What was the first game that impressed you in terms of graphics?

[Dhrizzle]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the Spectrum, I've never seen another game on that system handle colour so well.

[Sorshen]

Unreal Tournament or maybe Freelancer. Can't decide.

[Doomislav]

Wing Commander

[tankbug]

I think one of my earliest memories of mind blowing graphics was when I first saw the games of my neighbors Amiga 500. We only had an Atari 2600 at home at the time. But I don't remember the feeling though. The memory that I can still feel was when I went from software rendered, low resolution Quake:



To the hardware rendered, high resolution Unreal:



I watched that intro on a demo PC at a tech convention for like 30 minutes.


Long before that, I also remember being totally blown away by the VR games in the Lawnmover Man. They're pre-rendered demos made for the movie, of course, but I remember wanting that equipment so bad.

[dope_danny]

Oblivion on the xbox 360. Trees with leaves and branches instead of flat textures repeated on an axis to make a pop up tree! on a console!

What a time to be alive

[minkage]

Doom
Donkey Kong Country

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Metroid Prime

Honestly it still holds up today.

What impressed me the most about that game was the atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a knife

[Lillyth]

Crysis 3

[anaxie]

The step of a link yo the past and super mario world from nintendo.

Then Zelda OoT released

Then resident evil started coming out

Then morrowind set the new standard

Then Oblivion came out

Now its kinda samey because modders make older games look better then the next big game all the time now

[Termak]

Ultima Underworld, real 3D baby

[HumbleDuck]

Doom, no other game impressed me ( interns of graphics) like that since.

[Arrashi]

Gotta go with boring answer - morrowind.

[Aurimas]

Crysis.

Too bad I really disliked crysis 2, because that video a few posts up about Crysis 3 looks amazing. I didn't even know it existed. Maybe I'll look into it; I'm sure it's cheap now.

[cuafpr]

Stirke commander

[Leadsop]

Link to the Past. You could hear the rain falling down, then you step outside and it was like "holy shit!"

This.

Also FFVII. While it's not my favorite FF game by far (FFVI is GOAT), the whole opening cinematic coupled with the score was a total game-changer when I booted that up for the first time. Got my PSX and FFVII my freshman year of high school, so it was obviously a total 'wow' moment.

[Beazy]

Snake rattle and roll on the NES. I could not fucking believe I could play in a 3-D environment at the time. I played the ever living shit out of that game and still have the original cart in my closet.

[zlygork]

Warcraft 3, first real 3D game I played I think

[xindralol]

for PC it was ultima 9: ascension

I played it so much even though it was running at like 3 fps (or less) on my 56mb ram laptop (64 mb with 8mb shared w/ gpu).

Later it was Far Cry (1). The vegetation was absolutely incredible.

[Chemii]

Mostly before this for me it was just 2D games with the odd 3D feature but this was around the time I thought it was starting to get immersive. When the bear attacked or the first time the dogs attacked on resident evil.

The water and the swimming motion for Tomb Raider was amazing to me at the time.

[I Push Buttons]

Oblivion

Walking out of that sewer for the first time in 2006.

A++

[Magistrate]

Unreal Tournament(1999)

Second this. I think the next time I really noticed graphics after that was Oblivion, which gave me chills. Of course, it didn't age well. Realistic graphics rarely do.

If we're talking awe from stylization, I would say Symphony of the Night as the earliest "amaze" moment for me.

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Oblivion

Walking out of that sewer for the first time in 2006.

A++

I know right?! it was like blinding and overwhelming at the same time :P