[Jason Vines]

For Christmas, I got a new computer, so I've been playing the newest games I hadn't been able to before: Call of Duty 2, Doom 3, Quake 4, Day of Defeat: Source, etc. Unfortunately, because of logistics, I couldn't take my new computer back to university with me when the winter break ended. Looking for a silver lining, I thought I'd still be able to play and enjoy my old games.

Perhaps I was mistaken.

I was just trying to play the old version of Day of Defeat (with the first Half-Life engine), and the graphics horrified me! I felt almost as if I were looking at an old Nintendo game. And then I tried to punch someone, as I do in Day of Defeat: Source, and I couldn't. My most surprising and handy attack (in a gunfight, you don't expect someone to wallop on you with fists) is nowhere to be found.

I've had a similar experience before. I used to play Elite Force a lot, but I loaded it up recently, and the blocky graphics shocked me. I couldn't keep playing after the first training level; I couldn't take what I saw seriously.

Does anyone else have this problem, where old games are like nails on a chalkboard?

Perhaps the oldest games I can stand now are the more refined Quake 3 engine adaptations, such as the Jedi Knight games. And, for some strange reason, No One Lives Forever... maybe because of its incredible gameplay.

[Bondo]

Perhaps my favorite game of all time is the original (arcade perfect) Rampage with the wolfman. So I'm a fan of less sophisticated graphics.

For today's graphics, its less important to me that the game look good, and more important that it has a great visual style. I'd be more than happy to sacrifice the technical side of of the visual look for the sake of the artistic appeal.

But, I do notice a lower tolerance for poor 3D graphics in particular. Poor Duke Nukem. What awful, awful stuff. I can't even play that anymore. And another great, old game -- Conquest of the New World (iirc) is so pixelated I can't even look at it: and I bought that game years after it came out.

Old console or 2d games, I don't mind much unless they are really bad. I still think my SNES Shadowrun looks great, and that is even considering that I was stuck in a room for 1-2 months when I first played it because the graphics obscured the door controls.

Playing the original starfox, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely.

[Sim]

I'm not so picky when it comes to computer graphics. Sure, I wouldn't really enjoy playing Doom1 anymore. But I still love to play Civilization II, and even after playing games like Half-Life2, Quake4 and FEAR, which have rather amazing graphics, I still enjoy playing Max Payne 1 or Deus Ex. Sure, great graphics add a lot to the fun ... but some games are just great, despite old graphics.

[Cymro]

I think it's more to do with the FPS genre. I played Elite Force 2 and Half Life 2 before the originals, and I found the orignals rather dissapointing when I finally did play them. The reason I'm blaming it on the genre is that I just re-played the "Star Trek: 25th Anniversary" game last month, a 2D low res aventure/puzzle game that was released in 1992, and I loved it. The month before that I played "Top Gun: Fire at Will", a flight sim which is from the last generation DOS titles from the mid 90s, and I play most of my old RTS games (starting with the original C&C) at least once a year.

[-Oz-]

I will rant and rave against graphics over quality until I die. So it should come to no surprise that I love old video games! My two favorite games of all time are still NES/SNES games: Ninja Gaiden III and Chrono Trigger.