Gaming's Biggest Graphical Jump

[@AbruptAvalanche]

The poll results pretty much align with my feelings. It's just too hard to top the jump from 2D to 3D, though the gamecube generation still felt like a huge leap as well.

[@Volvagia1927]

Generally? Phrased on technical achievement, I'd agree. But on AESTHETIC achievement? That's either NES to SNES/Genesis or N64/Playstation/Saturn 3D to PS2/Gamecube/Xbox 3D.

[@98SE]

Yeah I completely agree with this, but what about the VR generation, that jump was just INSANE.

[@jarerarebear1765]

2D to 3D wasn't really a "graphical leap" though, it was more of a shift in perspective

[@leonro]

I would argue that the jump from Atari 2600 & co to the NES and SEGA Master System was even greater than 2D to 3D. Games went from looking like... things... to looking like a real world. Side scrolling, more than a couple of colours, actual stories... It can't be overstated how great that leap was.

[@chrisrichfield8906]

​@@jarerarebear1765they aren't talking about perspective though, they me a n 2d graphics to 3d graphics. You think going from a flat plane using sprites to full 3d environment was not a big leap in graphics? You can have a 3d game in a 2d perspective, and vice versa.

[@jiraiya0698]

I disagree with you. The N64/PS1 jump was astronomical. You are kind of disregarding the jump from 2D to 3D when it's a total game changer. That feeling of playing Ocarina of Time, MGS1 and FF7 will NEVER be recaptured.

[@NamelessGamer29]

Like you pointed out in the video the jump in visual quality from Smash 64 to Melee will always blow my mind. And the fact they were able to pull that off in a little over a year is miraculous

[@bobosmith101]

melee to brawl felt bigger to me

[@Matanumi]

Man was just playing melee with the boys last night talking about how crazy the jump was Brawl single player and content was nice but not the same

[@traviscunningham7062]

Brawl was my favorite because of the single player. I hate the other Smash games because they are way too competitive.

[@Marlotix]

​@@bobosmith101 The difference with Melee to Brawl wasn't because of what the different systems were capable of though. Brawl's drastic art style shift was because Sakurai and the development team didn't want the game to look to visually similar to Melee. So it's not really the same thing.

[@bobosmith101]

@@Marlotix No, I would say it is. There is a focus on much higher textures and backgrounds. Melee's are comparatively flat while Brawl's are much more detailed. The effects of moves, too.

[@epretzel72]

The Atari gen to NES to SNES was also impressive

[@catsaregovernmentspies]

Yes, going from the 2600 to the NES blew my mind when I played SMB1 and Double Dragon for the first time.

[@baileywatts1304]

I know that wikipedia considers all of atari stuff to be one console generation but the 2600 saw the 5200 and Colecovision to the 7800, and the Colecovision games were about on par with NES titles at launch before mapper chips were introduced.

[@LITTLE1994]

Definitely

[@NesrocksGamingVideos]

@@baileywatts1304 7800 was released in 1984 though, so technically the NES (famicom) already existed.

[@thehound1359]

By far.

[@rodrigo53]

Snes to n64 were magical times. It will never happen again

[@lol-ih1tl]

Ironically SNES games held up better than the N64 graphically.

[@traviscunningham7062]

Like compare Mario World to Mario 64. Which one aged better?

[@croper0]

@@traviscunningham7062 mario world

[@wurzelbert84wucher5]

@@traviscunningham7062 Mario World looks super cool, especially in high res and widescreen in Mario Maker!

[@Nutty151]

I thought VR would bring that magic back but it hasn't caught on yet.

[@kingjeffwx5331]

The jump in 3D graphics from the 90s to the 00s is just massive.

[@viewtifuljoe99]

Going from something like Dragon Quest 7 to 8 was absolutely insane.

[@Chelaxim]

Especially because of the merger they got a biggerbudget. If you compare Dragon Quest V and VI to other SNES JRPGs and VII to other PS1 JRPGs woof. Dragon Quest VII is my second favorite but even if you only compare it to 2D sprites on a 3D background Grandia,Breath of Fire III,Breath of Fire IV,Xenosaga,Wild Arms 2 and Shining Force III it still looks rough....despite Dragon Quest VII coming out after all of them.

[@jaretco6423]

Especially considering Dragon Quest 7 was still an 2D game with an 32-bit approach and Dragon Quest 8 was the first real 3D DQ game we gotten.

[@AbstractM0use]

Absolutely

[@Jakob-W]

I had no idea MGS2 was running at 60FPS on the Ps2 that's pretty insane

[@gamesssssssssssssssssssssssss]

If you look at it from 2 generations in 1988 came the megadrive/Genesis in 1998 the Dreamcast was released, only 10 years later, compare the graphics of Shenmue to something like altered beast/golden axe on the megadrive, its just mind blowing how quickly graphics got noticeably better. go 10 years back now, from 2023 too 2013, you can barely notice a difference

[@sonyx4500]

Games pretty much reached their limit. Xbox360 and ps3 games still look great.

[@TheOldSchoolCrisis]

@@sonyx4500 I don't think they have "reached their limit" so much as the curve towards the limit offers much less space for that wow factor that we got moving from the 4th to 5th generation, or the 5th to the 6th generation. Games are still getting better and better in terms of graphics, but those differences while noticeable are not impactful. Moving from 2D to 3D was HUGE, and the refinement of 3D in the 6th generation with GC, PS2, and Xbox was pretty astonishing. On the other hand, things like Raytracing and HDR are pretty substantial when you stop to look for them, but they just don't make that much of a difference in the moment to moment gameplay. The other thing to consider is that often the implementation of these advanced technologies take massive teams tons of extra man hours and it means that you get diminishing returns when it comes to time spent vs budget allotted so most games aren't taking full advantage of all the power allotted to them.

[@XanderCrease]

Yeah, Street Fighter 2 and Soul Calibur, Sonic 1 and Sonic Adventure all released in the 90's. Madness! The 90's was the decade with the biggest changes.

[@Richard.Linder]

True. In those early days of the gaming industry, each generation was truly a massive leap, and it was very exciting.

[@jamesgaines6676]

Good observation.

[@LITTLE1994]

The jump from 16-bit to 32, basically 2D to 3D, was the REAL biggest graphics change.

[@coreyhull7625]

I remember looking at magazine previews for the PS2 and the graphics just blowing my mind. Stuff like the PS2 being able to do the FF8 waltz scene in realtime. The change from mostly 2D to mostly 3D felt too apples to oranges to really compare, but PSX to PS2, Saturn to Dreamcast, and N64 to Gamecube were such straight comparisons to see how far things were jumping.

[@itsprobablypedro]

While we may never have another graphical jump wow factor, its nice to see the current generation of consoles with so much QOL features like Near 0 loading times, more stable frame rates, and Quick Resume. That's to say who knows what will really define the next generation.

[@Luke973T]

Yeah this gen blows the previous one away. As a fighting game fan its so nice not to have to wait a minute in between matches because the loading times are so bad. We are midway through the gen and that's when I expect things to really start getting pushed.

[@mb-md3wj]

I just got a ps5 and the loading times and download speed is just magical.

[@adam145]

Resident Evil Remake on GameCube is the most baffling I've ever seen in my life. 6 years to go from walking polygons to characters that look very realistic even to this day if someone updated their shaders.

[@Lightspeeds]

Not to me, mostly because I played Code Veronica first.

[@adam145]

@@Lightspeeds Code Veronica felt too flat to me. Backgrounds were a bit too sparse and didn't quite match what Silent Hill 3 showed on PS2 later.

[@sandman8920]

I’ll never forget the day I played Tony hawk 3 for the first time! It was incredible going from the n64 to seeing that on the GameCube was mind blowing 🤯

[@pkbelly]

For me the biggest graphical leap was Rogue Leader for the release of the GameCube. It looked so close to the movies, and it felt HD even though it was still 480ii.

[@Gogetta80]

Plsying my first ever 3d game: Mario 64 after 10 years of 2d starting on nes absolutely blew my mind. Changing camera angles, varying the speeds u could walk, things getting smaller in the distance. Will never forget that feeling

[@svenbtb]

Aw man, you can't just hit me with the Nier feels like that out of nowhere But yeah, I agree. At the time especially growing up, the jump from SNES to N64, and then from N64 to GCN, were both AMAZING and haven't really been matched since. While there's nothing wrong with more polygons, bigger resolution, bigger textures, more stable framerate, more realistic lightning, those things are all small incremental game-by-game changes and on a game by game basis. They are appreciated and impressive when done well, sure. But I don't think we'll ever see another LEAP like we did before again.

[@RAGEAlanBun]

It’s wild you could have went from being used to playing the SNES in January 1995 to playing the Dreamcast just less than 5 years later, and the GameCube/PS2 a year or two after that. Compare that to the fact we’ve been able to play the PS4/Switch/Xbox One for over a decade and we’ve not had anywhere near as notable changes.

[@Citanoo]

NES to SNES should have been an option. It was great!

[@The_MEMEphis]

Yeah but it was still 2d pixel art not as big of a jump from 2d to 3d

[@mothius238]

@@The_MEMEphis NES to SNES is a big improvement just like N64 to Gamecube or Ps1 to Ps2, it's not need to be a 2D to 3D to be a big jump or invalidate the improvements ...

[@The_MEMEphis]

@@mothius238 yeah but the whole debate here is which generation is the biggest jump not what generation is a big jump because every generation is a big jump

[@aliali-ce3yf]

SNES to N64 - that blew me away. seeing Mario 64 at Target, the Jolly Roger stage and its great soundtrack will forever be the bar of "wow , this is the future"

[@michaelsummerell8618]

I'd say that the voters who responded aren't old enough to know earlier generations of gaming. Yes, I agree with the highest ranking choice as leap to 3d was massive - Mario 64 was literally overwhelming at the time. But how many of those who responded also remember the huge jump from 8bit to 16bit... Or even earlier?

[@grabisoft]

True but to remember the leap from Atari to nes the guy should have over 40 something. And let's be honest most of the gamers of that time lost interest in video games long time ago.

[@Chelaxim]

I think the jump from 6th gen to 7th gen was the biggest with an asterisk. The launch Xbox 360 didn't have HDMI support and not everyone got an HDTV right away. Many early PS3 and 360 games when played today on a HDTV display looked like they were their own HD Remasters like Kameo Elements of Power,Enchanted Arms or Tekken 6. If you were to compare games from very late in the generation like Tales of Berseria, Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn,Persona 5,Metal Gear Solid V,Rise of the Tomb Raider or Soulcalibur V to their 6th gen counterparts counterparts they blow them out of the water.

[@doctorg5056]

The fact so many sixth generation games held a stable 60fps is mind-boggling. I know the Switch gets a bad rap from some people for performance (despite being a trailblaser and a powerhouse for what it is, but that's a topic for another video), but even today PlayStation and Xbox can struggle with 60fps, even to the point that games advertised as 60 end up releasing at 30 with promises to add support for 60 later... and here the Gamecube and PS2 were just doing that perfectly out of the box.

[@lol-ih1tl]

Mario Sunshine ran at 30fps.

[@Bargate]

Developers back then had to work within a ton of limitations and very good at it but that also limited scope allowing a more polished product. Now the ps5 and Xbox are so powerful in comparison they can be lazy a lot of stuff and they kind of have to because the scope of games are so much bigger now a game of similar quality takes around 6 or 7 years to make now it seems

[@lol-ih1tl]

@@Bargate That's not true at all. Bad games are the result of many factors such as: Mismanagement, crunch, overambition, budget contraints, team size constraints, time constraints, hardware limitations and bad scoping, not laziness. Also only a handful of developers were creative with hardware limitations back then. Most developers at the time went overambitious and made terrible games hindered by the aforementioned problems.

[@itsmatt517]

To be fair to Mario World, it did have quite a lot of up and down as well

[@traviscunningham7062]

And A Link to the Past?

[@Jamsch101]

It's amazing just how far games have come. Great video, Jon. Nothing will ever beat the experience from the jump to ps2 for me.

[@kevinvandorst]

For me the ps2 was a downgrade, coming from the amazing Dreamcast.

[@Lexsoufz]

@@kevinvandorstok there 🤣

[@HollowRick]

​@@kevinvandorstearly PS2 games definitely If you had a dreamcast and DVD player in 2000 you didn't need a PS2 for me personally I'd say the PlayStation 2 didn't really hit stride until 2001 with games such as final fantasy X, devil may cry, and GTA 3

[@JorgeTrueno]

I'm now replaying OG Metroid Prime and that's a near perfect game, it's crazy how good it looks and how smooth the controls are for an early NGC game.

[@DogeTheShibe]

3:07 "Metal Gear Solid 3 on the PlayStation 3" Shows footage of Metal Gear Solid 4

[@stevenwarner9156]

Strongly agree. I lived through seeing 3D become normalised over 2D games with the 5th generation of consoles, and it was a massive leap forward, but the 3D was still very obviously impressionistic. The 6th generation was a massive leap in giving us detailed 3D worlds you could get lost in. The training wheels were off, and devs practically learned to fly in the 6th gen.

[@CenturianEagle]

I like how you showed that beginning part of ffX when you said they likely won’t have that wow moment again. I remember that, Christmas morning loading it up was so crazy!!! I was sad they didn’t have a world map in that game, and I kept waiting for it happen the same way ff7 did (where you play in one big area for along time and then all of the sudden BAM! A huge world map opens up and you realize the game has just begun 😢, good times. Damn that game was good, the way you stand at the exit to midgar for a bit and your party talks to eachother and stuff before they leave for the world map, so amazing

[@HollowRick]

Yeah I think he's a little bit too young to appreciate how much other leap final fantasy 7 was at the time

[@M1XART]

After 2000/2001 there really was biggest jump on 3D -gaming, but why? Actually, it's because there was no jump on resolution. GameCube games did run on same 640*480 resolution as Nintendo 64 Expansion Pack enhanced games. But this really opened doors to have virtually infinite use of polygons, especially on character models. Also 60fps was actually easy to achieve, as those consoles were "over-powered" for 480i. I think it was great to see that happen. Just for characters sake and for high texture - quality all around. Unlike on PC during early nineties, when it was all about resolution, not so much about texture mapping. Those games looked bland. Sadly, on XBOX360/PS3 generation we were back to barely 30fps gaming. Textures also are sometimes inferior even these days than on Dreamcast. But you can always point your finger on those flat screen displays. After all 640*480 is only 307200 pixels, while 1920*1080 is 2073600. Thats 6,75 times as much pixels to draw. Now, imagine someone creating XBOX 360 -game on 640*480P. -It could have so many polygons and special effects that graphics would look like a real film-footage. Great example of something similar, is Panzer Dragoon Orta on original XBOX. It runs below 480i, but o' boy it is smooth and full of life. Don't get me wrong. I'm really into high resolution gaming. But i would not had sacrifice framerate, textures and special effects just to run game on 4K or 8K or something. As for handheld gaming, 3DS is still freaking amazing.

[@HappyDrunkGamer]

I think part of the issue with recent generation jumps is that many games have had to be cross gen or support a wide array of hardware, Horizon Forbidden West or Forza Horizon 5 both look amazing on PS5/Series X respectively, but its mostly a refinement, pushing out details, increasing resolution, not fundamentally looking like a next gen game over the previous consoles as the underlying tech is still last gen. But as you pointed out the jump from the PS1/Saturn/N64 to DC/PS2/GC/Xbox in terms of polygon counts allowing developers show faces correctly is really the key, that opening scene in Shenmue where you can see actual emotion on the characters faces still blows me away, and the jump between RE1 on the PS1/Saturn vs the Gamecube version...... WOW. The fact is that game still holds up even today it was such a huge leap. One question I would pose though, I have recently gone back through and played Detroit Become Human and as its not an open world game it has a level of graphics that most PS4 games could not reach. Do you think part of the issue is that because of many games being open world, they do have to pull back on graphics etc, that actually graphics in the constraints of more linear games, actually have seen a bigger jump? For example the faces in Horizon Forbidden West have incredible animation and vs Zero Dawn they are a generational leap, however, because I like many others have played games like Detroit Become Human, it doesn't jump out as much? I mean look at say Soul Calibre on Dreamcast vs Shenmue, or MGS2 vs GTA3 on PS2, is this part of the issue? If you compare GTA 3 to GTA 4 I would say its almost as big of a jump as RE1 to RE1:Remake in overall terms, but the issue is we had games like RE1:Remake on GC meaning that the character models in GTA 4 dont seem as impressive, because we have seen that before?

[@GiancarloThomazSenoni]

2D to 3D is such a massive jump, the Game Cube refined severals of the flaws of early 3D games on N64/PS1 2:59

[@liammcnicholas918]

Metroid Prime looks amazing, and it’s over 20 years old. Ocarina of Time, Final Fantasy 7, Mario 64, and MGS by comparison look pretty ridiculous now, and yet these are considered masterpieces. Metroid Prime has aged a lot better.

[@traviscunningham7062]

What about the 3Ds version of OOT?

[@liammcnicholas918]

@@traviscunningham7062 It looks good, but it has a lot of the original game’s DNA left over

[@FletcherReedsRandomness]

Something I don’t see many people talking about is the during-generation advancements. Compare Super Mario 64 to Conker’s Bad Fur Day, or Grand Theft Auto III to Shadow of the Colossus, or Sonic 06 to Sonic Generations. As more developers get used to the hardware, they can really take advantage of everything that hardware can do and push it to its limits. To me, that’s just as impressive as generational jumps.

[@lol-ih1tl]

Or the jump from Splatoon 2 to Splatoon 3.

[@cauldronofstardust4113]

This is an excellent point. It’s easy to distinguish early PlayStation games (95/96/97) from the later ones (98/99/00) because-as you said-developers had more time to familiarize themselves with the consoles, & the tricks they could utilize that could get the most out of them.

[@ThomastheDankEngine8900]

Fifth to sixth gen was a huge graphical leap

[@TNewton001]

I remember the first time I saw Soul Caliber on Dreamcast. It was the first time seeing anything on Dreamcast after years of playing PlayStation. My jaw was on the floor.

[@zobizobstudio]

Right after my Playstation 1 my parents bought me an Xbox with Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. You cant even fathom the gap between a 1994 tekken 3 compared to dynamic lightning, insane game physic, insane AI in a real time wide Opened level from Splinter cell !

[@KomradeCPU]

One interesting aspect from the first jump to 3D was that, since there were still considerable limitations the developers had to be very creative in their solutions, specially considering the gameplay as you already knew how much you could push on graphics. That created some kind of building block such the refinement 3D era that came after could properly realize those well thought ideas, providing so many masterpiece games. Let's not forget pc as well, around that era there were some pretty incredible companies doing their best, with also many console games ported so having a pc for gaming was getting more popular; steam as well, multiplayer games as a whole. What a journey it was.

[@superdave9]

Growing up in this era was truly special

[@YusiDJordan]

The feeling of going from PS1 to PS2 was so special. It felt like an alien console. Games like Metal Gear Solid 2 were SHOCKINGLY beautiful

[@KonohaRamenNoodles]

I’ll always remember the jump from the N64/PS1 generation to the PS2/Xbox/GC being mind blowing. We’re talking about going from the character models in Goldeneye to Halo. Captain Keyes looked photo realistic to me at the time when I saw him a few hours after shooting Oddjob in the face.

[@Brad-cb2dt]

4:07 the “bits” have little to do with this graphical changes from Saturn and PlayStation to the Nintendo 64. After all, 32-bit PC’s can run Crysis. The reason the N64 looks better is because of its memory bandwidth. Its higher memory bandwidth allowed it to have a z buffer for perspective projection. While the textures were smaller on the N64 due to cartridge storage limitations, the textures did not wobble like they did on the Saturn and the PlayStation. Z buffers are not an exclusive feature to 64bit CPUs. It’s not the bits, despite what Atari’s and Nintendo’s marketing departments would have you believe.

[@kmenzel]

I think a thing that's worth understanding is the interaction between PC gaming and console gaming and how one informs the other. Back in the NES days, you just have a better experience playing on Console. You can see PC trying to come up with ways to ... scroll playfields. To deal with not even having sprite engines. To make music sound ... like music. The SNES managed to jump ahead of the majority of PC games (don't come for me, Amiga fans) - in terms of colour, sound, etc. - but that didn't last long. By the time you have an N64 or a playstation a lot of the early experimentation with what games can look like is being done on PC. And by the time you're hiting PS/2, XBOX, gamecubes, etc - you're hitting an era where consoles release, and they're... stable good for the money, but they aren't doing anything a gaming PC isn't doing in terms of graphics. Then as you move on, a lot of what you get is consoles as these... points in time that represent the constant improvements being made in PC space and reflecting that back into a non-upgradable product that just sits there. So when all you look at is consoles... you see the leaps, instead of the constant progress in gaming as a whole. And consoles are still, graphically, pretty much that. There have been some cool architecture things here and there with console GPUs here and there, but like the XBOX 360 wasn't *better* than the best PC games could do at the time, it was just more efficient at it.

[@tor2919]

Also I’d say the jump from SNES to NES was pretty insane. Certainly top three. Biggest developments: 1. SNES to N64 2.NES to SNES 3. N64 to GameCube

[@LCTesla]

Dreamcast was the miraculous one, beating its rivals by 2 years or more and already offering much of what that next generation represented... WHY did it not succeed? It will never cease to confound me that gamers rejected this gem of a system. myself I WAS enjoying Soul Calibur on this system at the time... what an incredible start of a series on an incredible system... none of the iterations after that came close to offering that much of a jump in value.

[@jamiecal11]

It's part of why Gamecube has aged so well. Still looks great to this day whereas N64 looks like shit and has a shit controller.

[@TheCrankyTechnician]

Born in 1990, the 6th gen truly felt special and like the future to me and a lot of people my age then. I was a hardcore N64 player from 1997-2001 and I'll never forget when I saw the Gamecube reveal in a magazine and being blown away by the graphics. If you look at titles like Starfox Adventures or Rogue Squadron, they were looking really good for more than a decade after their release and still look nice today

[@alexojideagu]

Going from 2D games to arcade Virtua racing, Virtua Fighter, Ridge Racer, Daytona USA was also incredible at the time. That's totally lost and taken for granted now. Although 2D games look great, nobody had seen 3D like that before in 1993.

[@humanice2]

The thing with Playstation, I didn't notice the leap because I was both very young, and I played Quake and Doom on my father's Windows 95 before I got the PS1. The best graphics on consoles at that time were ofcourse on the N64, GoldenEye was the go-to game. When the PS2 launched, I could not believe the graphics I was seeing, Silent Hill 2 looked like real life, F-Zero GX on the Gamecube looked amazing and it still holds up today. I also remember the leap from PS2 to Xbox 360, I remember seeing videos of House of the Dead 4 in arcades and Dead Rising on the 360, the graphics were superb, I had never seen anything like it. With the Xbox One, well I got that one day, played games like Killer Instinct, yeah the graphics were cool but nothing too spectacular compared to last gen, my PC could handle similar games. With Series X, I got what I expected.. the wow factor definitely has gone down.

[@mega77]

Had a bit of the same experience, I played Doom II or Tomb Raider on Windows 95, so the N64 looked good, but not that much compared to PC. But the games were amazing and felt big (Ocarina of Time, Goldeneye...). But I could really feel the difference with the 6th gen power when playing Mario Sunshine at a Toy Store. Not only the details, lightning, render distance, frame rate were better (couldn't really tell at the time, just feel it), but I was also really impressed by the physics and rendering of water in the game, it really felt like a huge leap. At realease 360 games looked very nice, even on cathodic TV's. But that's really when Gears of War I/II and Assassin's Creed came out, and could be played on HD TV's that the Gap was trully felt with the prior Gen. Hell you could perfectly tell the difference between a game that ran on Wii (last Gen Hardware) and a game like FFXIII realeased on PS360.

[@giulytsme]

I always imagined the next big jump beeing VR! But... for now there is not much market there

[@MedalionDS9]

The jump from N64 to Gamecube was HUGE for Nintendo

[@lol-ih1tl]

The same is true for the jump from GBA to DS, from DS to 3DS, from Wii to Wii U and soon from Switch to its successor.

[@MedalionDS9]

imo the leaps from the above mentions while big, are not as big imho from N64 to Gamecube ... a lot of Wii to Wii U games looked like Wii graphics but in HD because they had good artstyles that would convert nicely @@lol-ih1tl

[@lol-ih1tl]

​​​@@MedalionDS9 the graphical jump from Mario Kart Wii to 8 was massive, which is why MK8 made retro tracks feel like new tracks.

[@Faceplay2]

Honestly, the biggest jump I ever remember was easily from the PS2 to the PS3 at the time the graphics truly felt like real life I was like completely blown away

[@wurzelbert84wucher5]

I didn't like the graphics of PS3 era games, especially the color palettes felt so off and together with the bad lighting it made everything so muddy. I really liked the jump to PS4 style games later on again, but PS3 is the "dark age" in terms of graphics for me ;)

[@Faceplay2]

@@wurzelbert84wucher5 I’m not talking about how they aged over the year I’m talking about when it came out. I remember being a little kid and being blown away how good resistance, and the game motor storm looked . I think I was like 9 then. I grow up with the N64 and then the PS2 so I could notice the jump up. Also again look at metal gear, solid three versus four basically look like real life at the time. Also, it wasn’t just me that thought this most of my friends when we talk about gaming thing pretty similar things from that time.

[@mycomputergl0wsblu]

I agree with you man, from PS2 to Xbox 360/PS3 was absolutely mind blowing. Thats when consoles started to reach near PC level graphics. I recall visiting my friend who had just got an Xbox 360 and after playing it for a bit, I could never play my PS2 the same again.

[@Drybones2015]

I was born a year after the N64 released but my family was always a generation behind when it came to owning consoles. So I was lucky enough to still be able to experience the transition to 3D. I still remember my sisters hogging the SNES so my dad pulled out an N64 with Wave Race from the close. It blew my mind, one of the youngest memories I still have.

[@nukepineisland]

I had a launch copy of Resident Evil on PS1 and the 1st time playing was at a friend's house there were at least six 7th grade boys in the darkened room (Halloween time mind you) sitting on the floor watching me play , all seasoned video game players at that point, when the dogs jumped through the window every kid's ass left the floor at least a foot and most screamed. Such a feat of immersion is impossible on the SNES gen. THE. END. What is amazing is that the next jump kept pace going from PS1 to PS2 , those were fantastic times.

[@rpgfoods1457]

I always felt that the hump to HD was the most impressive because of the clarity it added to game play, you no long had to get right up next to an object to see details. It also feels incredible easy to go back to games from the 360 PS3 era. Wail PS2 and OG Xbox are harder to go back to.

[@lol-ih1tl]

The Jump to HD however hindered game performance leading to many games running at 30fps.

[@rpgfoods1457]

@lol-ih1tl Really? I didn't know many consol games ran more than 30 fps, during thay time period. Of course I was a kid when the 360 and PS2 came out.

[@Chelaxim]

​@@rpgfoods1457There are some late era PS2 and 360 games that feel very modern.

[@Chelaxim]

​@@lol-ih1tl30 fps is generous for that gen LMAO.

[@The_MEMEphis]

​@@rpgfoods1457most PS2 games ran at 60 the 360 is a generation ahead that's the PS3 which that generation was mostly 30

[@GiancarloThomazSenoni]

11:49 cant wait to play the next 3D Mario looking like a Pixar movie

[@brandonsimoncini]

The last mind blow for me was the Battlefield 4 campaign reveal trailer - I thought it was live action when Michael K Williams started talking to ‘you’ until the lights were turned on Battlefield 3 already looked great, so seeing the quality get a resolution bump did Frostbite wonders.

[@schmecklin377]

I think the best part is that gamecube/ps2 was able to do realtime graphics as good as stuff that could only be prerendered before. So it really felt like you were playing a movie or animation or render.

[@ari-athbadminton0301]

The most important jump nobody is talking about that was the gameplay improvement. Things got not only more refined but even unexpected bugs became gameplay features, the bunny hop, the rocket jumping, the out of bound skipping (in classic wipeout), the highly immersive driving mechanics made old era of games just epic since some aspect were bugs. But on that aspect things are taking a dip.

[@koffing2073]

Most impressive jump was going from consoles to PC, it had high resolution monitors much before HD TVs, 60 FPS and custom graphics.

[@kid14346]

When i was a kid playing windwaker my brain basically disintegrated when my older brother came home and told me he got the new zelda game. He put in twilight princess and ny child brain was like, "What do you mean this isn’t real life?!"

[@DoctorMinjinx]

Is it weird to say I actually feel like 8th gen to 9th gen is a more noticeable jump than 7th to 8th? 9th gen has had a lot of dual releases holding it back, but I've actually felt more impressed with it than 8th gen tbh. GTA VI is blowing me away (assuming the trailer is reminiscent of what the game will look like) Early on, 8th gen games really felt unimpressive visually, it wasn't until like 2015 with the Witcher 3 I truly felt like I was playing a next gen game. Maybe I'm not thinking hard enough? I don't know I just kind of feel this way.

[@MG-wk2eh]

GTA 6's trailer didn't impress me graphically. Maybe I had unrealistic expectations, but it is just nowhere near as impressive (in relative terms) as the first GTA V trailer from 2011.

[@mega77]

Had a N64 with some of the best visual looking games of the time (Zelda Oot / Majora's Mask, Goldeneye, Star Wars Racer...). I remember playing Mario Sunshine at a Toy Store. I was not only impressed by the graphics and smoothness of the game, but the water and liquids rendering/ physics were absolutely insane for its time. We weren't running Digital Foundry analysis of each game coming out during that time, we were only kids, but we could feel that games were becoming way more immersive and realistic compared to the late 90's 3D games.

[@bigduke5902]

SNES to PS1 was slightly bigger.

[@Nigel222]

The Dreamcast/PS2/Gamecube/Xbox gen really was the peak of video games.

[@lol-ih1tl]

It had Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing in it aka the greatest video game ever made.

[@seanhicks8569]

I remember going to toys r us with friends just to look at the n64/ps1 displays that was definitely the biggest jump.

[@TheNinjaMouse]

The N64/PS1 era showed what 3D gaming could do. The GC/PS2 era made it actually look good. (No offense to those with nostalgia for N64/PS1 graphics. I lived through that era too, but I wasn't a fan of them at the time and I still don't think they've aged well. Personal taste.)

[@jsr734]

The Tomb Raiders, Gran Turismos, Ridge Racer Type 4 still look very good to me. Banjo Kazooie, Zelda OOT, Zelda Majora´s Mask, Mario 64, still look really good if you play them in a crt tv.

[@jaretco6423]

​@@jsr734Paper Mario 64.

[@RuiTsuki]

I'm sadly just ever so slightly too young to be able to fully relate to this. The N64 was my first console, but I was about 5 or 6 when the Gamecube released, too young to fully appreciate the graphical jump. But I can remember that Pokémon XD was the first time I saw a game in an ad on TV and really wanted it. The pure presenation of Shadow Lugia won me over. And I am very sure that this was only possible in part of how great the game still looks today. So I *do* get it, just in a more limited fashion.

[@cbrmax4192]

I'm 40, started with the Intellivision (before NES) up to PS4 PRO and Switch. All I can say is that I NEVER experienced again what I felt when I connected my new Dreamcast to a VGA 15" monitor running Soul Calibur 😲😲😲 Crisp, precise, colorful and smooooth images, I almost couldn't believe it! ..and then came Sonic, Shenmue, F355 Challenge, Virtua Tennis, Crazy Taxi, Rez and so many TRUE A+ games..... just WOW 😱😱😱

[@MichaelHeide]

The jump from 2D bitmaps to 3D polygons had already happened before the jump to 32/64-bit, with Starfox, Stunt Race FX and Doom.

[@DeadOmega]

Thankful to have been alive during the shift to GC/PS2/Xbox. Truly was an unprecedented jump in tech ..

[@mihau5037]

I will always say that SNES games look better than N64 games. Super Nintendo titles had more style and thought put into their visuals. You can appreciate the elaborate spritework more than the early 3D models of a 5th gen console.

[@lol-ih1tl]

Star Fox is the exception though

[@mihau5037]

@@lol-ih1tl Fair enough

[@jaretco6423]

Agreed. Nothing against the N64. But I feel like visually and presentation wise, the SNES looks better than alot of the N64 games. I even enjoyed there gameplay perspective more than most of the N64 ones.

[@sheldoncooper8199]

In Summer of 2002 or 2003 i had this conversation with my Gamer Buddy We talked about Metal Gear Solid 2, Metroid Prime and Def Jam Fight for New York and i said to him Dude i can not imagine Games Ever Looking any better. Those were the Days.

[@nmdpeaceout]

I think the key point with the jump from ps1 to ps2, was we had smooth Unpixellated 3d graphics, with lagre distances and spaces to play with. So it basically finally became what all games were trying to be previously. Respectful artworks.

[@LCTesla]

8:42 resolution... AND aspect ratio... we can't deny that the move from 4:3 to 16:9 was a massive deal!

[@UndeadEggmiester]

Ive been playing games for over 35 years now. We've had a lot og big jumps. Artari to NES was insane but i definitely feel like PS3/xbox 360 might be close biggest.

[@RetroDaddyPH]

This is why emulation on a handheld device is thriving. We've come to a point that so many devices can now handle PS2 and below like a champ.

[@BaggyPop]

I remember how crazy tekken 4 looked. I remember tekken tag was also for ps2 but tekken 4 still looks like a ps5 game in my head honestly

[@SlowSpyder]

The thing is, any new generation now is just an improvement. 16 bit to 32 bit and the immediately post 32 bit generation were revolutionary in what they could do compared to the prior gen. Now, just more polygons, more lighting effects, more storage, etc.

[@EnigmaHood]

One of the reasons why we haven't seen a huge improvement in graphics over the previous generation is because of the increase in resolution that kept creeping in. PS3 gen had 720p native, PS4 gen had 1080p, PS5 gen 4k. I was a critic of these resolution increases because they meant that all other graphical attributes had to suffer. 4K was 4x the pixel density over 1080p. So this required a lot more powerful hardware in order to run at a steady 60fps. The good news is that, this resolution creep is likely to peter off finally. There is 8K, but 8K is kind of overkill. You really don't need it except for giant home theater TVs. So my guess is that for next gen, 4K will remain as the standard resolution. The other factor is likely due to dev time, although this is somewhat situational. I think open world games will take much longer to make due to the expectation of greater detail, and a larger world, but other kinds of games don't need to be so big. Then there's also the fact that, ugly games tend to sell really well. Fortnite isn't ugly per se, in fact when it first came out, I was impressed with its smooth looking, cartoonish graphics. But now it's old and tired because everyone is doing it, and why bother improve the graphics, when it won't affect sales? Minecraft same deal. Looked cool at the time, but now it's old and tired. Call of Duty games all look the same to me, and they all sell. So why bother invest in making the graphics look really good?

[@megamillion5852]

I feel like video games were most visually interesting around the 64-bit to 128 bit era. There was just something very candid about the way games conveyed their vision under still rather limited means. And it would be remiss of me not to mention that we had some of the most creatively wonderful art styles during this period, as well.

[@MusicSkeletonKeys]

One tidbit that further drives home the leap between GTA's - Body Harvest, for the 64. Body Harvest was made by the same team, and you can tell it's a preview of GTA3's core game mechanics.

[@MicaiahBaron]

I think the most noteworthy thing is, for the most part; with just a "best of the game (no slowdown)" video you can very easily tell a PS1 game from a PS2 game, you can usually tell apart a PS2 game from a PS3 game, but sometimes you can't tell a PS3 game from a PS4 game (ignoring how much of the PS4 library is PS3 ports).

[@maxwelllittle5291]

Yeah we have reached diminishing returns in terms of graphics for awhile now.

[@daniellesiak6209]

The only chance of ever feeling that "whoa this is the future of games now!" new generation feeling, is if all these photo realistic unreal engine 5 tech demos drop for real, or something like Unrecord comes out playing exactly like the footage we've seen. And then after that there really is no more bar to raise

[@Witchlover1984]

I get the wow feeling In vr seeing how that technology is evolving every year in it's infancy

[@jamesgaines6676]

The Sega Dreamcast was the first game system I owned where I can distinctly remember people from my parents generation finding what was happening on screen to be impressive, interesting, and realistic when most of them had no prior interest in video games whatsoever. To me that spoke volumes…

[@casualcadaver]

Sega Dreamcast was the only console who’s graphical jump was unbelievable. It was surreal.

[@vincentlamontagne7639]

the jump to N64/PSX/Saturn just was the biggest jump. It was a total paradigm shift. 3D graphics changed games to their core. Graphics became amazing with the next gen, but it was really graphical updates and not a whole lot more.

[@xman777b]

biggest jump was from N64/PS1 to Dreamcast. And that's never been equaled

[@SatansBestBuddy1]

8:43 - "the only thing that wasn't a huge jump was resolution" uh, 640x480 is double the resolution of 320x240? that's four times as many pixels the hardware has to render compared to the previous generation, which is about the same leap as 1080p to 4K resolutions we saw with the PS4 to PS5. I still remember some games on the N64 had "Hi Res" modes that managed to hit 640x480 at the cost of tanking the framerate, meanwhile the Gamecube had that as the default, with games that looked better and ran smoother. even after 12 minutes it feels like you're underselling how big a leap in visual fidelity that generation really was.

[@dafff08]

as a 3d artist, there a couple of visual tricks that are fairly simple to implement, but give big visual boosts, such as smooth shading, beveled edges, ambient occlusion and pbr textures. on older hardware these were quite taxing, but now even smartphones can run it. just look at certain mobile games. they look far better than any ps2 game despite the lack of visual fidelity.

[@TIDbitRETRO]

Super Nintendo to N64. Case closed. Nothing else even comes close.

[@Trashedaccount123]

Can you imagine another graphical jump like like N64 to Gamecube?

[@Treetops27]

Yes. The Xbox 360.

[@didgeridude8430]

Smooth McGroove just did the Links Awakening theme so it’s cool to see the theme featured in this video too!

[@aegisofhonor]

don't forget the jump to Atari 2600/Intelivision to NES and Sega Master System was a significant jump as well.

[@MVergaraQ]

I think we'll experience sth similar with VR technology getting better and better

[@Jakob-W]

5:20 I honestly don't think they would be because the jump in visual quality was so massive it was actually worth the money. Despite only being a few years since the original.

[@Amra..]

These graphical jumps still exist but in VR gaming

[@jsr734]

The strange thing is, its not catching up. I mean very few games support VR or are planning to have VR support and defenitly VR is not the way most people are experiencing their videogames right now.

[@NYG5]

Going from Goldeneye to Halo was a massive jump.

[@Brianhahahaha]

I think if we were going to get this feeling again we would have to go from ps5 and series x to those ultra realistic demos that look like someone is filming it with a 4k camera that someone has to break it down frame by frame to even notice it's a video game and not just someone's camera footage.

[@MasonOfLife]

Going from Mario 64 to Sunshine was actually crazy

[@traviscunningham7062]

Then to Galaxy.

[@MasonOfLife]

@@traviscunningham7062 I meant visually/graphically, the jump from Sunshine to Galaxy in terms of graphics isn’t really significant But the detail, models, and overall graphics from Mario 64 to Sunshine was huge

[@jaretco6423]

​@MasonOfLife But Galaxy does look incredible though. Considering it's on the Wii and not many Wii games looked this incredible ad Galaxy has.

[@MasonOfLife]

@@jaretco6423 I agree that Galaxy looks great, it’s just not as big of a graphical/technical leap as 64 to Sunshine, from the polygon count, to the textures, animations, details, a very big leap

[@jaretco6423]

@@MasonOfLife That's true. Good point.