edit: This is actually an edited image I found years ago. I find the low poly bunnies slightly more funny than the original, which had skeletons.

    • Pokethat@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Gen alpha will never grow up with demo discs from pizza hut. I feel sorry for them. I spent so much time getting good at that crash bandicoot level though I was crap at that PaRappa the Rapper game.

    • fidodo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is a poor screenshot to show the capabilities of the PlayStation though. The first playstation game that boggled my mind was crash bandicoot with it’s fully expressive world, but the game that really blew me away was Mario 64 shortly after with its true freedom and wide open world.

        • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Thank god so many hacks fix it. I know it’s a lot to ask of the man, but I really hope Kaze releases his fixes as a standalone project.

    • snor10@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I still remember the exalted feeling of playing Super Mario 64 in the toy store when I where a child.

      Looking back, that was the peak of my life. That feeling of infinite possibilities, the feeling of living in the future.

      All I’ve ever done since then is chasing that perfect moment, that instant of serenity at the apex of the trampoline jump that is my life.

    • LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Many forget (or don’t realize) it wasn’t the graphics alone, it was the smooth 3D motion.

      Before the 3D console era (and the equivalent arcade machines) most “3D” motion was scaled and stacked sprites. The rest of the time we had 2D scrolling.

      Two examples of the best of 16 bit 3D effects:

      Galaxy Force II

      Power Drift

      Which used 3x CPUs like the Genesis clocked at 12.5 Ghz

      Compare to the first gen 3D console 3D effects:

      Soul Edge - PS1

      Panzer Dragoon Zwei - Saturn

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        1 year ago

        It was very much like the difference between seeing a video of VR gameplay and experiencing VR yourself.

        I remember seeing the screenshots in magazines (we used to update ourselves on the state of the industry with monthly or biweekly physical print media) and thinking “oh neat, but whatever…” and then I saw Battle Arena Toshinden being played at Toys’R’Us and that “oh neat” turned into “okay satan, you can have my soul for this”

        We weren’t blind, we knew the polygons were ugly as hell standing still, but seeing them move at 30 fps on a 25-inch CRT was downright sorcerous

      • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Just an FYI, that Soul Edge video is it being played on a PS2 which upscaled the resolution and smoothed the textures. There was also a pretty big time gap between the Sega Y Board which came out in 1988 and the PSX which came out in 1995. While the PSX was a big jump in graphics over the previous console generation, the arcades had graphics that were similar several years earlier with the Sega Model 1 and 2.

        The first PS game that really blew me away in terms of graphics was Gran Turismo. There were some other games that looked pretty good but Gran Turismo (specifically the replay feature) was head and shoulders above everything else.

  • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Back in the day, just the idea of having an entire 3d world inside a computer was absolutely mind boggling. The first time I moved a cursor and the camera rotated, the entire game world shifting, I lost my mind. I remember thinking “how did they fit this world in there? How did they build this?”

    It’s what sparked my interest in programming.

    • Philolurker@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I still remember the first time someone told me about EverQuest. I legit thought they were trying to trick me.

  • daninet@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You have to put it in context and not look on it retrospective. I was absolutely blown away by the graphics of PS1

    • fidodo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The PlayStation was capable of way more than this. Even in context this is a funny screenshot since it’s a really poor demonstration of its capabilities. Also it’s just funny to take historical things out of context in general but doubly so here since it’s also a bad screen shot to show off the system.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So there was this VR game in the 90s that you could play in malls called Dactyl Nightmare that had effects at about that level.

    Seriously, we were blown away. There were huge lines. People would shell out five bucks over and over again to play it.

    • drcobaltjedi@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      You have reminded me of an old old memory. I don’t know where I was at the time and I was a little kid, but there was this VR headset thing with a stick. The stick was the controller for a lightsaber and the game I remember had like pterodactyls flying in it and then some ogre or something attacking you.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    It sure looks old and dated as fuck today, but when the 3D games of the time had some 500 triangles at most and run at 10FPS, having a console managing a couple thousand triangles at 30FPS was truly mind-boggling 😀

  • lobut@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, these were crazy at the time. After doing sprites for so many years it was awesome.

    Although it seems we’re back here with the sprites.

    • refefer@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      A lot of the industry has finally learned that investment in the most realistic graphics doesn’t offset lack of fun. I credit indie studios the most for that

      • fidodo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Graphics have diminishing returns. Doubling the amount of polygons in the 90s meant enabling completely new kinds of games and going from blocky models you can barely distinguish from each other to something that looks like a character. Double the polygons now and the difference would be barely perceivable if at all.

      • fidodo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We’re you at peak teenage horniness at the time? There was a sweet spot you needed to be at to really appreciate it.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Google tells me it came out in 1996 and I was class of 1995, so post peak teenage horniness. Maybe that’s why?

      • dhorse@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I grew up squinting at lines and playing with the antenna on the UHF channels to try and see a boob from the Spice channel. Compared to that Lara Croft had it going on.

      • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Or you probably didn’t get to see what was usually shown for the advertising proper, where she’s considerably rounder

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Hah, somewhere along the way someone made a texture hack for that game, Nude Raider haha!

        Their hack was a bit tricky to install since it had to store the texture mod pack on the HDD while still allowing the game to access the CD drive, so I basically rebuilt my own ISO of the game with the modded textures included.

      • x4740N@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s because CRT’s also smoothed things a bit compared to modern TV’S

        Combine that with the mind of a child and tests what you get

  • Magicianfox@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I remember playing Resident Evil Outbreak (PS2) a couple of years ago and noticing how bad the graphics were (Compared with today graphics)

    But also remembering how I was amazed how good the graphics were when I first saw when I was a child.

    • Psythik@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      When I was 12, nothing would ever top the Dreamcast. Video game graphics had peaked, and were never going to get better than that. I mean, how could they? The games looked photo-realistic to my eyes!

      • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        When my best friend and I got the PS2 we went home and played Twisted Metal Black. I remember saying, “Bro, how much more real could it get?”

        I wish he had lived long enough to see just how far the PS3 and Xbox 360 took it. Maybe my age is showing, but I’m still surprised by titles from that era sometimes.

        I mean, not like I was when Drake put his hands on the wall in Uncharted 4, but still.

    • dx1@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Well, to be fair, Jurassic Park came out in '93. Playstation rendered it live at 27fps or whatever, with consumer affordable hardware.

      • fidodo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Very little of it was actually CGI. The only parts were of the brontosaurus’ at a very far distance. The rest was animatronics and puppets.

    • DulyNoted@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think they really claim it was CGI though, just practical effects.

      “Space was made in a Hollywood basement”, from noted investigative journalists RHCP.