Games now considered retro (pre PS3/360) That in their time looked so good to you. You thought this is it. We have hit total realism in games.
I will say it now. Not since 2008 or so do I even care about realism anymore. These days I find realism boring in games in general with exceptions. Still nice to think back to a time when I was still wowed by it and looked forward to games pushing that boundary.
I will start with one of my fave games of all time.
The game didn't just look real but it felt real. Like NPCs had blood types and daily routines and places the lived. You could pick up random objects and look at them. Turn the lights on and off. Open anything. Take pictures off the wall. When you pulled the light string to turn on or off a light it had realistic physics as it swayed side to side faster then slower. The weather changed at random. This blew my mind back then. At that point it was everything I needed and wanted in a game. To this day still impressed by how detailed everything is for a game of it's time.
N64 days playing All Star Baseball. Always felt the stadiums and city backdrops looked really good. Well now they look like typical N64 blurry shit but I still love it.
Staying with the Sega/Dreamcast love here, might as well point out both that Ferrari and Le Mans racing game too. Both had the highest levels of polygonal output and texturing pretty much done on a retail Dreamcast game in the day and they looked stunningly realistic and held up quite well. I'd argue since they weren't goofing with people models, more so than Shenmue which was quite stunning then too, as was Soul Calibur.
