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Atari 2600 Launch: Combat (1977) Believe it or not, those huge block walls and pixelated tanks were state of the art graphics in their day.
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Atari 2600 later: Solaris (1986) Well after the video game crash in 1982, developer Douglas Neubauer showed that there was still life in the aging Atari 2600. The bright, gradient colors and smooth-scrolling pseudo-3D effects in this game really need to be seen in action to see the full effect.
Also impressive on Atari 2600: Real Sports Boxing (1987); Commando (1988) -
NES Launch: Donkey Kong (1983) This port of the original arcade game, one of three titles launched alongside the Famicom in 1983, was far from a perfect recreation, but it still represented a quantum leap over the competing versions on Atari and Coleco systems.
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Genesis Launch: Altered Beast (1989) Like Donkey Kongthis Genesis launch port was nowhere near the arcade original, but it was the best you’d get at home at the time.
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Genesis Later: Virtua Racing (1994) Versions on the 32X and Saturn were much closer to the original arcade game, but the fact that the aging Genesis pushed so many polygons is an achievement in itself. It was all made possible by the Sega Virtual Processor chip built into the cartridge, pushing the price of the game above $100 at launch.
Also impressive on Genesis: Vectorman 2 (1996); Contra: Hard Corps (1994) -
SNES Launch: Pilotwings (1990) This simplified flight simulator used the SNES’s built-in scaling and rotation functions to create some impressive fake 3D effects for the time.
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PlayStation Launch: Ridge Racer (1994) This Namco racer was an impressive feat in real-time 3D at the time, but all things considered it was still quite blocky and pixelated.
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PlayStation 2 launch: SSX (2000) Extensive use of lighting effects and character models made this snowboarding title a visual highlight of the PS2’s launch period.
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Xbox Launch: Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) The game that defined a new era of console first-person shooters was a big step up from similar games Gold eye and the console ports of Earthquake II
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Xbox Later: Doom 3 (2005) Despite running on hardware that was only passable four years earlier, this console port did a surprisingly good job of capturing the dark atmosphere of the PC original, released the previous year.
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Launch Xbox 360: Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005) For a licensed launch game that could have easily dialed in, this game featured some impressively detailed beasts.
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Wii Launch: Wii Sports (2006) The shiny, rounded Mii characters in this pack-in title had a certain cartoonish charm to them.
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Wii Later: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011) Even on an outdated “standard definition” system, strong art direction made this title feel fresh, even in the midst of high definition competition.
Also impressive on the Wii: Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010); crazy world (2009) -
PlayStation 3 launch: Resistance: Fall of Man (2006) Many early adopters wouldn’t get the full impact of this game’s improvements over the last console generation until they picked up an HDTV.
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PlayStation 3 Later: The Last of Us (2013) The level of environmental detail and realistic facial expressions made this one of the crowning graphical achievements of the last console generation.
Also impressive on PlayStation 3: Heavy Rain (2010); Kill Zone 3 (2011)
In the never-ending war between PC and console gamers, one of the PC side’s favorite points is the fact that console hardware remains frustratingly static for years, while PC users can upgrade everything from the RAM to the graphics card as technology improves. So by the end of any given console generation (and sometimes earlier), a price-competitive PC will almost always be able to outperform its aging console competition.
This is true, as far as it goes. But as any console owner can tell you, unchanged hardware doesn’t mean graphics performance remains unchanged over the life of a console. On the contrary, over time, developers are often able to get more out of a console’s limited architecture than anyone ever thought possible when the system launched.
In the beginning, new processors and memory chips in the actual game cartridges contributed to this evolution. More recently, it has become a function of developers who have the time and experience to know how to extract every last ounce of power from an architecture that is intimately familiar.
As we look back nostalgically at how this intra-generational progression has played out in the past, keep in mind that the same process will most likely play out in the current console generation as well. In a few years, we’ll look back at even the impressive launch titles on the Xbox One and PS4 and wonder how we ever tolerated such low-quality visuals.