/vr/ - Retro Games

not that i didnt think graphics could get beter, but the texture work looks ""photorealistic"" I seriously dont need games to look better than this.

Resident Evil remake, aged like fine wine.
Resident Evil Zero
Soul Edge
Soul Calibur
Soul Calibur 2
Silent Hill 3
Some parts and character models in Silent Hill 4
Resident Evil 4
Fear Effect 2
Clock tower 3
Dead or Alive 3
Dead or Alive Utlimate
Ninja Gaiden

Devil May Cry on the PS2. I rented the system for a weekend just for that game. I was blown away. That and Bouncer and NBA Street (I think).

>>8625112
adding to DoA Ultimate
The game's rich visuals spoiled me so much that 360 graphics didn't look that impressive at the time, didn't think it was worth switching to next gen yet.
https://youtu.be/d4p2b9SGfS8?t=153
https://youtu.be/q2sCHm0v6-w?t=20

>>8625007
First time I saw Virua Fighter at a store display. Also Sonic Adventure blew my fucking mind. Must of played that first stage on that DC demo disc a thousand times.

Amazing art direction goes a long way

Diablo, Quake 2, and Starcraft, those graphics wowed the fuck out of kid me.

>>8625129
god I hate that DOA has become a gay gatcha coomer game

>>8625040
>not that i didnt think graphics could get beter, but the texture work looks ""photorealistic"" I seriously dont need games to look better than this.

First time I played Max Payne was using my GeForce 256 with 32MB RAM, and a Pentium Celeron 566MHz CPU on Windows 98se. I had to upgrade my video drivers just to get the game to work. But yeah, I remember running the game almost exclusively at 800x600, though 1024x768 was still doable,and was blown away by the texture quality. The PC game itself, doesn't use a lot of effects. maybe the odd 'shine map' here and there, nothing really in the way of shader effects. The game supported a mixture of DX7 and DX8. DX7 for the menus, DX8 for the game. The PC version also came with modding tools, and a level editor, and I would make my own maps in the editor, and I remember extracting all the game textures, and the majority of them were .jpg with a few other formats. Like .pcx for transparencies. Lighting is generated through light map calculation in the map editor. But are saved like 256 colour gradient textures, even though can be pulled out of the editor and edited using a paint program.

Max Payne 2 for the PC came out two years later, and uses an updated version of the Max Payne 1 engine (MaxFX) with DX9 rendering, Havok physics engine, cinematic models, facial animations, etc. Though the home console port of Max Payne 2 uses the Renderware engine.

>>8625206
Always was "coomer" game, those tits saved the company., and DoAX games are unironically fun games, but I do hate the gacha stuff and removal of volleyball for the last doax game.

>>8625007
Defender of the Future was a great game. It doesn't get enough love in my opinion.

>>8625007
Far Cry 1

Though FEAR counts and that game still looks good to this day.

Soul Calibur 2
Resident Evil 4
Metal Gear Solid IV
Heavy Rain

>>8625007
My rich friend got a Wii when it came out. We all still had gamecubes and I still regularly played the N64.
People forget how hyped up that motion control was and it all made us look at the games as better than they actually were.
I remember thinking to myself those graphics were unparalleled and that motion controls would just be the standard from then on.

>>8625406
I recently saw some dude's tribute artwork to Dreamcast and wasn't particularly impressed before I saw Bomberman riding Ecco at the bottom. That's when his artwork got 10/10 for me, there couldn't be a combination more perfect, these two games are basically defined my Dreamcast experience as a kid

>>8625464
>IT'S OVER

It looks dated now, but I remember back then I couldn't tell the difference between an actual car picture and a gran turismo render (as in for magazines, etc). I couldn't imagine anything surpassing this

>>8625531
AH SHIT I FORGOT THE PIC

>>8625531
Not a video game but remember that Final Fantasy CGI movie that had nothing from actual FF series except title and some names (I guess)?

There was a point in my life when I seriously couldn't tell if the character are CGI or real people. I even remember it was advertised like a breakthrough achievement in graphics, ultra-realistic. Looking at it now... oh boy.

Also Valkyrie Profile

>>8625538
Yeah man I remember this too. It's crazy how far we've come in CGI. I also remember the tanks and hills (gungan battle) from Star Wars Episode 1 being amazingly realistic... looks like a very early ps3 game now.

>>8625538
Man you could totally tell it was real people, what the fuck are you smoking? I say the same thing about beowulf, but whet they do now on national news is pretty shocking and close. David Muir reads his lines and the CGI head moves on someone else.

>>8625007
technically i played it on the wii but same difference really. also metroid prime 1, though i played that one later on. still think both of these look really good honestly.

>>8625551
>David Muir reads his lines and the CGI head moves on someone else
what are you talking about schizo

>>8625551
> you could totally tell it was real people

But it's not real people...

>>8625539
>Valkyrie Profile

>>8625013
wonder where that guy is now

>>8625007
Crysis. I was right to think so.

>>8625551
I would like to know more about David Muir reading his lines while the CGI head moves on someone else.

>>8625614
Yeah pretty much this.

I thought that this was the best a 2D game could possibly look

>>8625007
The models in this game still look fantastic and mog the fuck out of other games released later like GTA San Andreas.

>>8625471
'em

>>8625635
>I thought that this was the best a 2D game could possibly look
and it is

>>8625007
RE4 on the gamecube for sure.

I hadn't played a ton of video games to be fair and was sheltered so had older consoles and pcs, but I remember being wowed by Oblivion and Mabinogi

>>8625007

>>8625678
>>8625678
San Andreas had to render vehicle physics, dozens of vehicles, dozens of pedestrians, and much much more in a huge sandbox all at once with 32mb of ram and less raw power than a Gamecube has and still managed to look decent. What a fucking unstudied and garbage comparison.

>>8625040
It's a good sweet spot of graphics being just detailed enough to look good, without being visually noisy and distracting, and requiring increasingly large budgets and dev teams just to get things done. I would have been pretty happy for games to stagnate in this era forever.

>>8625007
Super Mario World at launch. Mario 64 at launch. Sonic Adventure and SoulCalibur on Dreamcast at launch. Luigi’s Mansion, Rogue Leader and Wave Race: Blue Storm on GameCube at launch.

>>8625007
Rogue Squadron 2 on the GCN. Turns out I was more or less right. Graphics have essentially not changed since the second half of the PS2/GCN/XBOX era. There is a larger difference between Halo CE and Halo 2 than there is between Halo 2 and Infinite.

>>8625678
>>8625873
Yeah, this is a fucking retarded comparison, anon. Seriously what the fuck?

>>8625886
You hear people these say "[insert compay] NEEDS to get new hardware out. Their current system is an embarrassment!", and I'm just thinking I've been pretty much satisfied with where hardware was for the past 15 years. I'm mostly just happy when I don't have to buy new shit.

>>8625910
I think we've kinda hit a wall in regards to graphics technology unless theres some major tech breakthroughs. The amount of extra money it costs to get even the most minor of graphical improvements has simply become unsustainable. To get appreciably better graphics at this point you'd need a PC or Console that was so expensive it simply wouldn't be affordable.

>>8625897
Nintoddler smashcels are seriously like this.

>>8625007
Half-Life 2's graphics and physics blew my mind as a teen.

>>8625873
Agree. The models and textures were never the greatest looking for their day (though I was pretty impressed by some of GTA3's visuals when it was new), but rather they were adequate, and made room for having a bunch of stuff in memory to create scenes, scenario, and detail.
Fidelity wasn't dramatically increased for Vice City, but they added lots of neat detail which wasn't in the previous game, and magnitudes more for San Andreas.

That trilogy of games was a good example of largely setting graphics aside so they could focus on building the world and gameplay instead (a mindset alien to Rockstar Games today).

>>8625678
Well done making those Soiny fanboy trannies reeee.

>Nothing will ever top this.

>>8626160
Environments looked good; those faces were always atrocious

>>8625112
The Gamecube RE games are so fucking beautiful to look at.

>>8625454
I had to wait almost a full year to get one, and was pretty underwhelmed. I'm left-handed, so I would point with my left hand, and control the nunchuck with my right hand. It was awkward. Games that controlled with the nunchuck were god-awful. Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess were unplayable because of it.

>>8626198
You could switch hands.

>>8626198
I don't get this. The Wii is the only console I can think of that has an ambidextrous controller

Actually, that's a point. I wonder if games that assign more control to the left hand of the controller are better for left handed people, which means left handed people would generally prefer high stick control games like platformers or shmups, vs high face button control games like fighters. Someone do a study.

>>8626198
this post makes little sense

>>8625614
the fact that the original looks so much better than the "remakes" is fucking hilarious
also its a fun game and the aliens are only like 10-15% of it
/vr/ can suck my big nanosuit cock

>>8626163
>grass popping in from 10 meters away

>>8626282
>also its a fun game

What's so fun about it? I beat it and it was a bugged boring slog. Tank missions sucked ass. Graphics are definitely nice though.

>>8626346
depends on how you play

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuHouiTQ8JgoS2b_5FUqdE3dLujacjnvs

Rogue leader rogue squadron II

>>8625613
died from cancer in 2013

>>8626346
why did you take the time to finish a bugged boring slog game, anon?, serious question

>>8626972
Yeah, I finished the story campaign, just to be sure I wouldn't miss some incredibly fun content or plot twist or whatever this game is praised for. Aside from few bugs when koreans were levitating in air and not-so-fun one when I couldn't progress because some attack chopper got stuck up in the sky there wasn't something interesting. It's like a B-movie. You'll either drop it in the middle or watch it till the end but only once.

>>8626972
Oh shit, i misread your question, it's "why"

Well, because I heard a lot about it but never played it. Then somebody gave me a key for a game and I decided to try it.

>>8625678
There's something really kino about low poly 3d with low res textures. It's a timeless beauty.

>>8625007
Final Fantasy VII
Gran Turismo
Oblivion

>>8625007
i don't know what i was thinking

To this day it's the only time I've ever been impressed by graphics

>>8625551
After watching the FX breakdowns on Girl with the dragon tattoo and Blade Runner 2049, i'd believe it. That clipping mic fuck up with joe last year only reinforces it.
>you could tell it was real people
idk back then if Final Fantasy Spirit Within could pass for that realistic, I remember the hair would give it away for me and something about Cid's face looked unrealistic. Also the movement would sometimes look too overdone. They did an amazing job with those Skyboxes, though, looked phenomenal.
Beowulf was pretty impressive, I can't believe they made a million dollar cgi model of angelina jolie only to cover it up in yellow. Wonder what they did with that cgi model, does it go in a hardrive vault or do they delete all that work? seems like a waste.

Has anyone played the beowulf game? is it any good? it's technically retro, nov 07

>>8627005
>VII
how!?

>>8626879
this still looks great

>>8627249
*yawn*

Never really, I always thought they would get to the level of movies. This was back when Shenmue was out.

>>8626018
>and gameplay instead (a mindset alien to Rockstar Games today
yeah, ever since they dropped the arcadey gameplay, their games are fucking boring now, even max payne 3 managed to be boring and there's not a lot to change in those games, but they found a way. R* games desperately wants to be a sim, but never goes all the way cause their games are too mainstream and has to appeal to every paste drinker, so it ends up with this half arcady, half realistic shit funnel with mind numbing gameplay, and hbo tier oscar bait writing fused with mcu/disney writing. it's such a weird fucking path they've taken from the fun and silly gta games.

>>8625007
UMK3. It looked just as realistic as a movie to me, considering I was watching movies in the same blurry CRT that I was using to play it.

>>8625454
How the hell is this possible when Xbox 360 came out a year earlier. Hell, Wii games don't even have better graphics than the 2001 Xbox.

>>8625536
That's amazing.

>>8625539
You thought we'd never get actual grass in a video game?

>>8625206
the fighting games are still the best fighting games on the market. people are just too embarrassed to play a game with panty shots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwn6h6vofOE
28:09

Halo 2. Especially cutscenes with the prophets like at the time I mentioned above

>>8627249
Why can you post this, but I can’t post cod 4?

>>8625454
>>8625614
>>8626160
>>8627249
>>8627686
>>8627696
Not retro.

>>8627676
>people are just too embarrassed to play a game with panty shots
This is not true, only the sponsors and journos care, the people playing them do not care.

>>8627708
crysis is technically retro if you go by /vr/ board rules

>>8627743
Fair enough, but I don’t really see how that’s the case since it came out in 2007. Halo 3 and Cod4 should be fair game, then.

>>8627708
you still believe 1990 was 9 years ago?

I was right

>>8627880
It feels like I lived there in another life

>played at the time of their release
What do I look like, a richfag?

>>8627892
what fucking disgusting filters are you using anon holy shit

>>8627892

>>8627892

>>8625790
goddamn i love this game. never has a movie game got me so hard before.

YOU WANNA LIVE GET A SHIV!

To me this was peak graphical fidelity

>>8625007
that's because you played on a crt in which case you were correct because the blur of the screen lowered the requirements for realism

>>8627892
Nice filter, fucko

Not gonna lie, each year's new Madden commercial during late 5th gen throughout the 6th gen felt like "we've reached peak graphics. How could they possibly top that?".

I distinctively remember playing GTA San Andreas for the first time and exclaiming "Wow, the graphics are so realistic!"

the Splinter Cells on the original Xbox (probably because of the lighting effects)

>>8630460
That actually looks very good.

>>8630439
I never heard that from anyone.

>>8625007
Gran Turismo 3
Final Fantasy X
Soul Reaver 2
Metal Gear Solid 2
Devil May Cry
GTAIII
Ico
Zone of the Enders

Damn it felt good to own a PS2 in 2001.

>>8630460
I miss clearly defined and actaully dark shadows like this

>>8625635
>shitty 3d prerenders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_u5B5R0qUM

>>8625678
Agreed with this one.
Even if maybe it's not the most impressive of the launch GC games (probably Rogue Leader is way more impressive) the sheer amount of stuff everywhere on Melee, all the different models, the colorful shit, the mix of cartoony and realistic textures. It blew my mind back then, and I already had a Dreamcast.

>>8625007
My first console was the N64, before that we had a Master System which we never really played and a Game Boy. So, everything on the N64 seemed just mindblowingly better than what little ganes id seen previously

That said, I remember playing Rogue Squadron 2 on gamecube in a games store and actually being stunned into silence for a while. It looked photo realistic. I remember thinking it looked as good or better than PS1 FMVs (FF7, etc) but more smooth less loading and actual in game. I remember on the back cover of RS2 it said "ACTUAL IN GAME SCREENS" for the avoidance of any doubt. Most games usually said (not actual in game footage) besides the photos on the back.

Soul Calibur 2 also blew me away (Gamecube version - ps2 version looks like a dreamcast game and xbox version, well, who cares .)

Metronid Prime also - shame about the terrible gameplay.

The Dreamcast was stunning as well, especially on my steady diet of N64 and PS1. It was like the future 21st century had arrived already.

The Game Boy Advance really impressed, the talk was how it was 32 bit I.e a PS1 in your hands. By that logic we were expecting a portable Ps2 by the time the Ps3 came out. And lo the PSP in 2005 - I remember being amazed at the PSPs visuals and movie playback ability (in DVD quality).

On that topic DVDs themselves blew me away too. I loved VHS but the picture quality was stunning on DVD and not having to rewind the tape all the time.

That whole period, c. 1998 to about 2005, had a lot of mind-blowing advances. Haven't really seen it since

I was also blown away by Perfect Dark on N64 which looked like a Dreamcast game. I especially liked the lighting effects (shoot a light and it goes out, darkeningthe area) which were also in DK64 and the blur effect, which was also in Zelda Majora. PD was stunning in lots of ways. The scope of that game was freaking huge. They really threw the kitchen sink at jt

>>8630439
No, you didn't.

Literally everyone accepted that graphics weren't its remit: it was so huge that it dipped a bit graphically and that was a tradeoff both developer and gamer were willing to make.

>>8625007
With Crazy Taxi I thought it was the best looking game, I thought that having anymore polygons would just be a waste. The way I saw it was you could have stylized cartoon graphics at 60 fps or gritty realistic bullshit at 20 to 30 fps. I noticed that other open games had cars with interiors but it halved the frame rate, the other cars in CT with no interiors were perfectly fine to me.

Daytona USA arcade
Virtua Fighter 3 arcade

>>8632423
GBA really wasn't like having a PS1 in your hands at all

>>8625579
Lots of GC exclusives still look good nowadays. Rogue Leader comes to mind. Factor 5 really knew how to get the best from the GC.

>>8627428
GTA is for arcade and wackiness.
>Jesus My Saviour! My Favorite Flavour!
Leave realism and seriousness to Mafia.

>>8630439
Nobody thought this, strange larp.

HL2 was the peak for me, I though the havok engine was amazing

>>8625536
Agreed. The first time I saw screenshots from one of the GT games (I can't remember if it was 3 or not), was the first time I can recall feeling nervous that I wasn't able to immediately recognize something as being computer-generated.
I thought it was a very ominous foreshadowing of future global disinformation campaigns, but luckily that's still a ways off.
Some damn fine looking games to come before then, though!

>>8632423
>The Game Boy Advance really impressed, the talk was how it was 32 bit I.e a PS1 in your hands.
Nope. Yeah, it had like three games with polygonal graphics, that ran at like 12 fps. And even then, mostly only the environments were polygonal, and the characters were just sprites.

>>8632603
>>8632957
Different poster, but I caught myself about to say it's closer to something like the 32X in power, but that thing has more juice also. Compare Doom running quite smoothly on the 32X with its original engine, while on the GBA, Doom 2 manages to at best run mostly decently with an engine custom made for the hardware.
I don't think there was any 32-bit home console from the 90s which wasn't a decent bit more powerful than the GBA.

I remember I was impressed by the GBA, however. There was a handheld with amazing pixel graphics and even ports of some of my favorite games, like Super Mario Bros. 2 (admittedly not the most amazing port in every aspect). Just had to find good spots around the house to play it in, so I could see the screen, but eventually the SP model remedied that. I was really amazed at how nicely compact that one was, and how with the lit screen I could get such a great look at the games in basically any lighting conditions.

>>8625464
>I recently saw some dude's tribute artwork to Dreamcast and wasn't particularly impressed before I saw Bomberman riding Ecco at the bottom. That's when his artwork got 10/10 for me, there couldn't be a combination more perfect, these two games are basically defined my Dreamcast experience as a kid
Uh, okay?

>>8633192
Idk I thought it was a nice anecdote anon

>>8625007
This was so impressive back in the day. Still remember renting it and my mom walking in and being mesmerized by it

This is stupid because it's not even based on a system's graphical capabilities but when we first got our gamecube and the smash intro played my brother and I were blown away. I also remember how real the REmake looked, it holds up to this day.

>>8625874
So much this. Now everything is soulless Unity assets bullshit. I'm just looking for everything from the mid 2000's now.

>>8625429
This

>>8625635
Yet it's the worst

For me, it was OoT. Even with the low framerate and low-res textures, it was all so well put together that the resulting atmosphere made up for it. Probably the thing that impressed me the most was how cinematic the cutscenes were despite being completely in-engine.

I did have a PC, of course, but it was shit and had some off-brand GPU, so I couldn't run anything much more advanced than Starcraft on it, and as such I didn't get to play any PC games that wowed me with their graphics until much later. Probably the first such title for me was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, mostly because I could run it at max settings on my 1.6 GHz Pentium 4 without it blowing up.

It's hard to find a good screenshot showing it off, but honestly MGS1 had some great lighting effects on the PS1. Each area had a different color shading to it, from bright blue to hazy green.

The only other thing I can think of that comes close to it is how The Matrix movie's set designers used green and blue lighting and set design to let you know whether a scene was taking place within the matrix or in the real world.

>>8626879
Mind blowing in 2001. It also ran at 60 fps.

>>8635228
>on a $4500 arcade board on steroids

>>8635228
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi1p5NRCvgM
Mind blowing in 1996, also running at 60 fps
(from AOU, February '96 - to put into perspective: Duke Nukem 3D was fresh out and Quake 1 still five months away. Saturn was 9 months out in the US and PS for 5.)
Model 3 was crazy powerful when it came out.

>>8635228

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTBeGAhk79I
Mind blowing in 1996, also running at 60 fps
(from AOU, February '96 - to put into perspective: Duke Nukem 3D was fresh out and Quake 1 still five months away. Saturn was 9 months out in the US and PS for 5.)
Model 3 was crazy powerful when it came out.

>>8635070
The E3 trailer for MGS with the hype theme music made me shit my infant pants back in the day. Fucking incredible.

>>8627249
I mean it's basically a playable tech demo so not surprising. A modern tech demo is basically photo realistic.

Yup.

>>8630291
DOOM 3 still looks great with the mod that just uncompresses the textures and allows modern resolution scaling

>>8630376
This. CRTs make everything look better. I remember thinking Super Mario Bros. 3 was photorealistic.

>>8635963
Wait, the textures were compressed even on the highest settings? I remember benchmarks even well after the game came out wouldn't even touch Ultra or whatever due to requiring a ton of vRAM.

>>8628023
>>8629547
finally used correctly

>>8625669
Fuck yeah serious Sam

>>8625007
>>8625040
>>8625429
>>8625579
>>8625678

I legitimately don't think that game models and textures need to have higher fidelity than this. Any more and you tip the balance toward visual excess and spend too little time actually making the game.

I mean, look at the best selling games of all time, the most popular of all time, and look at how many were expressly not graphical masterpieces. I mean shit, the best selling games of all time are tetris and minecraft. The most popular new game of the last few years was Undertale. Miyamoto talked about this 25 years ago when Mario 64 got mogged in sales by tamagotchi.
Graphics would have added nothing but a novelty to those games (as seen in things like Tetris Effect).
>>8625206
Itagaki knew that you had to have a balance of girls and gameplay and his work reflected this. Even women enjoyed playing DOA XBV games until it forced you to do gravure parts in 3 (aka when Itagaki left).

>>8626198
As a fellow southpaw, you really should have just switched hands

>>8626239
If he's like me then his right thumb probably can't work a joystick. I never played and dual stick games growing up and nowadays I suck at any game requiring precise use of the right stick. Guessing he is the same way.

>>8626243
I don't think it's because of input, because I do like platformers the most but I like fighters more than shmups

>>8630460
This. Especially CT; I remember the first 3 videos that leaked right before E3. It was such a shocking jump in graphic fidelity compared to SC1 and Pandora.

>>8625551
Die.

>>8627001
Is 6th gen considered low poly now?

For me it was Melee. It's not that graphically impressive but I remember thinking how it was insane that Mario looked perfectly like how he does on the art, unlike in games on the 64.

>>8626282
I liked the alien part. There is nothing more satisfying to me than seeing a big mean alien and then grabbing it, socking it in the face, and throwing it across the room.
Welcome to erf.
Whole game was fantastic.

Probably Silent Hill 3
HL2's tech demo also amazed me back then.

>>8637095
>I legitimately don't think that game models and textures need to have higher fidelity than this. Any more and you tip the balance toward visual excess and spend too little time actually making the game.
for me it would be Silent Hill 3 and FF12
something about highly detailed models that are still on 6th gen restrictions looks really fucking good.

>>8625886
>Graphics have essentially not changed since the second half of the PS2/GCN/XBOX era
That's not true at all, but they haven't made the games any better.
There have been diminishing returns, ofc.
Raytracing is the next thing, but it's going to be incorporated so slowly that it won't be a giant leap. And the effects it can produce in real time are already faked and baked reasonably well, with some (potentially big) exceptions.

>>8625007
When I saw this island for the first time, I really thought we had peaked.

>>8637538
This. Say what you will about it, but its art style was clean, consistent, and looked amazing in motion. Brawl was a big step down in this regard if you ask me - despite its added detail and higher polygon count, it looked muddy and messy, with desaturated colors and clashing styles everywhere.

>>8626282
that screenshot is from the remaster btw, not seeing anything wrong with it