day)

duke 3d

Defender of the Crown. Seeing that opening scene with the words sparkling. Wow. The game delivered too. It was movie-esque. And had nudity.

We should include screenshots! I will update my post :P

ultima underworld 2

Turok

One of the Test drives, that had full colour and you could drive anywhere in it

SUPER FLASHBACK EDIT:

actually Another World, the frenchy game, i remember that being miles in front of anything else i had played (graphically)

http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpagesscreens/929020.asp

yer, should mention the first time i fired up q2 on my old voodoo1, that was pretty fricken sweet also


last edited by Spook at 08:01:25 26/Feb/08

When i was playing quake2 ctf with [GZI] and one of the dudes gave me his old Voodoo. I think the guy was Tarp or Trip or Trooper or something. THANKS BUDDY!

They were all ashamed of me because i was playing in software mode :)

Another world, that was a damn impressive game wasn't it! I think it was only like a couple of meg! (or possibly only 1.44 MB disk!)

Immediately, Green Beret sticks out in mind. At the time it had a killer improvement in gfx quality!

All in all probably Doom though, just from the immersive effect. It was something else!

Dragons Lair back in the 80's

http://www.members.optushome.com.au/gpahl/lair.jpg

That game Incoming that came with 4mb Voodoo 1 cards I think?

Pretty awesome :D You were just a random turret chilling about beating waves of attacks.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/video/viper-v770/incoming.jpg

Counter-Strike.... it was more the realism than the 'graphics'.. and yes I'd played spectre and quake before that...

Flashback, such ownage. Loved the story line, gameplay and the graphics. OOO JEERrr

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/Emulators/images/md_flashback.gif

wolf3d, then myst.

2. seeing a Voodoo 1 powered Turok at a QGL lan (I went and bought a card the next day)

I did the same thing when I saw Quake being played on a Voodoo1 card at A3.

Wolf3d

Yeah myst was pretty sweet too

Most impressive though was Quake one when I got my voodoo one

To be honest, all of those first generation CD-ROM games were pretty graphics heavy - 7th Guest, Dragons Lair, Return to Zork, Mechwarrior 2, Wing Commander 3, Kings Quest 5/6... And yet all except Mech2 were 2D and didn't require acceleration.

Quake 3 was certainly a huge turning point in terms of the speed you can render that quality of graphics though.

I think we're all forgetting Donkey Kong Country though, and the huge noise that made as far as 'good graphics' went.

http://home.columbus.rr.com/robertnotbob/emoticon/animated pong game.gif

Time Commando (1996), blew me away.




last edited by Tremble at 09:57:05 26/Feb/08

Unforeseen Consequences in Half Life, when you get warped through Xen and back. it was stunning.

For me it was Pong. As soon as I saw the detail in that paddle and square ball sliding across the screen so smoothly without dropping a frame I new the gaming industry would be booming in years to come.

http://www.pro-web31.com/jarg/fig/pong.png

The Dragon's Lair that Reverend Evil is referring to is the arcade version (or at least the screen shot is). I remember that game and also a game called Badlands (the western style game with similar graphics to Dragon's Lair - can't find screenshots anywhere but I am sure that's what it was called) at Grundy's at Surfer's Paradise.
I discovered (via some smart alecky little brat) that you could use ten cent pieces instead of the tokens and boy did I go to town. Running all over the joint testing machines for their ten-cent-ability.

Good times.

The Dragon's Lair that Reverend Evil is referring to is the arcade version (or at least the screen shot is).

Hm, it was definitely released on PC as well - I got it bundled with the ReelMagic card (a 1st gen MPEG Hardware accelerator/decoder card). I think it was also available for the 3DO.

gotta be sonic the hedgehog for sega, back in 1992 or so.. i was mesmerised

Time Commando (1996), blew me away.

Hahaha, f*** that game rocked.

First game I bought as a kid, saved up my $80 when I was 10.

Go through weird time stages, bash s*** up.

good graphics hmm.. cosmo cos graphics wise it kicked the s*** out of the early commander keens. I also remember some starwars rouge game where you had a jet fighter and had to steer it through a canyon.. so good.


omg kings quest *memories come rushing back*

*edit*
just found this

http://www.agdinteractive.com/ you can download kings quest 1 and 2 if you want for free :)



last edited by JakeG at 10:26:27 26/Feb/08

last edited by JakeG at 10:26:36 26/Feb/08

Hard to say, everytime I think of a game and relive the memory I then remember another before that, and before that and before that.

glquake for me.

Probably earliest recollection where I thought the graphics looked awesome was on dune2.

Here's the intro to Badlands for ya IncrEdible_vEgetable.



Space Ace

donkey kong country on snes, and banjo kazooie on n64

I think we need to settle this with image samples and dates.

1984 - Boulder Dash (Commodorre 64)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/C64_Boulder_Dash.png

1986 - Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter (PC).
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/76/Spacequest1.gif

1992 - The 7th Guest (PC)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/T7Gcoffins.jpg

1993 - Dragons Lair (PC)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/Princess-daphne.jpg

1994 - Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/Donkey_Kong_Country_Shot_2.png

1996 - Quake (PC)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0f/Quakedemo.ogg/mid-Quakedemo.ogg.jpg

1998 - Soul Calibur (Dreamcast)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c6/Kilik_vs._Xianghua.JPG

1998 - Starsiege: Tribes (PC)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/Sshot0028.png

1999 - Quake 3 (PC)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/Quake_III_Arena_q3dm0.png

2001 - Tribes 2 (PC)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/Tribes2.jpg

2001 - Halo (XBox)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Halo.jpg

2004 - Far Cry (PC)
missing screenie

2007 - Crysis (PC)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0a/Crysis_Delta_Force_in_Sphere.jpg

probably syndicate. or doom was playing doom on the work computers 2 days ago. can't believe i remembered the cheats.

I think we need to settle this with image samples and dates.

You mean a single image and a single date, since the idea was:

"What was the first game you saw that really impressed you visually?"

Here's mine:

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~boldajis/images/guy.png

prince of persia

Street Rod. It was so much more advanced than the old digger/tapper/frogger/space invaders.

the first game i ever played... mario

ahaha monkey island roockedd

You can buy Dragon's Lair for Blu-ray/HD DVD now. Space Ace is coming in a few months. :)

My vote - probably Space Quest IV - twas the first VGA game I saw/played.

I've been an avid gamer since I first got the NES back around 1992, but other than the pre-rendered cinematics in games like Final Fantasy and the sort, I don't recall ever being really awe-struck by game graphics until the Gamecube/PS2/XBox generation.

I had that Incoming game mentioned earlier, which came with my Voodoo 2, and yeah, I thought it looked pretty cool, but I don't recall even batting an eyelid when Quake came out. Really, I think the first time I ever though "no f***ing way" was when Valve first unveiled HL2 at E3 one year, with a really really long playthrough. That left me in disbelief.

http://www.marky.com/3d/quake2/gl/QuakeII_2_gl.jpg


first time i saw the railgun fire i was like "HOLY CRAP that looked awesome"
specially that spiral mmmmm spiral


http://www.bluesnews.com/screenshots/q2/quake2-15.jpg

last edited by Spock at 16:38:19 26/Feb/08

First time I remember saying "holy s***, look at the graphics" was when Unreal 1 came out. Was the best looking game for awhile. Shame it ran bad on even the most hardcore system then

ahaha monkey island roockedd

So true true!
My uncle brought us back a 1x CD ROM drive and Monkey Island 1 on CD.
Played it through so many times!

Earliest recollection of video game graphics that really impressed me was probably Wonder Boy when it was on arcade in the 80's. As much as I was always a "Nintendo" head over "Sega" back in the day in the home console market, imo Sega ruled the arcade world for a long long time, don't know if thats still the case though, haven't set foot in an arcade in probably 10 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Boy_(video_game)

There were earlier ones but the title that staggered me the most would have been Resident Evil 1 on the original PSX - hired one out (haha) with some mates the first week they were available in AUS.
The realism in the graphics just blew me away at the time...

AQ2

http://www.20id.org/images/games/screen-aq2.jpg

the realism, man!

CS, 1.3 when i got a voodoo2 that could use openGL.

you were still using a voodoo 2 in cs 1.3?

do you mean ge-force 2?

Descent.
Great game. It came out March 1995. I used to play this online against Zephron, who sometimes still visits these forums. Duke 3D and Quake came out the year after that.

tribes, or shadow warrior

STICKY BOMB!!

wolf3d, rebel assault then cs

constructor - dunno what year but i played it windows 95 and it ran in dos.
http://www.svatopluk.com/constructor/oldwww/images/screenshots/ss1.jpg

resident evil - late 90's saw a screen shot in a ps game magazine, went to the video store hired out a ps1 and the game and didnt sleep for a whole weekend.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y171/jiruyan/ma1.jpg

Shadow Warrior rocked hardcore!

Many fun times with sticky bombs :)

haha grundys.. i remember me and a mate getting kicked out of there for zapping coin slots with electric lighter clickers, it actually worked once too..

first decent graphics was probably pole position on C64

AQ2

f***ing hell that was an awesome game

I'm not really sure I've ever been impressed by a game's graphics but since I started gaming by playing quake2 on LAN (yeah I'm a relatively newb gamer) with some s***ty software renderer and then moved up to a voodoo2 I'd say at the moment I saw how hardware accelerated graphics could look I was pretty amazed.

Even crysis was disappointing graphics wise, sure the rocks were all 3d looking and the water was pretty but trees looked like total jaggy s***, facial movements during speech were all weird and far from the ultra realistic nature they were hyped up to be. Maybe if I were using full dx10 graphics they'd look better but I doubt it.

Maybe if I were using full dx10 graphics they'd look better but I doubt it.

The DX10 mode and the config-modified DX9 look pretty much identical in Crysis.

All the DX10-only highest setting crap was actually bulls***. The only advantage was that the DX10 cards happened to perform better since they were a generation of silicon ahead.

aq2 was so gay.

'Asteroids' on our MicroBee.

I had the same game on the Atari 2600, but that doesn't count. It's not a real computer :P



last edited by koopz at 19:58:33 26/Feb/08

1986 - Defender of the Crown

i loved this game as a kid, right down the the silhouetted boobs

Flashback was pwn!

I also remember Full Throttle and The Dig having baller graphics back in the day.

I tried to install full throttle a few years back for nostalgic purposes and daaaaaamn it was pixelly bad. Back then a 15" screen was hardcore though.

Descent.

Holy s*** yes

Solaris was the game that had us first talking about 'great graphics' all the way back in 1986!

last edited by Hogfather at 20:18:03 26/Feb/08

Flashback, such ownage. Loved the story line, gameplay and the graphics. OOO JEERrr

That dude reminds me of McGyver :D

hmmm... seeing that Apple demonstration of the Geforce 3 rendering that Pixar flick in real time would be the next one.

I'm still bummed that I've never seen a game or anything even close to that looking that good on a GF3

Defender of the Crown

Gee, thats way PC days. I think I had that on the C64, or was it the Atari ST.
22 years ago means I dont remember. Was really good at the time.

Probably Master of Orion 1 or This Means War. There were a lot of games in the years before them but those two stood out for me as fun but serious graphics.

The intro to X-Wing (1993) convinced our family to buy a CD drive...or was it a Soundblaster Pro 2? I can't remember but we spent a fortune on it.



last edited by Antisane at 23:53:01 26/Feb/08

Return to Zork 1993. Not one of the earliest pc games I played, but certainly one of the most impressive (at the time anyway :D).

Rev knows where it's at
"Dragon's Lair"

I remember seeing it on "That's Incredible" and for a game put out in 1983 (that's right the 80s) it kicks the crap out of most of the other screenies I've seen in this thread for games made in the 90s.

I remember being so disappointed that more than 10 years later pc games were still ega or whatever and you had a game 10 years old which had better quality graphics.

descent +1 farkk would have never recollected that lol..

'Asteroids' on our MicroBee.

no way koopz!

my old man was a high school teacher and managed high school computers, so we grew up with microbees!!

(we had a microbee computer in a book, 32k powerhouse)

i used to program lame choose your own adventure style stories on mine

FLASHBACK..... hi 5 to toll this was the first game I thought of too!

http://www.hardwaretidende.dk/hard/artikelimages/15122002-23.jpg

followed by


Gran Turismo

http://www.emunova.net/img/tests/1152.jpg


And then Half-Life

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/6/65/256px-Halflife_ingame.jpg

I kept reloading the previous save whenever I got to blow away any of those black mesa special forces mofos it was so cool.

holy s*** antisane, x-wing. hell yea. great find on that intro!
ohhhhh the nostalgia is giving me wood

Guys?

http://imgplace.com/image_bin/5899/166e9898a691072d7bc928a87e3998ff.jpg.th.jpg


last edited by Two&Eight at 23:42:13 26/Feb/08

MYST - remember it looked sweet in a review in a Hyper mag. Never played it though.

1986 - Defender of the Crown

haha, was it 'g' you pressed in the forest to get unlimited gold?

Descent.

yeah f*** yeah, and descent 2.

Also KKND, Tomb raider 2, x-wing vs tie fighter, SWIV 3d,syndicate wars, MDK (muder death kill), f22 lightning 1 & 2, Turok 1 & 2, Mario 64, dungeon keeper 1, that FPS terminator game, apache vs havoc, Q3 and half life were also big ones for me. They all had different kinda graphics but at at some point made me go wow this looks good.

There were a few other games like mechwarrior ghost bears legacy, duke nukem 3d, FA-18 Hornet, Jedi Knight 2 and NOX that got me saying these graphics are awesome. Myst looked good but was a s*** game to play.

what about Powerslide by ratbag? I remember when that came out there was a huge stir on here... and dont forget Ignition (3rd person cartoonish racing game with the 3dfx patch) that was awesome I still have both installed actually.


wtf they were all sweet games why arnt games as fun as they used to be anymore...

They are just all on consoles now.

You OLD and JADED now, it takes more too impress.

Half life on a sweet ass spec computer and gran turismo replays. Oh and doom I guess but that was more just a holy s*** this is awesome fun feeling.

i remember being wowed by the look of dragons lair when it hit the arcades... but ya soon get over it coz it's just a series of animated cut-scenes.. especially after you've gone thru a few hundred 20c pieces :P

on the pc i rekn descent was the first game that really impressed with teh graphic engine... real 3d & great gameplay.

Half-life 1