10 LANDMARK Games That Changed Graphics Forever

Many games innovate in many ways but only some push boundaries for graphics. Here are some games that raised the bar.
Thumbnail Credit: George Panfilov (larson35.deviantart.com/)
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[@gameranxTV]

There are many more out there. Let us know your favorite leaps in game graphics!

[@wayZZZ05]

Hi

[@ayoowndyoedeatconner8335]

gameranx before watching... the witcher?

[@user-ig1tc9jg1r]

gameranx 7 can u check out my channel and write in a comment ur was there pls

[@cameronfarroll3616]

gameranx Do you think 4K is the next big thing in gaming

[@somersetjones]

gameranx GTA 5

[@soincthe4437]

let's wait for all the people that's say graphics don't matter.

[@omarsabir1210]

But graphics dont matter

[@Zetta330]

papa "jhon" They matter but not as much as gameplay. you want to make a game with effort focused on graphics go make a movie. If you make a great game with awful graphics, people may complain but won't care too much. If you do the opposite people will REALLY complain (No Man's sky, COD infinite warfare, MGS ground Zeroes, Dead Rising 4, HATRED, etc.).

[@soincthe4437]

Pro gamer Omar antohr one

[@soincthe4437]

Jdude330 another one

[@soincthe4437]

nuke018 another one

[@george7376]

It's not that graphics were updated, it's just that our eyes got better and are now able to see the games better.

[@soincthe4437]

George The cool guy please don't be serious.

[@onslauhtphoenix3962]

George The cool guy lol nice joke

[@george7376]

papa jhon you never know the true power of the human eye

[@user-bp5py6bh3g]

I guess the human eye can only see 24fps, right?

[@memoirsofaskeptic8377]

you are so stupid we don't live in a world of frames try looking at a book of anatomy and physics for once

[@T6Ber62]

I'm a 57 year old man who had an Atari pong game and had to drive 8 miles to the nearest convenience store from my parents home in a small Oregon town to play the cutting edge games like Centipede, Defender, and Space Invaders. I didn't play for years, until I found Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem, and Quake, which blew my mind. I was working at a semiconductor company in the Silicon Valley at the time and going to school at night for an electrical engineering degree. I didn't even have a computer at home at first so I used to stay late at work to write papers for school on a Pentium 186 PC. I also played games on them. Eventually I got a computer of my own and upgraded the video card to play 3d games. I played Interstate 76, Quake, and Duke a lot. Use to play Duke with my friend over a 56K modem. It was so fun. Then a big skip forward and my first console, a modded PS1 and it was on. Then skip forward and I taught my two youngest to play FPS with Resistance Fall Of Man when they were just 7 and 8 years old. We also had a Minecraft period and now we all play Fortnite together. Now my thumbs are roasted from a year long NMS addiction, so I finally got a VR and all the other controllers that don't use the same muscles as the DS4. I know someday I won't be able to play but I don't know, maybe they will have mind controllers by the time I'm 80, and I will play until I go into the dark.

[@visheshl]

Thanks for the nostalgia, i love reading stories of people in the early days of this computer revolution. :)

[@T6Ber62]

It was actually very fun to recount all the stages I've been through with this hobby and the technology. It's been a great ride.

[@malo6748]

actually a good story. i hope u can play games till ur last day mate.

[@a.c.s.6204]

i love this. makes me respect the older people that made tech where we are today. also amazing that you are that age and still play games. (im not calling you old but im just saying i wish my parents were that cool lol)

[@_elite_hunter8885]

yo my man u r a OG LEGEND!

[@anthonyhobday]

"The first FPS where you could look up and down." Proceeds to show a clip where the player never looks up or down.

[@DesolationNathan]

Also showed the wrong game. It was Marathon from Bungie.

[@pacivalmuller9333]

No it wasn’t

[@computerapple4]

Call of Duty Ghost: Fish goes the opposite direction when the player comes near

[@fridge8900]

I couldn't hold it man, had to laugh at it.

[@captainnavigator6534]

computerapple4 Thats why cod ghosts is da best cod evur.

[@de-ment]

commented the same didnt see this sorry

[@mekniwassime2098]

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[@boskojal1681]

6GB ram required for the dog's hair

[@ibrahimiftikhar9240]

Im really disappointed that Life of black Tiger wasn't on this list :(

[@MeKen_]

Ibrahim Iftikhar its the best game ever

[@jaimemagnum]

That game may be graphically intense but it didn't innovate much aside of very realistic physics which i'm sure the developers took inspiration from Half Life 2.

[@Wakeupgrandowl]

Life of black tiger took things to a whole new level. Never before seen physics based combat.

[@rich1051414]

It features tiger on tiger fighting AND fucking. 10/10

[@neovssmith19]

life of black tiger was mind blowing

[@brokenthunder4163]

One word: Crysis. released in 07 and its graphic looks just as good as any game of today.

[@gausts]

It doesn't tbh. The trees, vegetation, terrain are all massive compromises, the geometry isn't that good too. Far Cry 2, released in 2008 is on part with today's games tho.

[@americafuckyeah4520]

@@gausts Far Cry 2 and Crysis aren't on par with games today.

[@gausts]

@@americafuckyeah4520 Far Cry 2 has live shadows, the trees in it look better than most modern games. The details in the game are amazing, the physics are on part with modern games too.

[@americafuckyeah4520]

@@gausts you're talking about the fact it uses modern tech. Polygons and textures can be quantified, graphics are objective fact, not subjective opinion. It is a fact neither of those games are on par with today's even mid tier standards.

[@gausts]

@@americafuckyeah4520 It's not about the resolution or amount of poligons you dumbass. It's the fact that the physics, vegetation, dynamic shadows, geometry and terrain are all good even for today's standarts. Don't tell me what I'm talking about.

[@lazaromartinez4097]

As many people have pointed in several comments, there are many pioneering games that should be here: Donkey Kong Country and the use of prerendered sprites, Jet set Radio and the use of Cell Shading, Crysis and the use of Ambient Occlusion, Doom 3 and the use of normal mapping, Defender and the use of side scrolling, Pole Position and the use of sprite scaling, MYST and its use of prerendered environments, Half Life and it's use of skeletal animation, Quake, Mario 64 and Tomb Raider as pioneers in full 3d worlds with animated "human" characters... Instead, the list has some games that are somewhat redundant (like tessellation and curved surfaces, which is a primitive form of tessellation), and some that are incorrectly quoted (the features attributed to Far Cry belong mostly to Far Cry 2). Still, it was a cool list, and it aknoledged the awesomeness of Dark Forces, which is always a plus.

[@ultimatehistoryofvideogame4160]

Xevious 1982, not donkey kong used first prerendered sprites, Virtua Figher 4 (2001) arcade first use normal mapping. not doom 3, Monaco GP 1979 (arcade) -first sprite scaling

[@thomasallen9974]

Spyro was one of the first big games to use LoD, which made for such expansive environments for the time.

[@alexandrosstyliaras9176]

Also what he describes is auto lod, not tesselation.

[@nec1211986]

Thanks, the only correct comment here

[@lazaromartinez4097]

@@ultimatehistoryofvideogame4160 I had no idea that VF4 had normal maps! Maybe because I knew the game through its PS2 port. Also, the enemies in Xevious are prerendered? I always thought they were just very well drawn pixel art! Amazing

[@kirishima638]

Correction, Dark Forces was not the first FPS that could look up and down in. That honor belongs to Bungie's Marathon from 1994.

[@FredDoes3D]

Nr 9 is also showing footage from both far cry 1 and far cry 2, the propagating fire wasnt introduced until the second part.

[@MarkLangdahl]

Actually Marathon being from december 1994 was predated by about 2 months by the floppy version of System Shock where you also could look up and down...

[@Olfan]

1992, Ultima Underworld. Granted, not an FPS, but looking up and down was possible and necessary, too.

[@n3r0n3]

Ultima underworld

[@Fimbulvinter19]

Indeed it does, but because it came out on a Mac, nobody cared about it. It took The Terminator: Future Shock to make vertical looking a thing, and then Quake to make it a staple.

[@Shadowmaker]

How did Crysis get boned out of this list? I mean guys.... "can it run Crysis?"

[@jaimemagnum]

Shadowmaker1001 because of Far Cry

[@DrBF3000]

Unreal came out much earlier.

[@Ketenkrad96]

Crisis didn´t do anything revolutionary, hell it isn´t even a good game.

[@aniforprez]

crysis pushed the envelope in terms of performance and cramming MANY graphics elements like the destructible trees etc into the game but didn't really add anything graphically that was never done before

[@BIadelores]

Crysis is way better than Fallout 4 or whatever bullshit gives you and your shit taste orgasms

[@cf5909]

Wheres Half Life 2 for its incorporation of the first "true to life" physics simulation and used it in puzzle solving and even went as far as to give you a physics "weapon" in the game to enhance the gameplay. The graphics were also one of the first to feature real time lighting and shadows. Doom 3 and Far Cry 3 were all halo titles in the graphics department for us PC gamers. No other titles, apart from Crysis 3, which is also missing from this list, kept our desire to upgrade our entire PC's to play at a decent, "cough Anything over 32fps was Winning" cough cough.

[@mikem2849]

But this is supposed to be about games that changed graphics capabilities, not games that had cool object physics. Of course, their list is mostly about object physics ANYWAY, what with their entries about GeoMod, 3D, and ragdoll... so whatever...

[@saurabhmisal3419]

@@mikem2849 yeah but I don't think anything looked that good back then. Compare half life 2 with GTA San Andreas which came out a year later. HL2 had next gen graphics in the ps2 era.

[@TomMarvoldoRiddle]

@@mikem2849Hitman's usage of ragdoll body physics is in the list.

[@mikem2849]

@@TomMarvoldoRiddle I know. I'm saying that it shouldn't be.

[@nathandrake1292]

C F for me this was the first time that enemies were flanking me from both sides

[@aaronseet2738]

*Witcher 3 Wild Hunt* : Geralt's facial hair grows back. :D

[@juliandenny5773]

GTA 5???

[@RexPhalange]

The Sims Castaway already did that in 2007 😂

[@perrychirpy4504]

Rdr2 ?

[@perrychirpy4504]

You even have to shave in rdr2

[@meurer13daniel]

released 3 years after TW3

[@LilBingo]

Date someone for their gameplay, not their graphics.👏👏👏😅💯💯💯💖💜🍰🚽

[@MegaGralha]

Emojis are fucking gay

[@71daftpunk]

That's the point of using them in the comment lol.

[@LilBingo]

Mega Gralha I was using them ironically

[@JustNick432]

KarlTheJester the emoji's made this comment cancer. I'm not gunna like this comment , edit the emoji's out then I'll give you a like

[@71daftpunk]

That's the freaking point of the comment, the godamm emojis!

[@noahfischer6081]

I thought GTA 4s graphics was fucking incredible at the time, I remember one time my grandma came over when I was playing it and she asked what movie I was watching

[@HowToMakeCostumeProps]

was your grandma wearing her glasses? ha ha jk. Yeah, Gta 4 was insane, but the gameplay was the best part about it.

[@CatPlayer]

Yeah and try playing it again now.. it looks really dated lol, damn.. I remember being stunned at the graphics and saw it in a recent video and it doesnt look nearly as good as i remember.

[@noahfischer6081]

CatPlayer1000 exactly how it works, I swear the Spider-Man graphics on the ps2 were super realistic haha, not anymore

[@cpufreak101]

i remember playing San Andreas back in 2005 and thinking "this is so realistic" and then i returned to it after playing GTA 5 for a few years and i'm like "who smeared shit on my screen?"

[@AphexTwinFlame_]

Noah Fletcher GTA 4 Is some Way more realistic than 5, Just see on KZbin

[@Dddsasul]

No Crysis? smh...

[@EonHSD]

Crysis didn't really Change anything. It was a visual powerhouse that no PC could really run for 1-2 years. It Made a Major leap but didn't really Change or Impact anything besides looking stunning

[@kentzel930]

Volumetric Clouds, Vegetation Physics, Procedural Destructive Physics, Subsurface Scattering, Water Simulation, Massive Open Distances, Caustic Effects, Water Drops, 24h Day Cycle, Parallax Occlusion Mapping. Yeah it wasn’t definitely a landmark. Infact, today, 11 years later no games have all these technologies combined together, only Red Dead Redemption 2 has similar capabilities.

[@lem0nade_899]

@@kentzel930 hate to burst your bubble, but those techniques exist before crysis happened. all it did was able to blend those stuff together well. that's all.

[@kentzel930]

Nguyen Zen I know they existed, but at the same time name me a game 12 years later that has all that? None

[@Mytube6138]

@@kentzel930 Are you kidding? Try any new open world 3d game

[@spontanp]

I remember the time I saw Lara Croft in the original Tomb Raider. The detail was amazing. What made the biggest impression on me was the quality of water :) Then Half Life was another major step and Quake 3 Arena. That was on a whole another level.

[@TheZorch]

No love for Unreal, that game forever changed 3D graphics on the PC.

[@NicolaosSoldal]

was looking for this comment.. That and Tomb Raider as it was the first 3DFX Glide AAA title

[@Storlans]

I really do not know how he missed unreal.......

[@jelitejbzzz]

Wrong

[@NicolaosSoldal]

Not sure what you mean here? What is wrong?

[@Moonstalker]

Mostly Unreal engine 1 had portals and it's the first game who features portals., shiny surfaces, some of the best mirrors and an impressive particle system back then. There is also trespasser for its physics engine, very first to get something realistic and that was Before HL2.

[@RafidW9]

yup gameranx is a confirmed giant doom fanboy...

[@kingquan3826]

Mujtaba Ibrahim and Witcher 3

[@kingjamestres]

Doom, Witcher and Red Dead

[@gentaillahi6153]

and Half-Life hater

[@KEVBOYMUSIC]

How can you be someone who's into video games and NOT be a giant Doom fanboy? I guess maybe if you're 12...but still...

[@thatboy5572]

Kurukulla bruh I'm 13 I fucking love doom well you said I guess maybe

[@matthewsmith1547]

I remember playing Far Cry for the first time and being blown away with how beautiful it was. I just wanted to explore and play around with stuff.

[@razor3106]

Gran Turismo 4. It was the first game that I ever considered to be "photo-realistic". It was one of the first games to support HD resolution on consoles, had impressive lighting and reflections, and even looks decent today despite being released in 2005. I'd even go so far as to say it was the best looking game on PS2 and even looks better than a handful of PS3 games.

[@philithegamer8265]

GT4 came out in 2004.

[@Karanar]

Weird that Unreal is not mentioned here.

[@allanb1832]

Im still playing UT99 online, still fun. ;) Says a lot when a game still goes strong after abt 18 yrs. :)

[@Kiliny]

Not saying it s a bad game but what did it really change that Quake didnt?

[@Karanar]

But Q2 isn't in that list either.

[@MyriadMythial]

Unreal was the benchmark test of it's era for a PC and Q/Q2 weren't. It's engine was also the go to engine for speedy game development for almost a decade.

[@tinkerwithstuff]

IIRC quake did not manage the big-ish outdoorsy scenes of unreal, its 16bit colors even in software rendering (using dithering), the water effects and other texture animations. Overall it looked a lot more beautiful and real compared to quake 1/2. Back then, we were really all drooling when first seeing it, lol. Not to mention when the 3dfx VooDoo 1 came out and the thing would really shine, quite literally, with reflections on water and other shiny surfaces. Then there were a lot of details, more smaller graphical effects that quake didn't have like lens flares and stuff like that. In an interview, ID's (quake) John Carmack told that "from now on, all those things in Unreal will be expected in new games", that gives you an idea there were quite some. EAX 3D sound support was great stuff back then if you had e.g. a Soundblaster Live!, even with headphones you really thought you were in the damn game world sound wise, it added tremendously to the atmosphere.

[@RookieN08]

How about Crysis 1? I still remember how gamers did not really care about graphics until Crysis 1 came out.

[@cosmonauthal7651]

RookieN08 true but I think it's more technical graphic stuff not like the prettiest ya know

[@Jafin16]

Play it today. It still looks good.

[@jaimemagnum]

RookieN08 Gamers did care about graphics before it, and it wasn't Crysis 1, Far Cry 1 was the game that introduced Crysis level graphics. In my opinion, it beats Half Life 2, Riddick and Doom 3 at the time.

[@jannegrey593]

Unreal also introduced us to the fact that game can be both beautiful and great.

[@kevinzurek3431]

Oblivion boi

[@spencemossman4027]

splinter cells real-time lighting and shadows looked amazing and hold up very well.

[@SteveParkerAudiobooks]

Mission Impossible on the C64. I used to literally sit and watch him run up and down corridors because the running animation was so smooth and beautiful.

[@kurt5079]

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay on the original xbox. The graphics stood up to other games for years.

[@bobaloohoo1777]

YES! and it was an amazing game, i love it.

[@OpenGL4ever]

The PC version looked much better. And yes, at its time it had very nice graphics.

[@kurt5079]

OpenGL4ever Indeed but the graphics where a great leap at the time for console which is why I mentioned that version. I smashed it on both and the pc/console and to be fair the difference was not as noticeable as with most games.

[@kodan7879]

true

[@daveforman5097]

Yeah, man! I used to just look at the walls, admiring the textures...

[@matthewredmond24]

One memory that ingrained into my memory that really made me think that games are going to the next level was reading about GTA4 in game mags and how they were going to use realistic rag dolls (when you shoot some one in the leg they limp) , randomly generated faces and outfits so you wouldn't see the same copy of a person walking around over and over again and so many other small details blew my mind

[@LiTTleGaBi21]

Euphoria (used by Rockstar Games) is probably the most advanced physic engine ever made for video games.

[@nektarpanagiotis6707]

6:54 "First fps shooter" so you have basically just displayed a message saying "first first person shooter shooter" lol.

[@LoungeFly02]

Splinter Cell: Introduced Dynamic Lighting Half Life 2: First physics engine to simulate real life. Like how things naturally fall and move. That's a HUGE one Halo 2: Background loading while still playing to alleviate long loading screens

[@loganhogg6237]

This might not be the post popular game... but i remember doom3 pushing new lighting tec.

[@D3LTATRAX]

Logan Hogg FEAR also had some great lighting. As well as being the first game, in my opinion, to NAIL slow-motion.

[@OleMenn]

There was also a game called Severance: Blade Of Darkness, which came out three years before DOOM 3. That too had some damn impressive dynamic lighting for its time.

[@kamikaze1171000]

Didn't Max Pain have great slow-mow? I never played it but the videos I've seen of it seemed to show some nice slow-mow dives.

[@MaicoMoon]

Id's revolutionary I can't see shit technology!

[@wawowhead]

@kamikaze1171000 Yes it did. It was a long time ago but I remember being in High School at the time and playing it on PC. (it was a pc exclusive at the time. Later ported to ps2 and og xbox) I'm pretty sure it was the first game to feature slow motion. Inspired by the Matrix movie no doubt.

[@greatsupper]

Damn who's the girl in the thumbnail though her graphics are fine as hell

[@thebomb7021]

I wanna know too

[@watgoog]

Jaina Proudmore

[@greatsupper]

***** Really? I've played all the Warcraft games and she's never had those graphics

[@fdlarts7676]

Kir?

[@greatsupper]

Gargoyle Senior I googled "Kir" but couldn't find anything I don't know what Kir is from

[@captainkail]

"Star Wars: Dark Forces was the first game where you could look up and down!" *gameplay footage NEVER shows you looking up and down*

[@la9406]

THANK YOU. This bugged the shit out of me while he was talking.

[@eggobender6041]

you couldn't look up and down but you could aim the projectile up and down.

[@phineasdickson5756]

what was up with that?(pun not intended)

[@daviddegeorge2667]

You could definitely look up and down. It was a pain to do though given that look up and down was tied to the page up and page down keys. It wasn't something you wanted to be doing with a bunch of enemies around you.

[@MarioMarioD80]

got my first pc in 1996 and played dark forces with a microsoft sidewinder 3D joystick. I put the look up/down on the coolie hat. even played jedi knight with joystick :D - that was way before wasd+mouselook was established :)

[@RandyLeftHandy]

Half life 2 was the first game that made me say "whoa." To be fair I already understood that the engine would be modified into many games that are still played.

[@OIFIIIOIF-VET]

No Crysis? Go home, you're drunk.

[@Belikel]

Crysis did nothing new, just updated the effects of its predecessor FarCry.

[@ChadeGB]

That's just plain wrong. Crysis did plenty new that no other game had done before. Go learn about the technical aspects of the CryEngine 2 and you'll see why.

[@pakan357]

Far Cry never used the effects Crysis did, are you dumb? Crysis was the first game to use SSAO. I also don't know if there was any game before Crysis to use subsurface scattering. And nobody before had the balls to use real-time soft shadows, god rays, interactive vegetation, 3D ocean with caustic, POM, volumetric clouds, DOF, real-time TOD all at once. It definitely should've been on the list.

[@PinkShades]

Crysis isn't on this list because it didn't do anything that changed graphics forever. They did invent *some* new techniques to create a more convincing image, but nothing they did really set a new standard. Most of the things you listed, pakan357, have been done before. Crysis just took each one to an extreme and made it all work together. Crysis better belongs in a top 10 list of technologically advanced games for their time.

[@pakan357]

Exactly what I said in my second to last sentence. SSAO and real-time SSS changed video game graphics forever. GTA 5 would be the example you are looking for in your statement.

[@jorgedaniel9656]

In all seriousness, I don't know if it was the first to do so, but it was the first game I played with it, Tomb Raider, the 2013 one, had an option for better hair quality, which made it so the hair was rendered as many unique threads, affected by movement and momentum, instead of a pre rendered object with scripted motions, which my computer at the time absolutely couldn't handle, but I turned everything else down just so I could have that option turned on, my character felt way more real with it, even if it doesn't sound that way.

[@BizzonaterInc]

Jorge Daniel kinda like that blue monster from monsters inc (forgot his name) Pixar animated every strand of fur on that guy

[@Negat1veGamer]

NelyL ,Nvidia's is called Nvidia HairWorks which is what Tomb Raider 2013 uses

[@ProbyWaN1337]

actually, it uses tressFX

[@williaamlarsson]

Negat1veGamer Nope not Hairworks, it's AMD TressFX

[@jamaicanbacon5414]

i did this too. felt so cool looking at her hair moving so life like. had to turn down the other settings too lol

[@dakshprajapati7348]

Everquest 1999... That game changed the way i critique other games. If you werent tgere at launch of eq1999 you will never understand how eq changed mmorpgs for ever

[@takeyourheart3030]

At the time I remember I thought Myst looked incredible. We never had a super high powered PC growing up so the only games we really had were like, Lemmings and Pinball and Monopoly/Life board game type games so Myst looked amazingly real in comparison. Oh and Mario 64 was the first real 3D game I played and I remember my dad commenting about how amazing it looked. He was playing Atari in college so seeing Mario 64 was wild for all of us.

[@ChinoWantan]

You should put the years of the games =/

[@MilkBreakMinecraft]

Was missing this too!

[@taoufikbritel8441]

Am I the only one that think his fking voice is fking good

[@kingjamestres]

Probably not although I never thought his voice was particularly impressive.

[@sadlluminati5843]

Taoufik Britel I'll fkn fuckn fucking FUKING headass boy ugly ass

[@georgeconnett7812]

I highly doubt it as there are 7,483,811,936 people on earth

[@fdlarts7676]

Didn't even pay attention to that. Oh yeah

[@arieltkotz4877]

"I don't have nothing against 2D games, some of my best friends are 2D games..." :)

[@justzack641]

The fact that Crysis wasn't in here makes this video invalid

[@ziggysfix]

these games were way more influential than crysis

[@NogginNogs]

@@ziggysfix First game to have SSAO

[@thecaptain4630]

I'm surprised no mgs2 where the ice melted or Mario 64 with the moving fish.

[@MasterGeN3]

Woah, technology!

[@Bloodwolf1995]

Oh. Was not expecting a Yandere Simulator reference here.....hi there.

[@eliasgolcoin]

ninja of fire introducing our completely new fish AI

[@kirishima638]

Did anyone seriously discover the ice melting thing when they played MGS? I'd wish the devs had put that effort instead into the mind trip second part of the game.

[@mlo51987]

yeah i agree, the first part of mgs2 is amazing, and you're thinking the rest of the game is gonna be the same, but the rest of it, in retrospect was kind of a let down. I did enjoy it when I first played it though, but its not my favorite mgs.

[@huzi37709]

You forgot -minecraft- *minesweeper*

[@rarespetrusamartean5433]

Huzufu Minecraft has its own sepparate video

[@huzi37709]

EndR60 Hence why it's crossed out :P

[@rarespetrusamartean5433]

Huzufu so...minesweeper?..

[@Trirumo]

Thank you so much for informing me about Descent. I played this game when I was really young and loved it. Every few years I search for it, but I didn't know the name or anything. Thank you again!

[@Follygon]

This is a lot more informative than I thought it would be, great vid!

[@rjjones3665]

In terms of graphics in 2014 I think infamous second son did an amazing job capturing wet environments. I'd say the graphics still can compare to the games coming out today. In my mind props to infamous second son

[@kingquan3826]

Richard D Jones exactly . That and Killzone shadow fall looks like new games today and still lives up to date

[@wallabingbong1810]

Richard D Jones yah dude! 30 fps is soo good and realistic

[@wallabingbong1810]

Troy Montana looks like console games nowadays* cuz it still looks like shit

[@rjjones3665]

SealthruX I left this comment to let people know my opinion not get an 8 year old replying to my comment

[@rjjones3665]

IlikeJev 😂😂😂 true

[@danielmelchert7945]

Unreal: Dynamic lighting Half-Life: Dynamic facial expressions linked to speech

[@freedom_7341]

yes

[@mancamiatipoola]

HL2 - HD facial textures which made the characters look so lively. It was a big thing at the time.

[@majicebe]

F.E.A.R. had me in awe at the detail, physics, and amazing AI for the time.

[@sylenzf4748]

My favorite was Descent. I still play it as kept the Windows system to play it on. I've always wondered why Descent doesn't come back. Way ahead of it's time.

[@Electrify85]

I think there is a remake in the works right now.

[@rushabhbhakta7181]

I always felt the original Crysis sort of was the herald of the modern standard for realism aesthetics in video games but I may be wrong, I just felt that game was such a massive leap ahead of its competitors at the time in terms of graphics that it was an important installment in the history of this medium.

[@jaimemagnum]

Rushabh Bhakta Far cry is Crysis predecesor, but yeah your right. Crytek improved so much after Far Cry

[@rushabhbhakta7181]

Skarenox yea, that's true. Far Cry just always felt like a different type of beast to me but it was definitely the predecessor to Crysis.

[@bmartinez002]

i love your channel!!! everyday i have something to watch that I love

[@mackgordon2117]

interesting video. i like the choices and explanations. subscribed :)

[@kaworupl]

Unreal and Unreal Tournament, UT had amazing graphics for the time and could run on almost anything.

[@Jokalijok]

Very true. But nothing new gameplay or technically wise. Just beautiful.

[@FlashManinSpace]

Guillaume Bregeon Unreal brought static meshes to games for the first time. And destructible self colliding body limbs with per poly hit detection. Previously in shooters you were just hitting an invisible bounding box.

[@kaworupl]

Nothing new technically? UT had all sort of mechanical stuff, you should play with old UT editor which lets you play with the engine, you would see how much advanced this game was.

[@pawelgorzelak6228]

yep UT was a classic & it deserved it, loads of mods BTW

[@KoppanyE]

And don't forget the S3 Texture Compression! At that time we were amazed by the level of detail. I found the animated textures (water, blood,...) cool too.

[@adityaverma6754]

So no Crysis , that became a meme cause of amazing graphics by its time . And gta 3 how can u forget .

[@IamRandomAF]

yea gta 3 was the first. Mk... \

[@hulktopf5031]

Uuuh no far cry one and crysis were produced by the same people.

[@adamg4336]

Crysis didnt change graphics forever. It looked nice but didn't do enough to make things common place. What did crysis do that many games before it hadnt already done?

[@ealing456]

I think OP's upset that games he's not heard of before made the list.

[@onscreensoucer2556]

and half life or cs

[@-Burs]

Silkworm, SWOS, Lotus, Cannon Fodder, just to name a few on my good old Amiga 500. Maybe not (r)evolutional, but those I will never forget. I get chills when remembering all the countless hours I've put into these games.

[@SteveParkerAudiobooks]

The first Mafia game was so impressive that my mate can't believe it when I told him while showing him the cutscenes at the start of the game that they were actual in-game footage.

[@DangaDave1983]

Rayman Origins - It was the first game to use the UbiArt Framework which essentially allows artists to draw what they want, slap it directly into the game and make it work, allowing 2D game development to be more focused on artwork. They've made some excellent games (Valiant Hearts, Child of Light, Rayman Legends) using this engine on relatively thin budgets, and I feel this concept will lead to more quality hand-drawn games, especially if and when competitors make similar engines.

[@thatRyzzle]

The very first Unreal game blew my mind with the high-resolution textures when the player looks at a surface merely inches away from it. Before Unreal, I remember the texture just being very blurry in previous games.

[@BornaPrpic]

That honor would actually go to the first Serious Sam game and bump mapping :)

[@hunnitroundheath7456]

The first Unreal is actually such a good game

[@christianjadot4459]

I think you are referring to the first Unreal 3d game, not the side scrolling 1990 Amiga game, with the 3d levels.

[@derelictfields]

A cool thing about the original Unreal was that, if you were using an AMD processor, you could get a lot of the advanced effects (like the detailed textures and colored lighting) without requiring a 3D accelerator card.

[@hellbenderdescent]

Some love for Descent ayyy. It's also pretty cool how the levels are formed from a bunch of cubes joined together.

[@EonHSD]

It's really impressive how well the early id games have aged. Doom looks still so much fun to play

[@renno0301]

Doom 3 and the original F.E.A.R. were pretty impressive to me at their times of release.

[@StarkeRealm]

IIRC Doom 3 was the first 3d game with no pre-baked lightmap. All of the lighting and shadow was generated at runtime.

[@ropy89]

i sure don't know the technical details but as far as i can remember,when Doom 3 came out,the whole world felt that we just arrived in the new age of video games - the graphics were top of the line

[@FreeManSaysAll]

For me it was a now very old pc third person shooter game called MDK. Multiple levels with different design, over 5 different weapons and different grenades, and big bad bosses with fun flying shooting events that for the time gave you the sense of falling while dodging enemies and obstacles.

[@wrangliser]

MDK was amazing. Nothing came close at the time.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

MDK was awesome. Still have the second game around somewhere. It's not as good as the first one, but still a nice game that one doesn't see today anymore.

[@FreeManSaysAll]

The grunt taunt that they would dance still taunts me to this day. Lol would love to see this IP return

[@prelude2disaster]

Holy god, I haven't thought about MDK for years! That and Evolve stole my childhood.

[@creationsmaxo]

MDK was actually first released on PS1. The PC was a port of it. +Squeak Stevens I got to thank you because you just gave me the name of a game I was looking for for YEARS. Evolva was a game I didn't bought (too young back in the time), but which I played the HELL out of its demo which I had from a Demo disk that came with a PC game magazine.)

[@NKey-fy7zi]

You guys are great. Thanks for another great vid

[@funkydozer]

Quake 2 was the first shooter that used a dedicated 3D graphics card. Which, in my case, was the awesome 3DFX Voodoo in 1997. It only accelerated 3D and you still needed a separate 2D card in the PC. Before the Voodoo, everything was pixeltastic. After the Voodoo, everyone and his brother jumped on the bandwagon and the graphics card wars began. The difference between Quake 2 2D and 3D was mind blowing.THAT was the greatest graphics advancement of all time... Until the VR revolution.

[@elenoe8]

even Turok is technically older then Quake 2 (and looks better, but what doesn't compared to any Quake). And that was a year after Voodoo release so there pretty much had existed others with support.

[@nexarath]

Tomáš Skála What are you on about son? Quake 1 was the best looking game of its time until Quake 2 and then Unreal came along. Quake 4 also looked amazing. Arena focused on other things but was more than apt for its time too?!

[@aaronseet2738]

*Quake 1* was enhanced as *GL Quake* to utilise 3D hardware.

[@jellex6068]

0:05 That's because video games have only been around for a few decades.

[@jacobworsley1030]

Jack Kavangh a

[@RuddsReels]

Shenmue and Halo: Combat Evolved are my major graphical increased games!

[@Jbonecreeper]

RuddsReels Halo CE anniversary was my favorite

[@Itz_JayM]

Lassi Kinnunen To be fair Halo did affect the industry just not in the graphical development of games. Without Halo xbox would have been a flop and none of the games made by Microsoft would exist today because they likely would have backed out of the gaming industry. Also in my opinion it set the standard for first person shooter controls with dual analog sticks for movement and view, toggles for shooting, A or X on PS for jumping. But thats about it

[@RuddsReels]

+Lassi Kinnunen At the time when these two games came out, they had the best graphics of any game before it!

[@CohnmanTheBudbarian]

lassi are you joking, when halo came out it was cutting edge gaming, i remember it like it was yesterday, back then and its not that long ago, halo was mindblowingly epic for graphics, and game play, you can even see it in halo anniversary, that one game alone was revolutionary for the fps genera and graphics and then there was gears... enough said

[@RuddsReels]

+netslave One of my most memorial moments in gaming and I would say the best for me, was when you would crash land on the Halo for the first time, hearing the sounds and music, seeing the scope of the land, looking up and seeing the inner side of the Halo ring reaching up to the sky! Then as you are walking around in awe you hear Cortana talking about the kinds of flora around you. Then you hear a dropship approaching and Cortana telling you to hide! I get goosebumps just thinking about it!

[@jamiequinn5553]

First game that blew my mind was Delta Force and Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. Amazing games for their time, I spent HOURS getting lost in the infinite (repeated) terrain trying to find the perfect distance to snipe from. It was awesome.

[@IrwinDeGannes]

Great video, brought back some good memories. I would have liked to see Unreal in there for something or the other.

[@Grim-HEX]

Unreal set new graphical standards for me

[@allanb1832]

Indeed, that engine is STILL used as a base for games developed today. Im still playing UT99 with lots of other ppl.

[@3800S1]

Same, I remember first time playing UT2004 and thinking whoa! I just love the light/bump maps as well as the reflections it could generate on surfaces, not only that but how fast and responsive the rendering is in that engine. On my current PC I can get 2700 FPS facing a wall in the game and several 100 FPS on average looking around in full view of the map. Its just stupid the FPS output at the level of graphic UE2 is capable of. I am really enjoying the graphics in new UT4, still work in progress as pre alpha but some of the semi finished maps look fantastic without being over the top. FEAR was also another eye opening game for graphics at the time. The lighting in FEAR and the physics was just something else.

[@gabrielnz]

Please, make a video about the most recent leaps in game graphics. As a developer, I loved this one.

[@TheJohnboyhunter]

Gabriel Núñez Have they not done something similar to that already?

[@NujuBIONICLE]

Prince of Persia (1989) + Prince of Persia The Sands of Time (2003)

[@jacobwheeler6136]

NujuBIONICLE I played the 89 one a lot when I was young

[@alexbiersner3350]

If it's a Gameranx video with Falcon involved....you know it's going to be a great time

[@sartori69]

Quake 1. I was at a LAN party, and all of us were sitting in IRC waiting for Id to upload the alpha test, which we were able to grab before the ftp crashed repeatedly. We spent the rest of the night completely blown away by the game. You could stand on each other's heads! You could lob grenades in creative ways. It was sweet.

[@trinity8166]

Morrowind ....

[@Buucho77]

^ This. Or even Daggerfall. That world was yuuuuge.

[@waswat]

Sadly just making bigger worlds made the environments really boring; world generation in oblivion was better imo! Had some cool speedtree tech as well.

[@Jokalijok]

Oblivion was boring as hell and everything looked the same.

[@Buucho77]

Daggerfall was also 1996.

[@Jokalijok]

Nothing technical though. But the gameplay was crazy. First game where i would spend hours running around picking up flowers. The world was so incredicble. The architecture! oh my! just crazy good.

[@Blink2691]

Hey Falcon, what song are you using starting at 3:04? I've heard it used in a good number of your videos--and I dig it! It's very soothing. Thanks, and keep up the great work!

[@brucethen]

First game to use entirely 3D models was Elite in 1984

[@philithegamer8265]

I bet people forgot about that game.

[@CookieMonster-nt8hh]

crysis 1

[@xtlm]

Rise of the Triad and Marathon were two fairly popular games that came out before Dark Forces where you could look up and down.

[@user-zd2kl9yg4v]

It depends how you look up or down, some games just stretch or squeeze the image.

[@cagey_87]

i feel like blood was also around this time but i could be wrong.

[@ediazcalvo]

Not to mention that Marathon's graphics are so much better

[@ThePhoenix4283]

Thank you!! Loved Rise of the Triad!

[@sorry987654321]

wow a gameranx video that was well hm had a reason to exist? i dont know why i sometimes click on these but this was a nice surprise

[@Hoi4o]

In 2006 I was blown away by Dark Messiah's graphics, and in particular it's great physics.

[@OmniVenom]

Flashback was that game, the low poly 3d cut scenes, i will never forget it. and the game was awesome too.

[@colbyerickson1788]

Red Faction was by far the funnest to me and my friends we were in Elementary School and blowing up your friends base across the map on a PS2 was so fun nothing out there like it. and the MP was not great but making a building faceless is priceless. Good memories =). Thank you guys for making these videos!

[@SoccerBoyAP]

The video was playing in the background and I was half paying attention until you mentioned Star Wars: Dark Forces and I was like WHaaaat? Then I was like, oh hell yea!

[@srmolinah3548]

Nice video guys! I always thought that the first FPS to use Poligon enemies was Quake 1 and the first FPS were you could look up and down was Rise of the Triad (ROTT)

[@jgedutis]

The Chronicles of Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay on the ogXBox blew my mind. Made my friend with a PS2 jealous.

[@Hubert_Cumberdale_]

Yeah

[@zachstraw8832]

Definitely ahead of it's time. I remember being blown away by the shadows and dynamic lighting of the game.

[@thrive5985]

Glad you mentioned Doom and Quake 3 Arena graphical achievements. Therefore you mentioned that Crusaders of Might and Magic is the first game that had Volumetric Shadows affected by light sources which is WRONG. Quake 2 (enhanced with GPU) and Thief: The Dark Project released 1 year before that game and had the technology.

[@FilipCordas]

Half life 1 and 2, Gta 3 Total war, Dune, Unreal, Battlefield... I like the Hitman 1 mention but the amount of stuff they left out is just insane.

[@freedom_7341]

h a l f l i f e

[@pedrogascon604]

Omh!!! Descent!! That game. I had it on a Machintosh when I was like 8 years old. Dude!! What a throw back!!!!

[@SamuraiJACsr]

Super Mario 3, World, and 64 all blew me away as a kid. I remember everytime just going, Wow.

[@majmunx9703]

And where is first Prince of Persia (Flashback, Another World/Out of this world, Karateka..) for use of rotoscoping?

[@sequorroxx]

Another world didn't use rotoscoping; it was actually done by translating and rotating geometric shapes. Thats why it looked even smoother than PoP(and much blockier).

[@CogniVision]

At the end of the day it's still just 2D sprites...

[@MaceAries]

I loved Flashback... the graphics blew me away back then and I think they are still pretty solid for today's standards too.

[@asgart16]

It sounds ridiculous nowadays, but the first game that blew me away graphically, was "Rayman 2: The Great Escape" on the PC x)

[@sopcannon]

Shadow of the beast for me on the Amiga 500

[@truongquoctien6321]

For me, it was Hitman 2 Silent Assassin, I was blew away by its graphic and violence back then.

[@SLOP_JOCKS]

asgart16 loco Rocco and ape academy when I was just a kid on my PSP 😂😂😂😂

[@t-kozy39]

Force unleashed ps2

[@SamFerndz]

i agree so hard

[@VioletGiraffe]

Ground Control II. Best looking dynamic sky and best water reflections. Stunning.

[@futsk01]

Reminds me of how the Q3 curves were such a controversy back then. Alot of people got the idea that those were supposed to be actual curves, while in reality they simply had higher polygon counts to look that way.

[@ChristianStout]

In 2002, Metroid Prime on the Gamecube blew my mind.

[@danlock1]

so that's what happened to it

[@daninbox]

Like when you look up and the rain hits the visor, or seeing your hand's skeleton when reloading with the x-ray visor on, or catching a glimpse of your reflection when something flashed on screen,?

[@maxwellnormandy7521]

It still doesn't look half bad today, but when I was a kid it almost looked real

[@BenjaminPlaysRust]

Absolutely one of the greatest graphical leaps in gaming history.

[@ddnava96]

Maxwell Normandy. If you can, try it in VR

[@DingbatToast]

"Another World" blew me away at the time. With its cinemagraphic cut scenes, amazing character animations and great environments. It was just a great piece of story telling - I'll take my rose tinted glasses off now :)

[@NKey-fy7zi]

I went back and played this recently. It is much harder than I remembered. 🤨

[@jwag2708]

This game was an absolute work of art. My whole dorm was addicted to it in college. If someone lost, the next guy would take over and it was his job to get us further than the last guy did.

[@patriotsandtyrants]

I remember being blown away by Myst a thousand years ago. Oblivion was impressive as well (even with the blueberry dunmer)

[@richgiustiniani635]

My dad brought home Wolf 3D before I was old enough to read. He, my sisters, and I played it as a family (kind of funny in retrospect). So when I saw Return to Castle Wolfenstein on display at Microcenter, I lost my mind over how good everything looked. Dad couldn't believe it either and immediately bought a video card so we could play it. There I discovered online gaming and I disappeared until my early 20s. Thanks, Dad.

[@TimothyBlackie]

I would say F.E.A.R. was pretty impressive in 2005

[@jamesgeorgi170]

The way the environment and ai reacted to the gunfights you were having was very impressive.

[@martinblanch5828]

James Georgi that was a great game!

[@SirS3mt3x]

Yeah, the AI is still really good. Haven't seen an AI react as realistic as the soldiers in that game, might just be the smartest enemies I've ever fought. :P

[@jessedavis2563]

I think life of a black tiger had incredible graphics at the time (sarcasm)

[@andrevalente1150]

A game that blew me away was the first Need For Speed on PC. I had the demo that only had the Dodge Viper and after engaging 1st gear and having the car spin 360 degrees and leaving skidmarks on the tarmac... Wow!!!

[@aaronseet2738]

I'm somewhat confused by your definition of "first 3D game". Long before *Doom* (or even *Wolfenstein 3D* )came along, there've been many tank, flight, space simulators that operated in 3D space and environment (regardless of polygon, sprite, voxel). And by nature of their targeted simulation, most definitely also offered six-degrees-of-freedom movement before *Descent* . Technically they're first-person "shooters" too since players are put in the perspective of the pilot/driver/crew seat. The 1973 *Maze War* is probably the progenitor to many of the visualsation and game design trends we have today.