Yeah, Inca looked quite nice. Still need to get the Big Box of the first game as I only got Inca II so far.

Another game that I think looks nice and that I still need to get my hands on (it's expensive) is Celtic Tales - Balor of the Evil Eye from KOEI. Even though it came out quite late ('95), it somehow has an EGA charm to it because it most likely uses a SVGA 16 colour mode.

As a RPG and DSA / Realms of Arkania fan:

Realms of Arkania - Star Trail
And the other two games but part is the most memorable for me. (Kill the "remakes" with fire!)

Terracresta wrote on 2020-09-04, 01:43:

As a RPG and DSA / Realms of Arkania fan:

Realms of Arkania - Star Trail
And the other two games but part is the most memorable for me. (Kill the "remakes" with fire!)

Yeah, I beat both ROA1 and 2 and found the graphics charming, but not at the level of many of the other games mentioned here. I do love the wide variety of games that are considered beautiful and that low resolution is not a barrier to that. Artistry is not necessarily limited by pixel count!

clueless1 wrote on 2020-09-04, 10:43:

Terracresta wrote on 2020-09-04, 01:43:

As a RPG and DSA / Realms of Arkania fan:

Realms of Arkania - Star Trail
And the other two games but part is the most memorable for me. (Kill the "remakes" with fire!)

Yeah, I beat both ROA1 and 2 and found the graphics charming, but not at the level of many of the other games mentioned here. I do love the wide variety of games that are considered beautiful and that low resolution is not a barrier to that. Artistry is not necessarily limited by pixel count!

As they say, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder but these games could also be called "charming". For me, artstyle, art direction and animations are important, while also keeping the genre of the game in mind. Everquest 2 had a high polycount but looked so much worse than WoW with it's low-poly models and better animation. Even the best graphics won't help, if the animations are bad. Games like Prince of Persia and Flashback were prime examples for great animations back in the day.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-09-03, 22:14:

I'd almost forgotten about Inca! This game is gorgeous considering it was made in '92 and has a great soundtrack. It actually […]
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I'd almost forgotten about Inca! This game is gorgeous considering it was made in '92 and has a great soundtrack. It actually plays well on a 386 and lists 286 as minimum requirements.

Link to mobygames screenshots:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/inca/screenshots

Link to YT gameplay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGIoiwEtdTM

Speaking of weird, French games, Inca is certainly in that list 😁

I only saw it "in person" for the first time last year with DOS Nostalgia's stream of the CD-ROM version. Interesting art style but don't think I would ever want to play it.

HandOfFate wrote on 2020-09-04, 14:30:

clueless1 wrote on 2020-09-03, 22:14:

I'd almost forgotten about Inca! This game is gorgeous considering it was made in '92 and has a great soundtrack. It actually […]
Show full quote

I'd almost forgotten about Inca! This game is gorgeous considering it was made in '92 and has a great soundtrack. It actually plays well on a 386 and lists 286 as minimum requirements.

Link to mobygames screenshots:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/inca/screenshots

Link to YT gameplay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGIoiwEtdTM

Speaking of weird, French games, Inca is certainly in that list 😁

I only saw it "in person" for the first time last year with DOS Nostalgia's stream of the CD-ROM version. Interesting art style but don't think I would ever want to play it.

I agree it's a very weird game. The only reason I know about it is I bought it back when it was new and played it about 1/3 of the way through before getting frustrated with it. Then when I got back into retro gaming, I had fond memories of it (especially the music) so ended up playing it again (I still had the original floppies). This time around, I beat it and it was satisfying. But only because of my previous experience with it when it was current. Nostalgia plays a big role in the games I choose to play today.

While we're on the topic of Sierra-involved adventure games, and beautiful games, gotta give mention to Gabriel Knight for being probably the last of them before the whole SVGA/"its like disney!"/photorealismliveactorsfilmedonlocationatsierrastudios/"We need a Myst Killer" phase of 94-97 Sierra. It certainly outclasses Sierra's other big 1993 adventures in the art department, and there's a ludicrous amount of spoken dialogue in there and holds up better than the sequels (including the art)...

Been going through the games on my dos machine and remembered some more good looking games.
Abuse, Black Thorne, Alien Rampage, Stormlord, Pushover, The Chaos Engine and Albion.

leileilol wrote on 2020-09-05, 01:18:

While we're on the topic of Sierra-involved adventure games, and beautiful games, gotta give mention to Gabriel Knight for being probably the last of them before the whole SVGA/"its like disney!"/photorealismliveactorsfilmedonlocationatsierrastudios/"We need a Myst Killer" phase of 94-97 Sierra. It certainly outclasses Sierra's other big 1993 adventures in the art department, and there's a ludicrous amount of spoken dialogue in there and holds up better than the sequels (including the art)...

So true. King's Quest 7 got criticism back in the day for its animation, and I have to agree its worse than LucasArts. LucasArts had much much better animation than KQ7. BTW I didn't look into Sierra that far.

Off-topic post but every Grim Fandango fan when they see Pixar's Coco:

A dump of LucasArts graphics (includes some Windows games) PART 1

https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/50403-maniac-mansion-dos-screenshot-bernard-in-the-den-enhanced-version.gif https://www […]
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PART 2 of my dump of LucasArts graphics

https://64.media.tumblr.com/8094ed1681871c8ee520201b3cb201f3/tumblr_pxr2vjlA2b1tixf8xo1_1280.png https://64.media.tumblr.com/402 […]
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https://64.media.tumblr.com/f4746b526e8281bce08bbc8a480ccbc6/tumblr_pmrbnrhPtV1tuvwugo5_400.gifv https://64.media.tumblr.com/6ec […]
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PART 3 of my LucasArts graphics dump

https://64.media.tumblr.com/aeb8b0e682ed8af5414ad7b545c98e16/tumblr_nfgjx2UzMR1rh6vado2_1280.png https://64.media.tumblr.com/da2 […]
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PART 4 of my LucasArts graphics dump

https://64.media.tumblr.com/2df9c5a0fbb7ae38eb644ef9b6589798/tumblr_p7dga0Lfs01tuvwugo3_640.gifv https://www.mobygames.com/image […]
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The graphics aren't that bad, I don't really like that the palette is a little dull looking. Also I wish that the character art was drawn by someone else. The backgrounds are cool though.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/c62dadfb5391ebe9f465dc4b2d5cf4ce/tumblr_p7dga0Lfs01tuvwugo2_540.gif https://64.media.tumblr.com/2477 […]
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https://64.media.tumblr.com/fc11f2811714c4fb8bca3a8813cb2771/tumblr_my7wvkEGmv1qd98zoo1_500.gifv https://64.media.tumblr.com/bfb […]
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I'm sorry but EfMI Guybrush and Elanie look better than CoMI Guybrush and Elanie

hyperrmachine wrote on 2020-09-07, 03:25:

PART 4 of my LucasArts graphics dump

Thank your very much for sharing these pictures with us, hyperrmachine! 🙂👍

Albion was already mentioned a couple of times and I also find it to be quite beautiful, except of the 3D areas these days.
Everything from Westwood looks and sounds great. Including: Legend of Kyrandia 1,2,3, Dune 2 and Lands of Lore. After that it becomes ugly.
Bitmap brothers were mentioned before. I like their art style which you can also find in Z. Great action packed RTS.

This game also has -ahem- nice.. graphics..

https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/bazooka-sue

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny3YhOSEa5M

Unfortunately, it's in German only.
But it may run in ScummVM, so Englisch patsches could appear in the future maybe.

I find it interesting with these kinds of games that it's often easy to tell what country are from. I didn't read your line about it being in German only but one look at a screenshot and it was "Aha, Germany"

HandOfFate wrote on 2020-10-05, 09:54:

I find it interesting with these kinds of games that it's often easy to tell what country are from. I didn't read your line about it being in German only but one look at a screenshot and it was "Aha, Germany"

Might also be just because of some distinctive artists.
Games which look similar to Bazooka Sue are Dime City and Chevy Escape from F5 as well as some others, which are from Carsten Wieland.

Another artist doing art in German Games having a very distinct style is Celal Kandemiroglu.
Some games he made graphics for:
Biing, Rings of Medusa, Mad News, Der Planer

https://www.mobygames.com/game/vikings-fields … s-of-england-ii