60 replies to this topic

[DracIsBack]

One of the things I do like about popular systems is that programmers stick with them for a long period of time and different "generations" of games appear. As the system matures, programmers start finding out tricks of the trade that make you go, "wow - I didn't know that was even possible".

What are some games that made you go, "wow - I didn't know they could pull that off on this system" when you first saw the game in action?

Some of my pics:

Atari 2600:

Solaris, California Games, Space Shuttle. These games were all way beyond COMBAT et al from early days of the 2600.

NES:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game

Sega Master System:

Mortal Kombat 2. This was supposed to be way beyond what the SMS was capable of.

Sega Genesis:

Toy Story: OK - the Genny was only supposedly capable of 64 onscreen colours. Along comes Disney with 128 onscreen colours, texture mapping and graphics that blew away anything else on the Genesis. It even managed to negate (in my eyes) a lot of the leap forward that Donkey Kong Country had generated in 16-bit graphics.

Vector Man: Compare this with Altered Beast and this was another leap forward.

Super NES

Donkey Kong Country: Way, way, way beyond what had been seen on other 16-bit systems up to that point in time, whether on SNES or Genesis. The graphics were good enough to probably scare the hell out of Atari and 3DO.

Killer Instinct: Also a nice graphical leap forward, complete with 512 onscreen colours.

What were your "holy crap - how did they do that?" games?

[Ferris]

Ballblazer on the 5200 and 7800. Easilly blew my mind. I would get that thing fired up on my 7800 right when 3DO and PlayStation were just hitting their stride... it impressed everybody in the room.. they had no idea the game was 11 years old.

[Tempest]

Rescue on Fractalus for the 5200. Fractal generated terrain. Nuff said...

Tempest

[Bratwurst]

Recca for the NES. The number of sprites on screen at once just gets insane.

[A2600]

NINJA COMMANDO (8-Bit)

[Ferris]

Tempest said:

Rescue on Fractalus for the 5200.  Fractal generated terrain. Nuff said...

Tempest

I was about to site that one too. Rescue on Fractalus was amazing on the 5200 & XE. The graphics were pretty much run-of-the-mill but the way you could just cruise around the terrain was way ahead of its time. I would have loved to have seen what they were doing on this game for the 7800.

[joeybastard]

Rocky Battles the Champ on the Colecovision. It looks cheesy now but back then I was astounded at the opening pic of Stallone.

[JerseyDevil]

Bratwurst said:

Recca for the NES. The number of sprites on screen at once just gets insane.

I will definately agree. Just played this game for the first time (Thanks Bratwurst) and was blown away.

[vanman]

gridders on 3do, crazyness.

[Raijin Z]

Hmm... Monster World 4 for Megadrive. Scaling? Mode 7? Holy shit.

[Mindfield]

Actually, every Lucasfilm game was damn impressive -- Rescue on Fractalus/Behind Jaggi Lines, Ballblaster/Ballblazer (the boot disk version blew me away with its music and animation while it loaded), The Eidolon, Koronis Rift... all first class.

[RCmodeler]

COMMODORE=64
Mayhem in Monsterland
- Wow! This is a C=64? It's got so many colors, such small dot pitch, and amazing music too. It's hard to believe I'm looking at a C=64.

COMMODORE=AMIGA
Dragon's Lair & Space Ace
- They squeezed these full-motion videos onto floppies and it looked beautiful!

PLAYSTATION 1
Soul Edge
- This games looks damn good to me. Sometimes I wonder why I need to upgrade to Soul Calibur.

Dance Dance Revolution Konamix
- Awesome background effects!

PLAYSTATION 2
Gran Turismo 4
- I never thought I'd see this level of realism on the PS2. I thought only the Xbox could handle it.

[SS]

2600 - BMX Airmasters

[Breakpack]

Super Smash TV for SNES.At the time the gaming mags were talking about the slowdown of SNES games like Gradius 3 /Super R-Type and when I played this,I was impressed at the amount of sprites on screen and no slowdown.

Remember Super Caslevania IV's rotatating room.That impressed the heck out of me,too (pretty much everthing Mode 7 )

I played the Super Nintendo before I did a Genesis,so 16 bit graphics on SNES were the bomb

[davidcalgary29]

Lynx: I played "Klax" for days when I first bought in '90 just to listen to the voice samples.

8-bit: "The Terminator", for its wonderful title music and impressive (title screen) graphics.

[Breakpack]

Couple more things :Super Off-Road and Super Adventure Island both for SNES.The music was awesome.You can't beat Yuzo Koshiro for SAI(and SoR series) .Almost forgot the Actraisers

[desiv]

C64: GI Joe!

The game was OK as I recall...

But, it had animation and sound DURING DISK LOADS!!!
It wasn't much animation, but.. :-)

We were always told you couldn't do anything during disk loads!!
(And the C64 (1541) had LONG load times.) :-)
------------------------

Amiga: Dragon's Lair! Then SoTB.

desiv

[Cafeman]

Atari 8bit/5200 -- another vote for Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus. Incredible graphics and smooth gameplay, I still don't really want to think about how they did it...

Sega Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin. This game has incredible FX and frantic action. Also I must list Dynamite Headdy and Gunstar Heroes by Treasure.

Sega Saturn: there are several impressive games, but Powerslave is one where I just wonder how the Lobotomy team coaxed all that power out of the Saturn. Especially in the light of the crappy port of Hexen, another FPS game.

[compacho]

GBC - Shantae. The animation is so smooth. Link's awakening blew my mind too.

[Ze_ro]

DracIsBack said:

Super NES

Donkey Kong Country: Way, way, way beyond what had been seen on other 16-bit systems up to that point in time, whether on SNES or Genesis. The graphics were good enough to probably scare the hell out of Atari and 3DO.

I don't know why everyone always thinks that DKC has such amazing graphics... it's all just normal bitmap graphics that were pre-rendered instead of hand drawn. The only really impressive part I thought was that they managed to get some pretty good animation out of the system, and the graphics were quite colorful.

I always found the later NeoGeo games to be amazingly impressive. For such an old system, they certainly got a lot of animation out of it. I guess it helps when the cartridges can hold so much data. I don't think any other game system ever enjoyed as much longevity as the NeoGeo.

Pitfall II on the 2600 is a work of art. David Crane is amazing.

Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast is extremely impressive to me... Despite being a launch title, this game easily looks good enough to be a Gamecube or X-Box game.

--Zero

[DracIsBack]

Quote

I don't know why everyone always thinks that DKC has such amazing graphics... it's all just normal bitmap graphics that were pre-rendered instead of hand drawn. The only really impressive part I thought was that they managed to get some pretty good animation out of the system, and the graphics were quite colorful.

It's because, in 1993, graphics like that weren't seen on 16-bit systems. :-)

[Video]

Or any other system for that matter.

Things that made me go Wow, how'd they do that on THIS system.

Super Mario Bros, GBC, Ok, I know the GBC is a weaker system than the NES.....isn't it? So why does Super Mario Bros work so much better? There's never any flicker with characture sprites, which Nintendo didn't pull off. And this thing can only do 80 piels of sprite info.

Warlocked, GBC, Not so much for graphics, but for what the game is. Ok, I've heard forever, at the time, RTS can't be done on a console cause it's 'to weak' And along comes Warlocked, on a crusty 8 bit handheld.

Ghost Busters Theme on C64, probably nothing, but at the time was amazing to me.

[A2600]

DracIsBack said:

Quote

I don't know why everyone always thinks that DKC has such amazing graphics... it's all just normal bitmap graphics that were pre-rendered instead of hand drawn. The only really impressive part I thought was that they managed to get some pretty good animation out of the system, and the graphics were quite colorful.

It's because, in 1993, graphics like that weren't seen on 16-bit systems. :-)

I REMEMBER GETTING THIS FOR CHRISTMAS IN 1993, WOW!!

My friends who owned Genny's went CRAZY!!

[King Atari]

I got the original DKC when it had just come out, the game blew my mind! Not only did it look incredible, it was a blast to play!

Contra: Hard Corps on the Genesis impressed me. The animation on some of the enemies is amazing, especially that giant thing at the end of level 2 (follow Deadeye Joe). Man, when I first saw that, I was like "A Genesis can do THIS?!". Almost 3D. I always heard how the Genesis was inferior to the SNES, didn't know such things were capable. 'Course, I've long said they were equals, and I had both back in the day (still do, in fact), so I never cared much for comparisons.

Virtua Racing was another impressive Genesis game. Sure, it uses special chips, but it's still great for a 16-bit system.

[Inky]

On the 26, I'd say Berzerk Voice Enhanced and Solaris take that prize easily.

On the 7800, it'd be Ballblazer without a doubt.