Looking back things can be so amazing in our minds but yet when reality steps in we can be in for a rude awakening.
With the games that are listed here which ones have you sat down to play, that in the past you felt were the absolute most amazing graphical power houeses, yet now you are struck by their visual age....
Now, by now means are the graphics awful (well they might be in hindsight) or is the game play bad. It's all about how rosey those glasses of nostalgia you wear are.

I think I might have scared everyone away with the title.......

I completely understand what you mean. It is always shocking to go back and realize just how much graphics have changed. At one point I may have played a racing game and thought it was one of the greatest things ever and so realistic. Then after playing some modern games and going back, it is difficult to race through what seems like a mess of giant pixels!
While I never had my own copy growing up, I remember playing Descent at a friend's house quite a bit. I thought it was simply amazing and had so much fun with it. While it is still a good game, it takes some getting used to when playing again.

I've been playing through Kingpin and I'm surprised how well it's held up. Sure it can't match any of the current shooters that are being released, but it's still not that bad. The animation can be a bit choppy and the bodies / gore doesn't stay permanently, but oh well.
I think the real test for me will be Redneck Rampage next week, hopefully the graphics won't detract too much :P

Well they looked great at the time, but that's because visually there was nothing better to compete against, besides other games from that era. I had an Atari 400, and back then I thought all the games looked "awesome" and "just like the arcade."
Unfortunately videogames don't age well: in 20 years people will be saying Crysis "looks like crap now" and other such things.
Yes, the gameplay still matters, but graphics are part of the game too. It's hard to play an ugly game, even if the game itself is great. I knew I was getting snobby when I refused to buy games that didn't have 3D acceleration. ;)
Technology is the best thing that happened to games, but it ages them before their time.

Personally, it's my ears that bleed. I tried pulling out Wolfenstein 3D the other day and I still can't make out what the Nazis are yelling at me. I think the regular trooper is saying, "Achtung!" but I have no idea with that crackly, garbled, digital speech mess. LOL!
Graphics-wise, just squint REALLY hard and they might either look like Nazis or the Thing.

I remember when I saw Quake 2 for the first time, and woooooooowwwwww there is no way it could get any better than this hehe.

The first game I played with 3D acceleration was Jedi Knight: when I saw the hardware-accelerated visuals for the first time after months of only playing the game in software mode, I was blown away.

Oh, thats right Quake 2 was my first 3d accelerated game I bought it the same day I got my Diamond Monster. The best thing about that card was that I rolled up into Sun TV (which is not H.H.Greg) and someone marked the price on the box wrong and instead of 149.99 it was marked as 49.99. The manager honored the price so the extra scratch went to quake 2..... and something else..... I can't remember.

"MEIN LEBEN!" (or something to that effect).
I do agree with the lot of you though. The same thing happened to me with Klingon Academy. The first time I played it I thought it was the greatest looking game at the time, and when I went back to it a few years later I thought the graphics were terrible.
Ah well, at least the gameplay is good.

Nah, the graphics are great. Yes, it is the nostalgia bonus too, but the most games have beautiful graphics from an art perspective. Let's take Fallout as example. The graphic is great. Yes, it is 10 years old, but for that the graphic is really nice. Or Jagged Alliance 1 and 2. Yes, the graphic is old and not up to date, but it can not be ugly, because it has so much nice and tiny details.
I think, the biggest problem is the early 3D graphic. The most of this stuff doesn't looks so good... 2D is mostly better in this case.

It was Jedi Knight for me too to play with 3D acc. and it looked so great compared to anything before. And few months after that came FF VII and I was blown away :) The chibi-characters looked so alive.
But I find Fallouts very appealing even with their normal graphics though I use the high resolutions patch which takes away only the roughness. And with strategy-games like Civilizations 2 I think the graphics matter the least.

There is much to be praised about amazing art direction (and fallout has it) and how it effects the age of a game... contemporary examples: Okami, Viewtiful joe, and Viva Pinata are probably going to look just as good 10 years from now as they do now.

I'm using my girl friend's laptop currently and since she has a widescreen monitor there is an ability to play games with the game centered at the current resolution with black borders. Or you can have it resized. I think it's part of the drivers for her integrated card or maybe it's some other software. She has too much shit on here for me to figure out which.