Hmmm, let’s take this all the way back to the beginning (just like Buffy Season 7)…
Pong (Arcade)
Starship Atari (Arcade)
Atlantis (Imagic, Atari 2600)
Space Duel (Arcade)
Tac Scan (Arcade)
Basketball (Atari 800)
Sinistar (Arcade)
Star Raiders (Atari 800)
Way Out (Atari 800)
Necromancer (Atari 800)
Sentinel (Atari 800)
Rescue at Fractalus (Atari 800)
BallBlazer (Atari 800)
Dimension X (Atari 800)
Sublogic Flight Simulator (Atari 800)
Sundog (Atari ST)
Dungeon Master (Atari ST)
StarGlider II (Atari ST)
Hard Drivin’ (Arcade)
STUN Runner (Arcade) sidenote that Atari Lynx version kicked ass as well
StarFox (SNES)
CyberMorph (Atari Jaguar)
Doom (PC/Jaguar)
TIE Fighter (PC)
Battle Arena TohShinden (PS1)
Warhawk (PS1)
Quake (PC)
Soul Calibur (Dreamcast)
Quake 3 (PC)
Halo (XBox)
Doom 3 (PC)
The first game that really blew me away graphically was LucasArts’ BattleHawks 1942. That one was one of those quantum leaps that games have occasionally made; it sure made an impression on me. I remember visiting friends in Boston over Thanksgiving 1988 (Actually, Doug Whatley and his then-wife. He was a programmer for AOL at the time and later to work for Microprose and ABC Sports Interactive before founding Breakaway Games), going to a software store with them, seeing on the demo machine and being absolutely floored. I think we all were a bit stunned.
I was still at AOL at the time and the only IBM-PC I had access to was in my office. I bought the game on the spot anyway and stayed late at work to play it for about three months.
It was two years, until Wing Cmmander came out in 1990, before I was again that impressed. That’s when I broke down and bought my own PC. Well, that and to play SVGA Air Warrior on GEnie.
Probably “Prince of Persia” was the first game that had graphics that blew me away from the opening shot. It was an adventure cartoon brought to life, full of swashbuckling and smooth animation. The runs, the jumps, the swordfights. It helped that it was an amazing game.
Troy
Games that impressed my graphically over the years (generally in chronological order):
-
lots of early arcade games, relative to anything that had been seen previously (Galaxian; Defender - most Williams games, actually);
-
early consoles: the Atari 5200 had some impressive arcade adaptations, but it wasn’t until the very late 90s that console games surpassed the quality of graphics in arcade games;
-
early computers - they weren’t better than arcade games, but they showed worlds that had never been depicted: Star Raiders; every Ultima, especially 4-5;
-
a bunch of early Amiga/ST games, especially Dungeon Master, Populous, Battlehawks 1942 (good one, Jessica!);
-
PC - it wasn’t until about 91-92 that it surpassed the Amiga (90 Wing Commander, maybe), but games that impressed me a lot graphically:
-
Ultima 7 - the Black Gate. Its graphics held up, or were better than, any featured in a subsequent RPG for over 5 years. Incredible.
-
the animations (only) in Ultima 8;
-
Wing Commander 3 (the space engine, not the FMV, although that was impressive in its own way). Maybe more than any other game.
-
Ultima Underworld
-
DOOM
-
Quake and Tomb Raider – polygonal graphics made a huge, huge difference.
-
QuakeGL
-
Unreal
-
Myth and Total Annihilation, for their 3D terrain;
-
Quake 2
-
Wing Commander Prophecy;
-
Half Life;
-
Independence War;
-
FreeSpace 2
-
Combat Flight Sim 2
-
Quake 3 (and the many Quake 3 engine games, like Elite Force and MOH)
-
Age of Kings;
-
Morrowind.
I’m in agreement with a lot of the games mentioned in this thread, but one game as yet unmentioned that had a special influence on me is NFL Challenge.
When that game came out in 1985, I was doing my gaming on a C-64 and I had a Tandy 1000 so I could write at home using WordPerfect. When I saw those Xs and Os moving around the screen, I finally had to bite on my first DOS game. NFL Challenge had steep systeme requirements for its day: 512K RAM. I bought a 640K “Zuckerboard” for my Tandy just so I could run the game.
Maybe a subject for a separate thread would be best game packaging, because NFL Challenge set a standard in that regard: The bookshelf slipcase, the plastic disk case with the NFL Logo, the sprial bound playbooks. All these years I’ve been hoping for a coach-mode football game to equal NFL Challenge, but it just aint’ gonna happen.
