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[MaestroMike]

Gears of War.

 

[Phunkydiabetic]

As a kid in the 80s/early 90s I can think of quite a few times I was amazed, but if I had to pick one it would have to be the first time I played Mario 64. I had played many "3d" games by the time it had been released obviously, but this felt so polished. It didn't have any of the jank that other 3d games at the time like Tomb Raider had.

The controller is so shit, yet for the time it felt so natural. You picked up the controller and boom Mario is ripping around doing double jumps and doing kick flips off of walls. It felt good to play, it looked awesome. It was at that transition point from a kid to a teen for me, still had that childlike excitement and fascination to it. Of course if I play it now it feels so dated but for the time Nintendo crushed it. It feels like it was peak "amazed the first time you saw it" to me.

 

[Dragon_Rocks]

Jazz Jackrabbut 2 was the first PC game I saw after pong, paratrooper etc. I was blown away by the graphics.

Recently it was God of War PS4.

 

[anthraticus]

Only game I was like "holy shit" when I first saw it, cause of looks was Dragon's Lair.

 

[tagliner]

Gran Turismo in its beginning.
It was 1998 spring, walking by a game store.. Behind the window a big tv replays a swarm of JDM cars attacking Trial Mountain.
I'm 45, still on that road and waiting possible GT7 reveal tonight.

 

[Sp3eD]

3D accelerated quake 2.

nothing else came close to how amazing the colored lighting And smooth explosions were. During high school that game was a whole generation ahead of anything in my eyes.

 

[EightBit Man]

Super Mario Bros. 3
Flashback
DOOM
Virtua Fighter
Virtua Racer
Ridge Racer
Daytona USA
Donkey Kong Country
Killer Instinct
Quake
Unreal
Gran Turismo
Sonic Adventure
Shenmue
Jet Set Radio
Metropolis Street Racer
Resident Evil (Remake)
Halo: Combat Evolved
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

...to name a few.

 

[shaddam]

Uncharted 2. It sold me on the PS3

 

[Apokgaf]

GTA Vice City.

 

[PuppetMaster]

Daytona USA first time I saw it in arcades. It was SOOO far beyond any 16bit games I was used to seeing.

Also Mario 64 for home consoles. First time I saw it running in a shopping mall. I was mostly a PC gamer at the time. And it looked so much better that anything even on a high end PC.

 

[TDiddyLive]

NFL 2K on Dreamcast. To this day no game has had as big of a graphical leap as that compared to Madden 99.

 

[kurisu_1974]

I remember going to a PC hardware fair and they had the first Voodoo 3DFX cards running Tom Raider and Turok... could't believe my eyes, those 3D graphics looking so smooth, that was something entirely new.

Don't think we"ve had that big of a revolution since then?

 

[havok75]

For me it has to be G-Police for the Playstation, from the opening cinematics to the sound, and then flying a gunship in full 3D I was mesmerised.

 

[GymWolf]

I know it sound like a lame choice, but when i saw ready to rumble on dreamcast for the first time i was impressed by the graphics and the real time damage on their faces.

I never bought a dreamcast but i bought and played the shit out of the sequel on ps2.

 

[Foxtrot91]

I don’t remember the first game but recentlay played unchartered 4. holy crap that’s a beautiful looking game

 

[Paasei]

Super Mario World - What amazed me were the many hidden exits that made turn into the explorer I am today in games.
World of Warcraft - My first ever MMO and I still have love for it to this day.
Uncharted 2 - The graphics and story for the time were never seen before on a console.
Hitman series - Made me realize I was a big fan of stealth games.
Dishonored - Stealth game with so much creative freedom in both movement and gameplay.
R6 Siege - My new FPS love after not really caring about the genre for such a long time. The tension, I love it.

 

[Daymos]

Recently.. dragon quest 11s.

I played the first dragon warrior (dragon quest 1) on nes, I even still have the manual. Yesterday I pulled up the Nintendo Power coverage of dragon warrior and just kind of reminisced about what my 12 yr old brain imagined the amazing NES world to look like as I traveled around it. Now in DQ11 standing outside arboria, man it looks and plays better than my kid brain could have ever dreamed.

I occasionally think about what it would be like to go back to the year 2000 and bring a ps4 pro & switch with me and show my younger self. Let my final fantasy 7 and ocarina of time addicted self play final fantasy 15 and breath of the wild, it would be better than winning the lottery. We complain about the shortcomings of modern games but damn are they amazing compared to 20 years ago.

 

[SometimeLaterToday]

Sure, it might sound childish but teleportation, reincarnation and space travel exist.
What's more, they all happen from within those few black little magic boxes.

 

[kevin_trinh]

Final Fantasy X, Bloodborne

 

[Damien Crowley]

One, I remembler semi-fondly is Tekken... The first one. Tekken ONE! On PSX...

There was a row of CRT-TVs installed in the games corner of a big electronics market and they all showed the intro and demo-loop of Tekken. I was so baffled, half a year later I bought a PSX... and Battle Arena Toshinden...
Because game magazins told little stupid me that Tekken was just 2D fighting with polygons and Toshinden was REAL 3D Fighting...
Yeah, still regret that.

 

[Paracelsus]

In the 90s I was never impressed by consoles, I was more impressed by what was going on in the arcades which were always one or two gen ahead until PS2 game along.
You could say the only console that surprised me was NeoGeo, but that's cheating because it was basically an arcade cabinet at home. The Dreamcast was also impressive for 1998 since the other companies were stuck on blocky characters and PC hadn't quite matured yet.
Last time I was impressed by games it was the very first Gears of War (until that point "next gen" looked like a joke to me) and Crysis on PC.

 

[the welsh one]

The first halo. After finally exiting the ship at the start and landing on the planet, I spent a good 10 minutes crouching and looking at the grass and then went and jumped about in a stream to watch the water splash and move.

 

[vkbest]

Outcast
Shenmue
Metal Gear Solid 2

 

[Laptop1991]

Half Life 1 and 2,
Bioshock 1,
Fear 1
Crysis 1
The 1st Assassin's Creed, and
Skyrim,, meaning the open world, not the graphics etc,which is the only game of the last 10 years that has, hopefully Cyberpunk 2077 will change that.

 

[HBx2000]

Unreal, Mortyr 2093-1944 and Crysis on PC.
Tekken 5 on PlayStation 2.
Uncharted 2, Killzone 2 and God of War III on PlayStation 3.
Ryse: Son of Rome on Xbox One.

 

[the_master]

Arcade shmup that I never found again
Golden Axe imported arcade
Road Avenger mega cd
Virtua fighter arcade
Virtua racing on Megadrive
Panzer Dragoon saturn
Tekken 3 psx
Mario 64 n64
Soul Calibur Dreamcast
Wreckless, the yakuza missions Xbox
The Cronickles of Riddick & Doom III
Half life 2 PC

Edit: Adding:
Flashback Megadrive
Donkey Kong SuperNes
Shenmue Dreamcast
Halo Xbox
Batman VR PS4VR

 

[GymWolf]

oh yeah also the first trailer for mgs2, it was so ahead of everything that i was in shock, i even bought the magazine with the tape of the trailer and rewatched like 20 times...

 

[Soleil rouge]

Resident Evil on PSX; Shadow of the Colossus on PS2; Shenmue on DC.

Playing these for the first time was a fucking magical endorphin rush. Shenmue especially. It's cliché to say, but it really did feel like a living, breathing world.

I never got the chance to actually play Mario 64 back then, but just seeing it action was well worth it. I'll never forget how jealous I was of my friends who owned it.

 

[Klart]

Soul Calibur on Dreamcast looked amazing when it came out.

 

[lame gag1990]

Some that I remember off the top of my head. Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike Source floored me. I was so used to the Gold engine and it was incredible for me at the time. Rez in PSVR blew me away. It was such an attack on my senses. The colours, the music, the motion, the sensations were amazing. I had played Rez before but this was almost like it had been reborn. Amazing stuff.

 

[Cynical_Aries]

I loved my Atari 2600 games, but remember liking the sports games on my neighbors Intellivision system. I know I'm old. Pitfall and Yars Revenge were great.

 

[DonF]

I was molded by the 8 bit era. Mario 3 looked great and it was a huge jump from Mario 1. Then super Mario world looked even better! And oh my god! Look at Yoshi's Island!! Where can they go from here?? My mind was fucking blown seeing Mario on 3D soaring through the sky. I couldn't believe it. Mario was so agile, the liberty of movement, everything. I remember discovering that castle, the excitement of all of it's secrets and finally seeing Yoshi. That game blew my mind from start to finish in a 14" crt.

 

[IKSTUGA]

Mario 64, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Halo 4 and The Last of Us Remastered. Graphics are too good nowadays, nothing amazes me anymore.

 

[Three]

That nighttime snow level in Goldeneye on the N64. I thought it looked photo realistic but it was my young mind making the transition from 2D to 3D.

Next it was Gran Turismo on the OG playstation, God Of War 3 PS3, Crysis, God of War PS4.

 

[Senua]

Gran Turismo 3 always comes to mind first.

 

[Shmunter]

Double Dragon

 

[Dr.Morris79]

It was three games that amazed me and changed my outlook on gaming as a whole until this day

Vietcong
Max Payne 1
Battlefield 1942

Many Eons ago a friend of mine kept asking me to go check out his (pretty terrible) store built PC, if memory serves it was fitted with an old MX 440 and utterly guff motherboard loaded with budget parts. The three games he was showing me blew me away in all their slideshow glory.

Battlefield 1942 was the hook though, a multiplayer game on massive maps set during WWII. I had to have it, two weeks later I set about building my own (pretty guff) PC. I ended up playing that utterly brilliant game for years with it's mods and i've never not had a pc since.

 

[SEGA_2012]

Sonic
Mario 64
Virtua Fighter 3

 

[b0uncyfr0]

Gotta be Prototype. Nothing else has given me that wow factor..

 

[T-I-N-M-A-N dX]

The last game that really made me go wow was Gears Of War on 360. There were plenty before it, but not too many after

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

Doom
Sonic the Hedgehog
Mario 64
Ocarina of Time
Soul Calibur
Sonic Adventure

 

[MrS]

Devil May Cry blew me and my parents away when I first played it. Everybody's jaw was on the floor. Spectacular looking game in its day.

 

[Ascend]

In random order;

The first time I saw this, I was completely sold on the game.



This one was a demo on a console kiosk in a store. I was flabbergasted the first time I played it.



This was a time where the only handheld around was the original Game Boy. Not only did the Game Gear have a light, it had colors!! Lol



What can I say? The trailer speaks for itself I guess, and remember this was 2005

 

[royox]

Metroid Prime. Everybody had the same first reaction.

 

[Kataploom]

Games in the PS2 era, they were mindblowing to me, there was "something" feeling different (then I learnt it was the 60fps), it alone was another gen for me apart from graphics... I mean, coming from N64 and PSX and those framerates, lmao.

Super Mario Galaxy is another game I remember being mind blown, and I played it using composite cable (the ones with 3 colors only) and in a LCD TV... The curius thing is that I already played HD games on Xbox 360 on an HD tv before (which, btw, also were mindblowing).

 

[Hunnybun]

The ones that stick out as the most incredible are:

Mario 64
Virtua Fighter 2
Metal Gear Solid 2

Mario 64 wins, though. Absolutely mind blowing.

 

[yurqqa]

Biggest awe were First Space Quest, Digger and Goody. Before that I saw only the ASCII games on the mainframes (that's USSR for you).
Then there were several cases, but ones that immediately came to my mind for some reasons are:

1. Little Big Adventure (firs SVGA game I saw)
2. Shockwave on 3DO in some shop
3. Gabriel Knight: Blood of Sacred, Blood of Damned on PC (It looked so great when it came out)

 

[GlockSaint]

In no particular order
God of war 3, like holy shit when i first saw this i couldn't believe this was even possible no graphical leap in games wowed me this much until then.
HZD the game is sooooo beautiful open world with plenty to do, explore, addictive combat and a fantastic story, got hooked from first e3 gameplay reveal.
Ninja gaiden sigma, one of those games that i knew i would love, the depth of the combat system was very impressive, it had great graphics at the time too.

 

[captain_cabbage]

The first time I saw a video game - ca. 1994-ish when I got my first NES console
Doom - ca. 1997-ish? I'd never seen a 3D game before and it was something insane
GTA III - I remember thinking how cool it would be to make GTA2 into a 3D action game. I didn't even think it was possible and when I first saw gta3 it absolutely blew my mind.
Max Payne - one of the games to pioneer the "cinematic experience" with bullet-time and crazy cool cutscenes
Doom 3 - I'm not even a Doom fan, but graphics-wise it was a huge leap forward from what I'd seen in games before. The lights, the materials and the dynamic shadows looked absolutely stunning.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory - I remember seeing the E3 demo and thinking that it looked almost like real life
Gears of War - one of the first games on Unreal Engine 3 and a magnificent looking one
Oblivion - apart from potato-faced NPCs this game looked so pretty when it was first released
Crysis - huge breakthrough in graphics and still a good looking game 13 years later
Red Dead Redemption - the only open world game that I deeply love
Uncharted 4 - it has to be the only game that came out kinda recently and made me say "hey, it surely looks remarkably gorgeous"

 

[Sacred]

Crysis

Final Fantasy 7

Super Mario 64

Halo

Gears of War