What games do you think were graphically well-ahead of their time?

All of you guys keep saying stuff that is not "graphically well ahead of their time" that the threads title states. There is a difference between something being good and something being ahead of it's time.

If something is well ahead of it's time it should be years before anything matches it.

HL2 had great graphis but they were not ahead of their time. Unreal Tournament 2004 and Doom 3 were already out before HL2 and had better overall graphics. I wouldn't call something "ahead of it's time" when it's not even the best at the time.

I don't even know if I would say HL2 as a game overall was ahead of it's time. HL2 is an amazing game, one of the best of all time. It did everything well, but it didn't do anything other games didn't do soon after or even before it was released.
You're right. That said, I think that it is fair to mention that the delay, because of the leak, was mainly what robbed Half LIfe 2 of its graphical crown. If Half Life 2 had released in its originally intended release window in Sept 2003 (along with the ATI 9600XT/9800XT Steam promotion) I believe that it would have held the graphical crown for at least 6 months until Far Cry came. I mean, the game got hacked and leaked basically a year before it's eventual release date and it was a pretty hardcore game, graphically speaking at the time of that leak.

The other problem is that this was an era of immense graphical improvement year on year (I mean the $200 GeForce 6600GT released in 2004 and was faster than the $500 Radeon 9800XT in 2003, when has something like that happened in the last 10 years?) As a result, if any PC game was graphically ahead of its time in that era then it wouldn't be holding that crown for more than a couple of months. I think in 2003, a PC game being graphically ahead of its time by 6 months could be considered akin to a game being 2-3 years ahead of its time in 2023.

That being said, regardless of the reason, I agree that Half Life 2 cannot be called graphically ahead of its time with its Q4 2004 release date. There is just no way that it could compete with a game like Doom 3 by that point in time.
 
All the usual suspects have been mentioned - the '90s and early 2000s id Software catalogue, Wing Commander, Ultima Underworld and System Shock 1 (which, as stated, inspired John Carmack to write faster but not better renderers), Unreal, Outcast, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, F.E.A.R., Crysis... even King's Quest 1 of all things for 1984, and that's just PC.

The N64 as a whole warrants further exploration, given its SGI-derived architecture. (Remember when Silicon Graphics workstations were the stuff of dreams that nobody could afford anything even remotely close to, at least until the N64 and those three SGI engineers splitting off to form 3dfx?)

However, I think I'm going to bend the graphics topic just a bit because I can think of two games that were well ahead of their time in boasting something that only started becoming mainstream in 2004, when Half-Life 2 pushed it to the forefront.

-Exile. No, NOT that PC/Mac series remade into Avernum, or that other Sega CD one, but the BBC Micro/Acorn Electron/C64/Amiga one, especially the Amiga versions.

It's not so much the graphics, but the fact that it's a 2D exploration game with an actual physics engine. Grenades bounce around accordingly, other objects like a chalice need to be moved around and filled with water (hopefully not spilling it along the way), other entities and enemies impart their kinetic energy upon collision (and good luck pushing a robot heavier than you out of the way, best to teleport around it!), and it's all in this sprawling environment that feels like a proto-Metroidvania.

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing it remade with appropriately modern controls. (QWPL for movement, UIJ for aiming your weapons and thrown items? What the hell?)

-Jurassic Park: Trespasser. Yeah, this one's a bit infamous on many levels owing to its rushed development, but hear me out for a moment.

Again, the physics engine - it's a bit janky by modern standards, but keep in mind that this was 1998, and physics-enabled props in Unreal Engine 1 and Dark Engine didn't even rotate convincingly mid-flight, always staying upright. This physics engine was cited as a direct inspiration for Half-Life 2; too bad it didn't amount to much beyond stacking puzzles and a few clever traps in Trespasser.

This also ties into an early form of inverse kinematics-based animation for all the dinosaurs you'll be encountering. They may walk around like they were drunk, but remember that skeletal animation was still a rarity back then, and still usually manually keyframed at that, not dynamic IK where a walk cycle meant actually putting a foot to the ground and pushing forth instead of looping a canned animation!

Visually, it's also quite open for a 1998 game, if absolutely hellish on the CPU and featuring noticeable pop-in with the trees turning from billboard 2D sprites to 3D models. I had to play on an AMD K6-2 350 back in the day, and 3DNow! optimizations be damned, it was practically a slideshow. It's not until fairly recently with the Trespasser ATX mod that it even properly utilizes a GPU, despite claiming to support Direct3D.

Also, the interface is fully diegetic, barring subtitles if enabled. Want to interact with something? Reach out and touch it with your arm! (This includes keypads!) Need to aim your gun? Line up those iron sights carefully! Don't know how much ammo is left? Anne calls it out verbally for semi-auto weapons, while estimating for full-auto ones. Need to know how healthy you are? Look down at that heart tattoo on your sizeable chest and see how red-filled it is! (Okay, that one's stretching it a bit, but pretty clever.) It's like it was made for VR despite not supporting the Forte VFX1 or any other VR headset of the day.

It's clear that Trespasser had the potential to be much, much better than it was had it not been rushed to coincide with The Lost World's release in theaters, and I'll argue to this very day that it did more for PC gaming in 1998 than Crysis did in 2007 just for its technical innovations literal years ahead of its time.

...you know what, there's one more game ahead of its time in many ways, albeit not with particular emphasis on physics, and I gotta mention it after that casual reference of the Dark Engine.

-Thief: The Dark Project. (And by extension, Thief II: The Metal Age.)

I wouldn't necessarily say that Thief had extraordinary graphics for 1998, but they were well-utilized given the technology available at the time, with particular emphasis on haunting atmosphere and dynamic lighting.

The environments were also quite sprawling - not a single loading screen in sight once the level's fully loaded, in very stark contrast to Deadly Shadows eating a heap of consolitis with split-up levels to fit on an original Xbox's 64 MB of RAM without any regard for PCs being capable of much more without thrashing the hard drive.

What sets Thief apart, aside from dynamic lighting being important to the gameplay (putting out torches with water arrows and turning off light switches to hide in the shadows), is the sound.

Being silent was just as important as remaining unseen, and this game made full use of DirectSound3D and A3D back in the day for when you really wanted to indulge in your new Sound Blaster Live! or Aureal Vortex card (ideally the latter with a good pair of headphones). You didn't have fancy X-ray vision with tagging enemies like modern games, or some fancy Soliton Radar System in the corner to tell you where all the guards were with their FOVs - you only had your own ears to wallhack with by listening to their footsteps and speech, and 3D mixing was paramount. (What, it only took Dolby literal decades with Atmos and the PlayStation five whole generations to accomplish what gaming PCs were doing with object-based audio in 1998!? If that's not ahead of its time, I don't know what is!)

But listening to footsteps went both ways, and if you could hear your own footsteps, so could they. Hopping across gaps in carpet, or better yet, using moss arrows to avoid a blatant footstep sound on noisy floors, was imperative to avoid being noticed.

Thief still has better sound design to this day than the vast majority of games released since, and thankfully, with those newdark patches retrofitting in OpenAL support for much better compatibility with modern systems, you don't have to set up an old 98SE gaming rig with an Aureal Vortex2 card to get the proper sonic benefits - a bit of OpenALSoft and HRTF tuning should do the trick, while also restoring the reverb and chorus room effects usually limited to hardware EAX/A3D.

I feel that it's important to highlight that there's more than visual splendor that makes a game cutting-edge for its time, and better sound and physics were great ways to do that back then. AI too, but I'm not sure of any games that were considered to have standout AI save for both Half-Life games and F.E.A.R.
 
Noteworthy games for me are:

  • DOOM (original) before doom i was playing Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM was on a completely new and never before seen level.
  • Need for Speed II SE with support for Glide. I was actively playing this game when I got my VooDoo 2 card. I didn't even know if had support for Glide until I launched the game and was completely blown away by the difference with and without a 3D accelerator.
  • Forsaken (1998) this game wasn't super popular but it too had support for Glide and looked amazing. Basically a FPS except you're in a little space ship. It was also the first game I played with support for LAN gaming.
  • Far Cry (original). This game was similar to discovering Glide with just how good it looked compared to anything that came before. A lot of this might have more to do with the superb art work than actual graphics. Either way, it looked amazing.
  • Crysis, speaks for itself really
  • Assassins Creed: Graphics were good but I put this on the list more for it's atmosphere. Building up the towns and seeing the population grow was pretty immersive for me
  • Cyberpunk 2077: If you have a system that can run this with the graphics cranked + ray tracing, and most importantly, and HDR monitor, it looks amazing. It also has a very immersive atmosphere like AC did.
 
Noteworthy games for me are:

  • DOOM (original) before doom i was playing Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM was on a completely new and never before seen level.
  • Need for Speed II SE with support for Glide. I was actively playing this game when I got my VooDoo 2 card. I didn't even know if had support for Glide until I launched the game and was completely blown away by the difference with and without a 3D accelerator.
  • Forsaken (1998) this game wasn't super popular but it too had support for Glide and looked amazing. Basically a FPS except you're in a little space ship. It was also the first game I played with support for LAN gaming.
  • Far Cry (original). This game was similar to discovering Glide with just how good it looked compared to anything that came before. A lot of this might have more to do with the superb art work than actual graphics. Either way, it looked amazing.
  • Crysis, speaks for itself really
  • Assassins Creed: Graphics were good but I put this on the list more for it's atmosphere. Building up the towns and seeing the population grow was pretty immersive for me
  • Cyberpunk 2077: If you have a system that can run this with the graphics cranked + ray tracing, and most importantly, and HDR monitor, it looks amazing. It also has a very immersive atmosphere like AC did.
The issue with Glide in NFS2 was that you couldn't use cockpit view.
 
Mario 64 for sure was eye opening. Seeing unreal for the first time was pretty mind blowing. Quake 3 looked damn good. I remember Far Cry looking really good too. Past that...nothing really stands out.
 
In terms of games I was around for:
PC:
Quake, Quake II, Quake III
Every Quake release was a quantum leap forward. Carmack was ahead of his time, every time. And the thing is he didn't just make "pretty" game engines, but highly optimized ones as well. The guy just saw the future. Still in saying that every successive Quake release brought all collective hardware to its knees. Even the [H] used Quake III for CPU based load testing some 5+ years after release.
Because a lot of my youth was spent playing PC games, there were a lot that I think are incredible for nostalgia reasons that were really just evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Sad to say now there isn't really anything that impresses me anymore.

NES:
Blaster Master - Honestly, how did they fit all of this game play into one cart? It had so many different modes. In a vehicle, out of a vehicle, overhead, collection of stuff. It definitely used every layer NES was capable of rendering.
Metal Storm - This is mostly because the visuals and mechanics seems so revolutionary for its time. It has a very unique "gravity reversing" mechanic that still has never been imitated by a sidescroller to this day (at least in this sort of player controlled implementation).

SNES:
Super Mario RPG - It made the SNES do "3D". Though that technically also happened with Starfox and going to Super 7. It was really just a clever trick, but it managed to look like an early PS1 game while being played on a 16-bit console.

N64:
Mario 64 - I can't really describe how much of an impact this game had on me. I couldn't even afford it at the time. My rich friend who had everything got an N64 at launch and I just wanted to go there and play it constantly. I was also a heavy PC game player and nothing wowed me like Mario 64. 3rd person, fully rotateable camera, huge deep move set, snappy, responsive, and quick. For a launch title, Nintendo sure knew how to pull out every console trick from the start. There was so much variation between worlds, so many enemy types. There has never been another platformer since that made as big a leap as Mario 64. And the graphics of Mario 64 are what sold the N64. PS and Saturn couldn't do what this game did. And every PC title that could come close visually (and technically be much higher resolution) weren't nearly as fluid.

PS1:
MGS - This and MGS2 below were just two titles that pushed their respective platforms to the max. Not sure who works on Kojima's game engines, but that guy knows hardware and engine design to an absurd degree. In a world of very fake feeling games, MGS felt really grounded in its world. And that's saying something considering that it's about Mecha with world ending capabilities, overly dramatic love plots, and enemies with psychic or otherworldly powers. The mashup was brilliant, and like I say, the gameplay felt serious and grounded that few games do. And it did this with graphics that scaled. From the close and minute to the super sized. Shadows, sounds, vision, all of it mattered. All of it was recognizable. And all of it was beautiful.

PS2:
MGS2 - Look at MGS1. The same but more-er.

EDIT: Adding info about whys.
I played Descent 1 and 2 before Quake. Fun times over a modem!
 
  • Forsaken (1998) this game wasn't super popular but it too had support for Glide and looked amazing. Basically a FPS except you're in a little space ship. It was also the first game I played with support for LAN gaming.

Forsaken was mind-blowingly awesome graphics-wise at the time! (Even the N64 version... Iguana really knew how to work that N64 hardware back in the day)


I'd say it was more like Descent though, rather than a traditional FPS.

Apparently, NightDive did a remaster?? :notworthy:

Holy crap, I'm all over that....
 
Forsaken was mind-blowingly awesome graphics-wise at the time! (Even the N64 version... Iguana really knew how to work that N64 hardware back in the day)


I'd say it was more like Descent though, rather than a traditional FPS.

Apparently, NightDive did a remaster?? :notworthy:

Holy crap, I'm all over that....

Yes you're right, it was more like descent. And i'll certainly be looking into that remaster!
 
Alas, no official HOTAS/joystick support so it's not "true Descent"..

Looks like this is the way: https://www.x360ce.com/
Hah, it's not "true Descent" until you're holding a Spacetec SpaceOrb 360 (or a similar 3Dconnexion device) in your hands! They even had to nerf the last SpaceWare version by removing the 180-flip command from Descent because it was considered a blatant cheat.

As for XInput emulation, X360CE was popular in years past, but Steam Input will also suffice for that (yes, even for non-Steam games) if you've already got Steam installed.

Also, if there's one thing I miss about late '90s games like Unreal (Tournament), Forsaken, Descent 3 and so forth, it's the blatant use of colorful dynamic lighting as energy projectiles turn corridors into wildly colored rave halls during firefights. We kinda lost that with the 7th-gen HD console era also making "Real Is Brown" a trendy art direction at the time, even for more blatantly sci-fi settings.
 
Also, if there's one thing I miss about late '90s games like Unreal (Tournament), Forsaken, Descent 3 and so forth, it's the blatant use of colorful dynamic lighting as energy projectiles turn corridors into wildly colored rave halls during firefights.

Glad I'm not the only one that feels that way.... (y)

Thanks the Steam Input heads-up, I'll have to check that out
 
There's always been a console vs PC divide on which is better. Even up to the Xbox 360, I remember seeing people talk about which one was more powerful. That's about the last console I remember that happening with, as that's about when computer graphics shot through the roof, and the consoles were just intermediate upgrades.

One of the games I played pre 3dfx was Indy Car Racing 2, which had Rendition support. This was in 1995. (I went through who knows how many 3D accelerator cards pre-3dfx).



Technology wise, this could do much of what the N64 could do. It had Anti-Aliasing, it had bilinear filtering. But you're talking a racing sim vs a platform game. Technology wise, which is better? A racing sim is going to be flatter than a platformer. What we're really comparing here is artistic style.

But computer wise, every few years there were revolutions.

Compare any Commodore 64 game to King's Quest.





King's Quest is a massive step up, not only in graphics, but also what was possible. There's a reason why this game is the pivotal moment computer games went to adventure games.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Compute!

https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue57/kings_quest.html



Things like Mario 64 imho were just evolutions in technology. But things like King's Quest, Wing Commander, Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, were revolutions in technology. With companies like Origin Systems, you knew you had to have the latest and greatest $3000+ computer (and that doesn't even include inflation) if you wanted to run their games at more than just a slideshow, and people bought them.

(And I'd agree that the original Super Mario Bros. was a revolution, but not Mario 64.)

two things

1. Aside from resolution and framerate, PC games weren't doing anything obviously better than N64. Goldeneye 64 looks as good and plays as well as the popular PC FPS games at the time. Now, there may be some technical details about texture filtering and whatnot, which was obscured by low resolution CRT TVs. But in general, N64 games looked relatively great.

2. Mario 64 was absolutely a revolution. It looked on par with anything at the time. And it completely invented (and nearly perfected) ways to do controls and moves in 3D games. And that control and that set of moves, is why it remains highly regarded, to this day. N64 was also the first real, effective use of an analog stick. And Nintendo used it to realize said controls and moves.
 
Mario 64 was absolutely a revolution. It looked on par with anything at the time. And it completely invented (and nearly perfected) ways to do controls and moves in 3D games. And that control and that set of moves, is why it remains highly regarded, to this day. N64 was also the first real, effective use of an analog stick. And Nintendo used it to realize said controls and moves.

True.
 
two things

1. Aside from resolution and framerate, PC games weren't doing anything obviously better than N64. Goldeneye 64 looks as good and plays as well as the popular PC FPS games at the time. Now, there may be some technical details about texture filtering and whatnot, which was obscured by low resolution CRT TVs. But in general, N64 games looked relatively great.

2. Mario 64 was absolutely a revolution. It looked on par with anything at the time. And it completely invented (and nearly perfected) ways to do controls and moves in 3D games. And that control and that set of moves, is why it remains highly regarded, to this day. N64 was also the first real, effective use of an analog stick. And Nintendo used it to realize said controls and moves.
1. I disagree. Quake II and Hexen II both look and play immensely better than Goldeneye 007, which all released around the same time period. Hell, even the first Quake which released a year earlier is better. Even though they were not true 3D, Build Engine games were also doing it better before Goldeneye released (Duke Nukem 3D, Blood). Goldeneye was a revolution for FPS games on consoles, not the genre as a whole, and it is fun to play despite its horrendous performance issues.
 
1. I disagree. Quake II and Hexen II both look and play immensely better than Goldeneye 007, which all released around the same time period. Hell, even the first Quake which released a year earlier is better. Even though they were not true 3D, Build Engine games were also doing it better before Goldeneye released (Duke Nukem 3D, Blood). Goldeneye was a revolution for FPS games on consoles, not the genre as a whole, and it is fun to play despite its horrendous performance issues.

2. No dispute
 
two things

1. Aside from resolution and framerate, PC games weren't doing anything obviously better than N64. Goldeneye 64 looks as good and plays as well as the popular PC FPS games at the time. Now, there may be some technical details about texture filtering and whatnot, which was obscured by low resolution CRT TVs. But in general, N64 games looked relatively great.

2. Mario 64 was absolutely a revolution. It looked on par with anything at the time. And it completely invented (and nearly perfected) ways to do controls and moves in 3D games. And that control and that set of moves, is why it remains highly regarded, to this day. N64 was also the first real, effective use of an analog stick. And Nintendo used it to realize said controls and moves.
As far as #2, I brought that up already, and gave it credit for its camera and controls. But this thread is games graphically ahead of their time, and Mario 64 was not.

Another person in the thread already mentioned how most games listed here aren't ahead of their time, rather they were representative of their time. And that's Mario 64. Now I would disagree with them that all the games listed here weren't like that, as this was the mindset for the games I chose.

I also gave a usenet thread of what people were thinking at the time Mario 64 was released, and you can't even get clear consensus then of whether or not Mario 64 had revolutionary graphics, or was just graphically overrated abusing low res TVs, and overshadowed by PCs.

But something like Dragon's Lair? No one at the time said it looked awful from a technical standpoint. Because graphically, it was better than everything else. And technology wouldn't catch up for almost a decade before that was possible without LaserDisc.

Too many people are viewing it as "What was graphically impressive to me", not what was graphically revolutionary or ahead of its time.

(And yes, graphically ahead of its time games tend to be quite dull and age terribly, as most of the focus tends to be on the graphics).
 
I thought the first Serious Sam games were impressive when I first played them. Large levels. Lots of enemies on screen. Impressive at the time effects, imo.
 
As far as #2, I brought that up already, and gave it credit for its camera and controls. But this thread is games graphically ahead of their time, and Mario 64 was not.

Another person in the thread already mentioned how most games listed here aren't ahead of their time, rather they were representative of their time. And that's Mario 64. Now I would disagree with them that all the games listed here weren't like that, as this was the mindset for the games I chose.

I also gave a usenet thread of what people were thinking at the time Mario 64 was released, and you can't even get clear consensus then of whether or not Mario 64 had revolutionary graphics, or was just graphically overrated abusing low res TVs, and overshadowed by PCs.

But something like Dragon's Lair? No one at the time said it looked awful from a technical standpoint. Because graphically, it was better than everything else. And technology wouldn't catch up for almost a decade before that was possible without LaserDisc.

Too many people are viewing it as "What was graphically impressive to me", not what was graphically revolutionary or ahead of its time.

(And yes, graphically ahead of its time games tend to be quite dull and age terribly, as most of the focus tends to be on the graphics).
To be fair, he said it looked "on par" with anything at the time, which I took to say that the graphics were not that special. The PlayStation was already doing full 3D rendering better than the N64 at the time, in my opinion. The amount of textureless surfaces in SM64 is really telling.
 
As far as #2, I brought that up already, and gave it credit for its camera and controls. But this thread is games graphically ahead of their time, and Mario 64 was not.

Another person in the thread already mentioned how most games listed here aren't ahead of their time, rather they were representative of their time. And that's Mario 64. Now I would disagree with them that all the games listed here weren't like that, as this was the mindset for the games I chose.

I also gave a usenet thread of what people were thinking at the time Mario 64 was released, and you can't even get clear consensus then of whether or not Mario 64 had revolutionary graphics, or was just graphically overrated abusing low res TVs, and overshadowed by PCs.

But something like Dragon's Lair? No one at the time said it looked awful from a technical standpoint. Because graphically, it was better than everything else. And technology wouldn't catch up for almost a decade before that was possible without LaserDisc.

Too many people are viewing it as "What was graphically impressive to me", not what was graphically revolutionary or ahead of its time.

(And yes, graphically ahead of its time games tend to be quite dull and age terribly, as most of the focus tends to be on the graphics).

You blaspheme sir..

god-wills-it.gif
 
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