Coming from a short period of owning an Atari 2600, and then switching to the Colecovision, i was blown away by the Smurfs game. I tought i was playing a cartoon episode! I must have been like 7 years old and didnt understand console specs at all. But that game had me drooling. That was the first game on a console that impressed me graphically.
CBS -Smurf
intellivision - Super Cobra
Master System - Rocky
Mega Drive - Revenge Of Shinobi
Mega CD - Road Adv
SNES - Contra III
Sega Saturn - VF
PC Eng - R Type
Neo Geo -Samurai Showdown
PS - RR
PS2 - DMC
Dreamcast - VF 3Tb
XBox - Halo
Game Cube - Star Wars RS II
N64 - Mario 64
XBox 360 - PGR 3
XBox One - Ryse
PS4 - The Order
Wii - Mario Galaxy
Wii U - Splatoon
The first game that actually impressed me on any console was Super Mario Sunshine on the Game Cube. I had seen a few small videos of it (nothing major or anything) before it's release, and loved the bright, vibrant colours and open nature look of the game. It looked like Mario 64, but bigger and more, and that's something that appealed to me.
Lo and behold, when I finally got a copy of the game, I was not disappointed. Solid controls, bright vibrant visuals, and a very calm/relaxing soundtrack for the most part, which suits the holiday theme perfectly. Still an amazing game to this day.
This is the problem with a title changed. The thread not is about games but with consoles. In back days when you saw a console in 1st time with a game the console impressed you with resources (sound, graphics) from a game when you saw title running for 1st time.Quote:
The first game that actually impressed me on any console was Super Mario Sunshine on the Game Cube.
here as well. dreamcast blew me and everyone I knew away. my father who was a gamer from day 1 and always had most powerful pc's and amiga couldn't believe his eyes when I popped in ready 2 rumble on october 99 european launch.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Must be the only Sega fan not blown away by Dreamcast on release. (Ditto for DVD Player 2)Quote:
Originally Posted by bultje112
For me it was seeing Altered Beast for the first time on my best friend's Mega Drive. I would have been about 8 or 9yrs old at the time so it would have been around 1991/'92. It was my first experience with video games ever and I was instantly hooked.
I'm a fair bit younger than the rest of the people here!
The first console game that really made me say "Woah" would have had to be Final Fantasy X on the PS2.
Yeah, I know. That sounds cliche. But here's the context. I was born in 1992, right? All we really had was the Mega Drive, PC, and my own Game Boy Color. When I had seen 3D graphics come from other machines, such as the computer, or consoles from friend's houses, they all looked kinda... bleh. They were either muddy, or visibly low poly, or just very poorly lit. It just wasn't engaging. The suspension of disbelief wasn't able to be sustained.
So. Here comes my Father, right? He got a PS2 around April and... never got any games for it alongside the console itself because derp. Not entirely sure what was going through his mind.
What we did try out on the supplied Demo disk didn't really wow me. Granted, we didn't explore it very far.
The PS2 ended up sitting for a few months.
So, cue a few months later, and my Father decides to buy Final Fantasy X randomly through good word of mouth.
So here we are, booting it up into the PS2. Intro opens. And... well, fuck. Again, the whole thing seems cliched in hindsight, but for me as a kid, there was this game that finally nailed 3D art direction on a console! It wasn't muddy, the colours were vivid where possible, the models were generally high quality, nice textures...
It all sounds ridiculous in hindsight, but that singular game, on a PS2 no less - a machine known for having troubles with every single thing I listed, is what convinced me that 3D had a potential to be not terrible. All it took was good art direction, and a good development team.
I should add some backing words to this - As a kid, I never really got to visit the arcades. Living in Melbourne's outer West, we didn't really have arcades. Or any real video game stores at the time. In fact, fuckit, I'll spell the suburb name - I was in that shithole known as Melton!
So, we didn't have any video game stores. My only exposure to the Saturn as a kid was when we were visiting a mall in Werribee and I saw a placard with the Saturn logo on it. I almost never saw any Arcade machines - I so desperately wanted to regular Arcades as a kid. All the kids on TV did it!
My real previous exposures to 3D were on PC. PC titles didn't tend to be the most brilliantly high budget stuff! Not helped the only 3D title to stick to my mind from PC was Microsoft's Monster Truck Simulator.
And most of the 2D titles we had on the Mega Drive had, to me as a kid, more appealing artwork than most 3D games - I wonder if other people thought the same, and drove the nostalgia towards pixel art.
So. Yeah. First game on a console to really wow me? That would be it.
Atari 7800 - Space Dungeon 2 Player Co op in a big space maze. I sunk soooo many hours into this with friends.
NES - Almost everything I saw at first. I mean it was such a huge step up from the things I saw before it.
TG-16 Splatterhouse. It looked amazing to me at the time.
Genesis - Sonic, like the NES, was such a massive difference to me at the time. It really was a superb looking game.
SNES - FF2/IV. The look and feel and the music was outstanding. There may have been better looking/sounding games on the system after, but this one was early enough to really stand out to me.
SCD - Snatcher. The look, feel, and especially sound of it really drew me into the game in a big way.
Saturn - Astal. It's everything I wanted the Saturn to have more of. Gorgeously done 2d with great sound and decent music. It's what the Saturn shined at so well, and yet it was really not used to the fullest outside of the fighting games really.
PS1 - Jumping Flash. Early game that really "felt" 3d to me for the first time. Not a great game, but memorable.
N64 - Mario 64. Despite many of the flaws in the game (that I saw even then), it absolutely made an impression.
Dreamcast - Come on 9-9-99... there's only one game that really stands out there. And that's Sonic Adventure. Of course, Soul Calibur is the game that held up better.
After the Dreamcast not as many games have really stood out to me in terms of giving me a real "WOW" when first looking/playing them.
And that's moving towards current gen stuff anyways, so might as well end it there. :)
Ah, OK. That's not very clear in the title. Although, my comment still stands as up to that point, I hadn't see anything on the Game Cube and it's what made me want one.Quote:
Originally Posted by segarule
That being said, when I first saw Sonic Adventure being played on my cousin's Dreamcast (I had never seen a Dreamcast before this), I was blown away by the visuals and the idea of being able to play a full 3D Sonic game. I traded in my Playstation and a ton of games (and some cash, as the value wasn't all there) for a Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure, as I had to play it. Still don't regret doing this.
Flygon, it's quite interesting to hear you echo that good art direction is really what makes the best graphics. I was musing on this today as almost all the games I remember as having spectacular graphics were actually doing nothing fancy, they were just drawn beautifully and well designed. Sonic The Hedgehog is in my mind.
As for the really techy stuff, also more amazing when drawn with artistic skill; Soul Star, utterly beautiful in terms of colour choice, aesthetics, animation combined with massive technical wizardry make it a joy to behold.
Panzer Dragoon looks rough and ready, but the art style really shines through and immerses you.
Just to finish, we're all old farts to you eh..?
(;))
People accuse me of being an old fart for still having nostalgic memories of Ragnarok Online. ;) Of course, that game is also a showcase of fantastic art direction - at least, in it's older parts.Quote:
Originally Posted by cleeg