The Video Game Critic

Early 3D titles on the PS1 and N64 that featured "realistic looking" graphics have aged like a carton of milk, but simple cartoon-y games still look great today.  On the N64 you have games like Mario, Star Fox, Banjo...they all look great even today.  The biggest problem with the N64 was the amount of "fog" that was neccessary to keep games running smoothly.

Games on the PS1 that featured cartoon-like graphics, Crash Bandicoot, Spryo, Medievil etc...) have held up quite nicely.  A few gems like Metal Gear Solid look great today too, but I still think the simple cartoon graphics have aged better.

Look at games like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Madden, Tenchu...they didn't age gracefully because gamers perceptions of what acceptable "realistic graphics" changed with the Dreamcast/PS2. 

The same thing is happening now with the PS3 and 360...what looked realistic on the PS2,Cube, Xbox looks sort of strange and ridiculous now.  Realistic graphics are quickly outdated in my honest opinion.  Look at the latest version of Fight Night...go back and play KnockOut Kings for the Gamecube...The cube game just looks like crap.  It looked great at the time, but it doesn't hold up, because gamers perception of realistic graphics changes as the technology changes.

There are exceptions to the rule and some realistic looking games will remain beautiful, but the more fantasy/artsy/cartoony stuff ends up staying fresher for longer periods of time.  Just my thoughts...though.

I actually remember a handful of polygonal games before Star Fox/Virtua Racer:

Faceball 2000 for the Gameboy was a polygonal FPS, and had a pretty cool deathmatch.  Hard Drivin' for the original gameboy was polygonal, as was the Genesis version.  I also remember quite a few flight simulators / flight combat games for the Genesis that were polygonal.  All of these were pretty choppy since they didn't have the extra chips that Star Fox and Virtua Racer had.

I guess Tengen had even developed NES versions of Battlezone and Hard Drivin', but they were never released.

There were quite a few old polygon games for the PC: Stunts was always a favorite. (Make your own tracks!)

I remember that these were so rare, that they were very cool in their time.

First, cartoony games ALWAYS age better than "realistic" ones. People look back at Odyssey2 sports games and laugh, thinking how people actually PLAYED them once. But KC MUNCHIKIN? That is simple but it looks as good as it HAS to! KCs Krazy Chase is even better. Yes, you could make the graphics better but to what end? It's already cute and charming. And Kaboom on the VCS-that is as good as it needs to be too, at 2K. If you filled in the blank wall with bricks, etc., it would ruin things! ...after all we find cartoons of the 1930's to still be entertaining!

Some mentioned the first 3-D games, but with non filled polygons. The first filled polygon game I can remember is the computer game DIMENSION X from 1982...and by 1984 I was playing several "star fox" like games on my C=>64. Can anyone go back further?

Whoever says that games from back then looked "horrible" is spoiled! Yes, they were "crude", but it's still very difficult and takes a lot of skill to model, rig, and (cringe) texture-paint those things.

Playing Star Wars Arcade on my 32x is still made of win.

ohhh ohh and Doom 32x we can't forget Doom 32x!

[QUOTE=Anayo]Whoever says that games from back then looked "horrible" is spoiled! Yes, they were "crude", but it's still very difficult and takes a lot of skill to model, rig, and (cringe) texture-paint those things.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, I am spoiled.  Spoiled by 2600 games like Pitfall 2, which looked much better than 90% of the first 3D generation.  Once you reach games like Bonk, well, at that point you have graphics better than about 99% of that generation.   By the Genesis and SNES I was way way way too spoiled to have ever settled for playing ugly mud. So yes, playing good games with good graphics did spoil me too much to play crap.

Hehe, I remember thinking Virtua Fighter looked horrible the first time I saw it as well, and couldn't for the life of me see why the game magazines were raving so much about how good it looked.