Video Games Graphics Evolution from 1991 until 2011 Part 1

1991 Sonic the Hedgehog

Everyone’s favorite blue hedgehog. Because let’s face it, if you actually saw a blue hedgehog you’d be pretty concerned wouldn’t you? The graphics of this game are very cartoony, which suits it well, because it's pretty dang hard to get realistic with pixels.

1992 Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat’s acting may have been brilliant for its time, but it really shows the game's age by today's standards. The graphics are blurry, the movements aren’t smooth and they don’t sit well with the pixelated backgrounds that don’t seem to match.

1993 Star Fox

Star Fox is another game that really shows its age. Though quite advanced for its time, the 3D flying futurist fighting jets are more like fighting origami planes today and it looks as through combat could get confusing. The pixel art however is very well done.

1994 Doom II

Graphics, by 1994, still looked quite pixelated. However, it is easy to see how things had changed since the Sonic days. The demons aren’t square, but have round heads. Players can run through 3D rooms, and overall, there have been significant improvements.

1995 MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat

In this game, it’s clear there’s been a shift in hardware capabilities. There’s a lot of aliasing, and the smoke and fire effects appear to be a vectored film of the real thing. At this point developers have gotten a good handle on 3D environments and it’s only a matter of time until objects themselves start to look less like polygon blocks.

1996 Super Mario 64

Playful and cartoony, the graphics in Super Mario 64 suit it well. The polygons that initially appeared in MechWarrior 2 are now industry standard and give the world a new level of depth that wasn’t there before.

1997 Quake II

Quake II is the first game that starts to look more like modern games, but it’s clear that graphics still have a long way to go. Objects still have sharp polygonal sides and enemies are still unrealistic and unfortunately cartoony for the game’s subject.

1998 Unreal

Unreal’s lighting is a vast improvement over previous games. Overall, this game hasn’t seen much improvement beyond a slight refinement in graphics in comparison to previous games.

1999 Ultima IX: Ascension

Ultima IX was rather ahead of its time, boasting high resolution graphics and requiring a Voodoo 3 graphics card to run properly. Unfortunately, the game didn’t support ATI graphics cards, which made it run sluggishly on most computers.

2000 Giants: Citizen Kabuto

The visuals in Giants were a vast improvement over older games, boasting liquid effects, hardware transformation and lighting, and bump mapping.








 source n4g