Graphics you thought weren't possible on a certain system?

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Such as: Half-Life 2 for Xbox 1 (LOOKS AMAZING, close to 360/PS3 version), GOW 2 PS2, Donkey Kong Country SNES, CRYSIS 2 for PS3/360, Conduit 2 (Wii game runs at 60 FPS and looks as good or better than COD 2 for 360, nuff said)

I remember back when Oblivion just came out. I saw a video with a guy saying that Oblivion was about as good as the graphics could technically get on the Xbox 360. A few years later Battlefield 3 comes out which is 100 times more demanding than Oblivion.. i wonder how that is possible

While Battlefield 3 does look decent on console, it does look much superior on the PC. For its time I remember Sonic 3D to be quite a good looking game considering mega drive limitations., the old disney games on there looked and played awesome too! In terms of more recent stuff games like Heavy Rain, Uncharted, Gran Turismo 5, God of War III, Mario Galaxy, and Gears of War all have fantastic graphics on console.

it is very far from a 100 times as demanding, im fairly sure it aint even double.

i do agree however that oblivion wasnt excactly the finest example of graphics nor optimization on any platform.

the problem with a thing like graphics is that it can be extremely independent of system resources, if enough vram is available it doesnt take much more to load higher resolution textures on a similar screen size.
likewise most modern gpu's have dedicated pipelines for post processing meaning that you can always employ at least a certain level of post proccessing.

added up with teh optimization methods developed in the last years and you would be surprised what one can do with the limited resources.

another note to add, many games have to sacrifice graphics to some extent when they use very complicated ai procedures and allow for unlimited expansion of those, there is also a vast difference in the game mechanics being calculated so in essence you can find games with fairly rudimentary graphics but a huge system load.

in truth most first person shooters are fairly limited in the scale of the ai, this doesnt mean you cant have smart opponents but usually there is only a few dozen at most, they in turn are to a large extent pre scripted as well, with only the most rudimentary combat operations in common use, this have been one of the largest strides in some gametypes lately and that really can impact performance.

look at s.t.a.l.k.e.r., in the last game there was faction warfare that meant there was fighting going on in places where the player wasnt present, no graphics to calculate but it stille meant a marked drop in performance despite optimizations in other areas and using the same engine as its prequel.

Shadow of The Colossus, one of the best looking games ever. Even though it's PS2, it looks like early PS3 or 360 games.
Also Metroid Prime, sure the graphics themselves aren't that good, but the amount of detail just blows my mind every time I play it. I sometimes just look up and watch the rain hit my visor.

Evolution of Graphics

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz-1tAeB868&feature=related[/youtube]

in very very rough terms, yes.

alltough it didnt happen in any particular order, graphics isnt a singular issue, it is many combined, some areas have abrely changed for 20 years and others do on a daily basis.

right now the next big thing will probably be voxels, they marry the concept of hpysics and graphics and allow for fuly deformable and destructible enviroment without using intermediary graphical products(what can usually be recognized as effects)

for an example, if you drove on sand the sand would form itself after the tires and create "natural" tire tracks with slipping and broken patterns when you turn, all without explicitly programming such a feature, only the relations and properties of the voxels in play, it is also less memory intesive considering the amount of work being done on the data.

To this day I'm still impressed by RE4 for the GC.

Metroid Other M on the Wii... considering the hardware, it's amazing...

You kidding? In my opinion, Metroid Prime looks better than Metroid Other M, and Metroid Prime was on the Gamecube.

I guess it's all to do with what you mean by "good graphics". Metroid Prime's graphics are great because it knows which things need to be detailed and immersive and which things don't.

Another reason that Metroid Prime's graphics seem so good is that every room is carefully hand-crafted. This is especially notable in the Chozo Ruins, where the crumbling walls are covered in gaps and protrusions that are "really there", not just texture. Glitched speed runs of Metroid Prime take advantage of this fact by using decorative bumps on walls, decorative pipes, etc. as "hand-holds" to get up higher than you are supposed to.

The corridors of Metroid Other M, on the other hand, just seem copy-pasted to me. Of course, this is understandable due to the setting, but it certainly isn't as impressive.

Donkey Kong Country for Gameboy Color, it looks almost like the SNES version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH4YQJS2BHM

Also, pretty much any Sega Game Gear game has amazing graphics for a handheld at the time. When I first got my Gamegear, I got it in 2000something, and I was like "Wow, the graphics on this are as good as my friend's GBA" and I think my assessments were right. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dKtaRWAA4M It'd have been a better move on Sega's part if they made it have a rechargeable battery, that and the system wasn't really "portable" either, as the only way you could carry it on you would be excessively large cargo pockets. Hell, it even had a TV Tuner accessory. And this was all in like what...1992? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fetGPLcWg

Twilight Princess had great graphics but shame that the Wii version couldn't do better in terms of it being the next step up.

Shadow of the Beast: amiga

Super Mario World (yeah): super famicon

Heroes' quest: pc xt/286 with cga/ega graphics adapter.

PS1: FFVII

Xbox 1: Half life 2

Xbox 360: to this day, Gears of War

PS3: Uncharted

Modern day PC: crysis1, battlefield 3 (I don't like wargames, nor online FPS, but it's impressive on max settings).

I've been most impressed with:

NES: Batman Return of the Joker
SNES: Donkey Kong Country
PS2: WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2006
PS3: Uncharted 2

MGS 3 on the ps2. how did they get such good looking graphics on a system that was obsolete the minute it hit the shelves?
Killzone 2 and 3.

New Zealand Story on the Master System.

Looks and plays exactly like the arcade!