What retro games graphically impressed you growing up?

Graphics have come a long way what games do you remember really impressing you the most as a kid?

For me I remember seeing this Super Mario World commercial I was blown away seeing that flying kooping going through the screen effect it was like magic to me as a kid lol.

Donkey Kong Country was way ahead of it's time it pushed snes to it's limits Rare ported pre-rendered 3D stills to the Snes as 2D sprites and background tiles

Star Fox one of the first games I remember seeing 3D polygon graphics using the super FX chip.

PC: Doom, Magic Carpet
SNES: Chrono Trigger and Mega Man X
PS1: Spyro, Street Fighter Alpha, Tekken

FF7

When Mortal Kombat came out for Genesis. The characters looked real.

Donkey Kong Country, Killer Instinct, and Vectorman definitely floored me as a kid, but I don't really care for the pre-rendered 3D converted to sprites look anymore. Same thing with Mortal Kombat.

Super Metroid, The Last Blade, and Gauro impressed me back then and still to this day.

Early 3D graphics were a disappointment to me back then. Wasn't until I saw Soul Calibur running on Dreamcast that I began to appreciate game visuals again.

I believe it was in 1996 when I was in school. We were watching some television program in school and a commercial came up for the Nintendo 64 console, showing scenes of Mario 64. It was the first time I had ever seen real 3D like that and my jaw hit the floor hard.

First time I saw Super Mario world at Walmart being played I was amazed! Still kinda am. Game looks great. Donkey Kong Country, Mortal Kombat 2 as well on snes. On pc when I first played Rebel Assault I was floored. With a flight stick in hand and that cd quality sound coming out of those speakers! Next one was Wing Commander 3 on pc.

Lots of games over the years have impressed me, been gaming since around 84.

Jungle Hunt - Atari 2600, even to this day its IMO one of the best looking 2600 games out there. Good animation and parallax scrolling are two of its bigger highlights.

Rampage and R-Type - Sega Master System, this was as close as humanly possible to bringing arcade games onto home consoles at the time. R-Type looked amazing and I still play this version to this day.

Street Fighter 2 - SNES, took arcade home conversions to a whole new level, it was as close to arcade perfect as 16 bit machines were going to get.

Star Fox - SNES, 3D on the snes, what?!? It blew me away when it released, it hasn't aged well (only because of the low frame rate which I would guess is 10 fps) but at the time it was a sight to see.

Altered Beast - Sega Genesis, this was the first 16 bit title I ever played and it was such a huge leap over the nes and sms in everyway.

Virtual Racing - Arcade, 32x. This was the first fully 3d racing game I ever played and the speed, solid frame rate and unique look of the game hooked me. It also helped the the racing was also really well done and fun. I got a 32x for Xmas the year it released just to play it at home, and even though that was the only 32x game I owned until a few years ago it was totally worth it.

FF7 - PS1, Wow!!! From the never before seen cut scenes to the characters and enemies in full 3d, everything about this game blew me away.

Virtual Fighter 3 - Arcade, dear god this game pushed 3d at the time, characters that had muscles that would flex, moving clothing, uneven terrain to fight on, great art and colorful, to this day If still kill to get an actual arcade machine for my house.

God of War - PS4, this is easily the best looking game I've ever played. The art work, detailed characters and world blow me away ever time I turn on my ps4 and play it. There might be other games that are technically more impressive on PC, but this still is hands down the best looking game I've ever seen.

Donkey Kong country

Clockwork knight

Astral

Knights into dreams

I remember Legend of the Dragoon impressing me as a young kid when I first got it for the PS1.. I just recently started playing it again and it blows my mind to think I thought that was advanced at the time... man have we came a long way haha.

Mortal Kombat 2 and Street Fighter 2, running on the Sega Genesis impressed me. They were reasonably close to the arcade.

DKC1 and Super Mario World impressed me a lot. Honestly, both of them still look decent enough today.

Lots of games but the one that stands out in my mind as the first game to truly impress me was Mega Man 2 (nes), the level design and huge detailed mid bosses were truly a sight to behold for the 8 year old version of myself and very few games cause the same level of graphical nostalgia as that one does.

• SNES: Star Fox, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, & Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
• N64: Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask & Perfect Dark
• PC: Half-Life & Crysis
• Sega Genisis: Sonic the Hedgehog & 3
• Xbox: Halo: Combat Evolve & Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

• Sonic 2
• Virtua Fighter
• Cyber Speedway
• Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight

Digimon World, Resident Evil 4, ratchet and clank games

as an earlier post, Starwing on SNES was a big moment visually, although even then its slow framerate was a chore.

But, the one that wins for first ever amazing impression on me, was when my mate showed me Wolfenstein 3D on his new PC his mom bought him. I was terrible at it but kinda hooked on PC gaming from that moment.

I got into games by the late 80s, with an Atari 2600. On the present subject, I could cite:

Gladiator - by Alumer, 1986. One of the first arcade games I saw in my life.

Metal Storm - by Irem, 1991. Thats still one of my favorite Nes games. Its backgrounds are interestingly detailed.

Jorney to Silius - by Sunsoft, 1990. The backgrounds are good, maybe not as much as Metal Storm's, but it got some impressive bosses. Another one of my favs, as well.