Consoles that provide(d) the best performance increase from 1stgen to last gen titles

PS2 had been out over a year when Jak & Daxter hit. Tekken Tag Tournament was arguably the best-looking PS2 launch title and certainly looked a lot better than any N64 game.

I think the N64 had as close to a difference, especially when you compare Majora's Mask to Mario 64. Granted, that extra 4 MB helped.

 

The Saturn showed a much greater improvement over its much shorter lifespan.

Neither of these claims is remotely true. The gap between N64 and PS2 launch games was enormous. Tekken Tag was a giant leap beyond anything the N64 had ever shown.

To say last gen PS2 games are on a par with Xbox games of the time is to be extremely generous to last gen PS2 games. You might as well claim the PS2 never did anything the Dreamcast didn't rival.

 

To be fair to the DC, it had a little over a year after its Western release then it was canned. The western release came a year late and after the initial period of improvement. The West was never forced to focus on genuine launch titles.

DoA2 hit the arcades around a year after the DC launched, and it was then carefully ported to the DC for a 2000 release. Only a few months after launch for the West, but certianly not for Japan and the machine itself.

Genuine launch titles like Godzilla and Pen Pen Triicelon looked like absolutte crap compared to what was to come. Even VF3 didn't look particularly good - Soul Calibur was a massive improvement only 6 months later. Compare those to DoA2 or JSR or ... just about anything from 2000 .... and you can see a pretty huge improvement.

A bit of an extreme example, but if the PS2 were to launch in a country now with GT4 and GoW, I'm sure its launch titles would look pretty good compared to those in 12 months time. Especially when a console lives as short an amount of time as the DC, cutting off the first half of its lifespan is going to give you a somewhat distorted view of how it progressed.

 

Not from the screenshots I've seen.

Not to my eyes. You ever see Madden 2001 on PS2? Looked like a damn upscaled PS1 game.
Proof:
PS1
PS2

Edit: perhaps I should've said PS2 launch titles looked like upscaled PS1 titles in my original post, not N64.

DC produced some amazing looking games that easily surpassed all PS2 games until MGS2. There were PS2 games that rivaled Xbox games - both God of War titles specifically.

 

I agree with that, techically and feature wise (effets and such all together) xbox was in a clear lead by a significant amount. GoW titles if looking at screenshots/videos really cant hold it against xbox graphical showcase games, not at all!

 

There's a problem here in comparing the worst of the early games with the best of the late games, where the worst could well be as much a fault of the developers as the hardware. If the purpose of the thread is to gauge had the hardware had been stretched, worst case games won't do it. You need to compare the best of the launch (window, which would need pinning down to an actual timeline) to the best at the end.

 

I was playing right through that generation. Looking at a few screenshots gives you only a fraction of the picture!

Once you've witnessed the glitchy, 20fps Daytona with horrific draw distance, or 20fps Panzer Dragoon, or glitching, untextured VF that couldn't even maintain 30fps, you know you've witnessed a special launch for a special console.

(Then you can understand why the PS2 launch seemed so solid in comparison, and why the PS1 with Ridge Racer kicked ass.)

You can always find crappy looking games for systems. Crappy frame grabs (like the PS2 Madden ones) don't help. Even so you can clearly see that the PS2 game is massively more detailed than the PS1 game, and not just running at a higher resolution (different to upscaling).

Looking at the good stuff, there is no way the PS2 looks like upscaled PS1. Try playing Tekken Tag and then putting Tekken 3 into your PS2. It's night and day.

I suppose a lot rests on what we mean by 'rivalling'. There are some great looking games on the PS2, but do they offer the kind of detail and the kind of effects that good Xbox games did? Quite simply they don't, and looking at the machines they were running on that's not surprising and it's no slight on PS2 developers or the PS2 itself.

 

I read in an article somewhere than Madden 2001 PS2 and Tekken Tag Tournament were not in fact the same game. And, for the record, PS1 couldn't do this in a million years:



Before you say "LOL! That image looks like crap!" recall that this is about Madden 2001 PS2 vs PS1. PS1 Madden models didn't even have faces. Anyway, I think Black looks almost as good as any Xbox FPS on a qualitative level. The Burnout games look amazing, too.

 

Strange question but isnt all about good tools bad tools, and how successful and staying a console is for developers to continue refining their engine on it?

 

Picture from Armored Core 2: Another Age.

AC2:AA is a semi-sequel to the launch game Armored Core 2, using the same exact engine and most of the models. The new models in the game were not really anything better than the ones in AC2, so essentially consider this an AC2 screenshot. For reference, here is a picture of the last Armored Core game on the PS1, Armored Core: Master of Arena:

Finding this was difficult, and in the process I saw a picture of Alia from the Megaman X series coming onto X. Thus, I nearly saw naked robot sex drawn by a pathetic fanboy/girl who will obviously never know the touch of a man/woman. I blame this on you.

Here is another launch game, Dynasty Warriors 2.

Here is the original, a PS1 game in an entirely different genre. Sorry for the low res.

Anyway, I believe I've proven my point, so here's a bonus picture:

While I was looking for the last image, I found this incredibly cute picture, as well as several other odd things.

 

It's also a close-up shot during a cutscene between plays, and thus not representative of gameplay so irrelevant.

Don't misunderstand my intentions here. I think the late generation PS2 games are amazing, and games like Black and GoW rival Xbox1 games as well. I just think the early PS2 games were horrible, with even launch Dreamcast titles easily surpassing them.

 

Play Armored Core 2. While the image quality will not match any DC title, it certainly blows almost every launch game on the console I ever encountered out of the water.

 

Why? They're still in game graphics being rendered in real time on the system. Besides, the actual gameplay graphics looked a hell of a lot better too - even blurry, cropped, badly de-interlaced screen grabs can't hide it.

VF3 easily surpassed Tekken Tag? And which PS2 games did Godzilla and Pen Pen Tricelon easily surpass?

The DC launched with a ropey looking selection of games - people tend to forget this and just think of the first 6 - 12 months that followed the machine's Western release as launch titles.

 

The only two launch titles I'd hold up are Sonic Adventure and Soul Calibur.

Goddamn I need to play those again, it's been years...

 

Yeah, Sonic Adventure was the first DC showstopper. Came out about a month after the Japanese launch (so it was in the "launch window") but was rather glitched and had an overhaul for its international launch.

Looked amazing at the time - far beyond anything any console or PC had ever done before (certainly in my eyes). It's the only launch period title that I think could really stand up well to the best very early PS2 stuff (Sega Rally 2 didn't look too bad, but it had some off putting frame rate issues).

Soul Calibur was amazing, but came out about 9 months after the DC. So a launch title for the US (not for Europe, sadly) but not for the DC itself. And visually a big step up from VF3.

Ah, Soul Calibur with the fishing rods ... who needs the Wii!

 

What would everyone consider to be the best looking game on each system to date?

Well, going back to around 1995 anyways.

Sony Playstation: Metal Gear Solid

Sega Saturn: Virtua Fighter 2 or Sega Rally

Nintendo 64: Mario 64 or Waverace 64

Sega Dreamcast: Soul Caliber

Sony Playstation 2: God of War 2

Microsoft XBox: KOTOR

Nintendo GameCube: Resident Evil 4

And so far:

Microsoft XBox 360: Bioshock

Sony Playstation 3: Uncharted

Nintendo Wii: Mario Galaxy

 

Wow Cobra, our lists could not be more different.
PSX: Too many games for me to decide, but I'd say Metal Gear Solid wasn't it.

Saturn: Panzer Dragoon Saga? Maybe VF2.

Nintendo 64: Conker's Bad Fur Day, bar none.

Sega Dreamcast: Dead or Alive 2, Shenmue 2, or Sonic Adventure 2.

PS2: I'll give that to God of War 2.

Xbox: Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Gamecube: RE4 or Pikmin 2

Xbox 360: Gears of War

PS3: No clue.

Wii: Mario Galaxy.

 

Psone -> see Toshinden battle arena in 1995/96 and look Tekken 3 in 1998.
Ps2-> Ridge Racer 5 without AA and compare to GT4 with 1080i resolution.
Saturn-> Panzer Dragon to Panzer dragon rpg/saga.

 

castlevania one vs super castlevania

 

Aren't those on different systems? Though Castlevania 1 to Castlevania 3 is probably a big enough advancement.

Panzer Dragoon 1 looked pretty good for a saturn title (albeit mostly just 2d graphics with clever camera angles) and I don't think it was a launch game.