The Fading Awe of Aging Graphics

[Bad Jim]

I have been gaming for over 25 years and I can honestly say that I have never cared more about framerate and resolution than gameplay. Can you imagine Nintendo Power talking about the fuckin' framerate and resolution of the upcoming Super Mario 3 in the late 80's?

For technical reasons, the framerate of NES games was pretty much always as high as your television allowed, while the resolution was half what your tv could do. If there was significant variation in resolution or framerate I imagine Nintendo Power would comment on it. The Amiga, which did have significant variations in framerates, did have game reviewers commenting on framerates sometimes.

Framerate does affect gameplay, because you cannot have responsive controls if it takes a long time for your input to be reflected on the screen. Resolution also has some effect on gameplay, because it affects whether you can see distant objects in 3D, and whether small objects in 2D are readily identified.

It might be more noticeable on PC because it's a lot easier to have a resolution or framerate that is nowhere near good enough, while console games run at a set resolution, and are designed so that the framerate will at least be tolerable. If you tried installing Quake on a 486 you'll know that you can't always ignore a low framerate.

 

[Amir Kondori]

I still remember how awesome I thought Morrowind looked when I played it for the first time. While it has been far surpassed I still remember that feeling and I am still impressed with the graphics in the context of the year it released.

 

[OpticalJunction]

Skyrim blew me away back in 2011 and it still impresses to this day. In fact it looks better than fallout 4