Older games that aged well. (strictly talking about graphics)

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michiehoward

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Baldurs Gate, Jade Empire, KOTOR. Thought these are aging well.
Always and will always love SMW for snes, so colorful.
 

SeeIn2D

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Ando85 said:
I noticed for example, to this day I really love the style of the Fire Emblem titles on GBA. A lot of these 16 bit games still look great. I do enjoy Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, yet I think the 3D polygonal characters look horrible compared to those in Fire Emblem and Fire Emblem Sacred Stones.
I'll have to agree with this. Partially because Fire Emblem 7 was my favorite handheld game of all time so I can't possibly bad mouth it in any way. But yeah the art style in those games was fantastic. I always loved it. Call of Duty 2 I feel has also aged quite well. That game came out in 2005 and you could probably make it look like CoD4 with a simple texture pack. The gameboy advanced Pokemon games have also aged pretty well.
 

skywolfblue

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Zerazar said:
World of Warcraft has aged pretty well in my opinion. The slightly cartoony design works really well even today, without limiting the ability to make "cool" or "epic" looking things.
Not sure if it's cheating though, since it has gotten a few graphics upgrade since release, I just don't know where and how much. I think it's just a few spell effects and water.
World of Warcraft is kinda the perfect poster-child of how stylized cartoony graphics last better then realistic stuff. That game still looks awesome, when virtually every other game from back then looks like complete poop.

Jacob.pederson said:
Homeworld 2 is a wonderful example of graphics aging perfectly. The game is around 8 years old and still looks like it was released yesterday. . .

this video (in engine footage starting at 4:00)
Aye, Homeworld2++

I love the ship designs in that game sooooo much!
 

dessertmonkeyjk

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Nov 5, 2010
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Nobody has mention this yet? Shame on you.

[http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8009/soulreaverwidescreendre.jpg]

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on the Dreamcast with improved textures. The widescreen was tweaked in there just for show really.
 

LordRoyal

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leet_x1337 said:
Half-Life 2 was made in 2004, and looks like it came out today.


Not really

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2011/10/battlefield_3_screenshots_10.jpg
 

Blue Musician

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Personally I find the Silent Hill series to have aged well. And yes, that includes SH1. Prefer them over the HD remake.
Also Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia The Sands of Time and Warrior Within.
 

TheXRatedDodo

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Blue Musician said:
Personally I find the Silent Hill series to have aged well. And yes, that includes SH1. Prefer them over the HD remake.
Also Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia The Sands of Time and Warrior Within.
I agree with you about the first Silent Hill game. I only played it for the first time last summer and the blocky graphics and tiny draw distance only serve to make the sense of terror even more palpable than what any of the other games in the series have managed, at least for me.

Also, Rayman 2 anybody? I love that game! Fantastic soundtrack too. However, let's all just pretend that versions with voice acting don't exist..
 

R0cklobster

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Also, in my opinion a lot of the N64 games have also aged well, or more specifically the nintendo games, just because it seems the art styles of a bunch of those games were cartoony in way that ages well... or something.
 

Blue Musician

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TheXRatedDodo said:
Blue Musician said:
Personally I find the Silent Hill series to have aged well. And yes, that includes SH1. Prefer them over the HD remake.
Also Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia The Sands of Time and Warrior Within.
I agree with you about the first Silent Hill game. I only played it for the first time last summer and the blocky graphics and tiny draw distance only serve to make the sense of terror even more palpable than what any of the other games in the series have managed, at least for me.
I found the second SH game to be more scary and atmospheric than the first one, but I simply can't deny the huge sense of atmosphere that the original has. To be able to convey that type of feelings is already an achievement of it's own.
 

TheXRatedDodo

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Blue Musician said:
TheXRatedDodo said:
Blue Musician said:
Personally I find the Silent Hill series to have aged well. And yes, that includes SH1. Prefer them over the HD remake.
Also Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia The Sands of Time and Warrior Within.
I agree with you about the first Silent Hill game. I only played it for the first time last summer and the blocky graphics and tiny draw distance only serve to make the sense of terror even more palpable than what any of the other games in the series have managed, at least for me.
I found the second SH game to be more scary and atmospheric than the first one, but I simply can't deny the huge sense of atmosphere that the original has. To be able to convey that type of feelings is already an achievement of it's own.
Usually I tend to find SH2 to convey a feeling of overwhelming melancholy to me more than anything else, but there was a period back in february of this year where I was going through some hardcore sleep madness and decided to play some SH2.
I got about 5 minutes in and freaked out so hard I was pacing around my living room and having tics for the next hour or so. SH1 tends to succeed more at scaring me in any state of clarity though. :)
 

tahrey

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Ones I've mentioned in another thread about pushing the boundaries - GT2, RR4 and Vagrant Story on the playstation - still look reasonably good despite their attempt to do "real" imagery on a machine that obviously can't do it.

After that, I could rattle off a whole pile of games which decided not to bother attempting that and just went down the stylistic route (including a scad of SNES titles), and that's something which never really ages so much, unless the system you're creating for is hugely limited (say, something like the VCS, Apple II or the Sinclair Spectrum, where it's almost impossible to make things look good unless you're the jammy bugger who got the Trapdoor gig; the C64, Amstrad CPC and EGA-mode PC (or CGA-on-composite-monitor) just about escape this fate with their better made games). You bend the machine's capabilities and limitations to the benefit of your art, rather than its detriment.

Heck, there was a Lets Play of 8-bit Sonic 1 I ran across on youtube recently and it took me a moment to realise... wait, this is the Game Gear version not Master System. You know you've styled your game art well when it's only 160x144 pixels in 32 colours, but still looks good 20 years later. Bold outlines without seeming TOO blocky, good contrast, lots of bright not-quite-primary colours, fluid motion, exaggerated characterisation, and obviously someone on the team with an eye for overall visual flair...

Oddly, one that comes to mind also is Monkey Island, so long as you don't mind PIXELS PIXELS PIXELS :D
 

Kemea

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Sep 25, 2009
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I find Legend of Legaia and Legend of Dragoon to have aged very well. I am usually a person who goes for the shiniest awesomest looking games, but those 2 are just so great :p
 

WulfTheSaxon

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Nov 15, 2011
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@munx13: I see your Battlefield 1942 and raise you the original Call of Duty.

P.S.
StarCraft hasn?t been mentioned yet? o_O
 

ResonanceGames

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Feb 25, 2011
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Graphically?

Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Far Cry (the mighty 2004 triumvirate!) Crysis (this will look modern for years to come) F.E.A.R., Halo, Mass Effect...there are a lot, actually. 2004-05 for the PC pretty much defined what this generation of graphics would like, everything since then has been more about refining than redefining -- except Crysis. That was our last genuine leap forward.