Graphics aren’t everything, but they do count for a lot, and if it weren’t for continuous advancements in graphics technology, then there’d still be games where the player has to, “save the green dot with your fantastic flying red square,” to quote GTA: Vice City’s hilarious radio commercial for the Degenatron game console.And it’s not just about the tech. Sometimes what’s required is a game developer bold enough to put in the time and effort required to set new visual standards. Where once this was all about squeezing more colors and bigger sprites onto the screen, it’s now a question of making the most effective use of fancy-sounding tools like rendering APIs and substance integration.
10 Out Run (1986)
Almost everything about Out Run was revolutionary and unprecedented: its non-linearity, its soundtrack, its deluxe hydraulic arcade cabinet, and, of course, those incredible graphics. Even today it’s beautiful to look at, which isn’t something that can be said of many games of the era, even some of the most beloved.
The sheer speed of its faux-3D world is still impressive, and its landscapes, while barren by today’s standards, are nonetheless atmospheric, iconic, and gorgeous. And many of its details, such as the way the driver and his passenger’s hair flutters in the wind, truly are timeless visual masterstrokes.
9 Sonic The Hedgehog (1991)
In the classic Nintendo vs. Sega console war of the 80s and 90s, Sega’s biggest strength was the sheer speed its home machines were capable of. Sega knew that it would have a hard time rivaling Nintendo’s Mario for design ingenuity, but one way to compete would be to make the legendary plumber look slow, sluggish, and old-fashioned.
And so Sonic The Hedgehog, a remarkably colorful and fast-paced platformer even by today’s standards, was born. And while it certainly didn’t supersede Nintendo’s golden boy in the long-term, its sharp, vibrant, faux-3D looks did make Mario look a little quaint for a while.
8 Star Fox (1993)
Star Fox was a descendent of Starglider, which was in turn directly inspired by Atari’s classic 1983 Star Wars coin-op. So it’s no coincidence at all that Star Fox very much has the feel of some of Star Wars' most iconic X-Wing sequences.
The smooth polygonal graphics of Star Fox were so cutting edge that the SNES wasn’t actually quite powerful enough to run the game without a little help, so every game cartridge had to be fitted with a Super FX graphics acceleration coprocessor. The results were truly groundbreaking and ushered in a new era of 3D gaming.
7 Doom (1993)
While the consoles of the day had to be augmented in order to run 3D games smoothly, the 3D revolution was already underway on PC, and leading the charge was id Software’s seminal Doom.
Doom was so much more 3D than anything that had come before. Its environments had texture and verticality and atmospheric lighting, while its enemies were gruesome and aggressive and died with incredibly satisfying animations. Until 1993, PC gaming had been all about strategy games, adventures, and RPGs, but with one incredible game, the PC suddenly became the premier platform for action gaming.
6 Final Fantasy 7 (1997)
RPGs used to be much like the tabletop games they evolved from. There were lots of character sheets with lists of letters and words and numbers. Some of them had pretty visuals, but graphics weren’t generally a priority. Players were supposed to use their imaginations, just like they did playing tabletop D&D.
Then Final Fantasy 7 came along. Three CD-ROMs packed with a whole new level of audio-visual richness, not just for RPGs, but for games generally. Some might argue that FMV and static painted backgrounds don’t count as “graphics”, but the way it was all blended together with the game engine was part of what made Final Fantasy 7 so breathtaking to look at.
5 Gran Turismo (1997)
In the same year that Final Fantasy 7 demonstrated how the PlayStation could transport players to immersive otherworldly experiences like no other games machine before it, Gran Turismo set new standards in visual realism.
It might look blurry and angular by today’s standards, but at the time it absolutely lived up to its tagline of “The Real Driving Simulator”. The game featured 140 real-life cars with ultra-detailed handling physics and had the graphics to match. The racing itself was great, of course, but simply watching the replays was a pleasure in itself.
4 Shadow Of The Colossus (2005)
Even before it was remastered for the PS4, Shadow Of The Colossus was widely regarded as one of the most visually stunning games ever made. The art, animation, and sense of scale are fantastic, but the graphics in this game offer much more than mere eye candy.
This is a game with no dialogue, no text, no narrator, and almost no HUD, and yet it tells one of the most powerful stories in gaming history. It’s a masterpiece of visual storytelling and its sumptuous graphics are part and parcel of that experience.
3 Crysis (2007)
Crysis wasn’t so much a game as it was a gigantic tech demo. In 2007, Far Cry creator Crytek had an extremely powerful new game engine, CryEngine 2, to sell, and what better way to show it off than to build a game that few PCs (and no consoles) of the time could run?
It was a bold move and a really good game, but Crysis’ biggest achievement was setting new technical standards, forcing every other AAA developer to either catch up or look old-fashioned. And nearly a decade and a half later, Crysis could still be mistaken for a current-gen game.
2 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)
Over half a decade after its release, The Witcher 3 is still one of the most visually impressive games ever, especially on a high-end PC. RPGs thrive on both detailed minutiae and epic scale, and The Witcher 3 excels at both ends of the scale.
The Witcher’s world is one that is breathtaking at a distance and extremely reach-out-and-touch-able up close. This, combined with its excellent character models and top-notch animation, makes it one of the best examples of that old cliche, “a living, breathing world” that gamers have ever seen.
1 Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)
‘Open-world’ might be a perfectly fitting name for a genre of games in which the player is free to roam the environment, but no other game world feels as truly open as that of Red Dead Redemption 2.
And it’s not because of how many square miles the game map simulates. It’s because its superb graphics create an incredibly authentic feeling of being in a wilderness at the frontier of a new world. Never has a game made riding off into the sunset feel so real.