Who created the most visually stunning games?

When the Amiga was first introduced, it was leaps and bounds ahead of the competition in the graphics department. With a colour palette of 4096 colours and custom hardware capable of handling dozens of on-screen objects smoothly, the Amiga certainly had the most potential out of any machine available at the time.

But good graphics don't come automatically. It's not just a matter of slapping as many colours on the screen as technically possible - to create a visually pleasing game, the graphics artist must have an eye for detail, the ability to choose the right colours for the right scenes. His graphics must be able to evoke emotions - without that, we might as well go to a museum and stare at a painting instead.

Which developer, in your opinion, had the best creative talent for graphics?

To me, it has to be the Bitmap Brothers. Their games may not look as immediately striking compared to some of the Psygnosis offerings, but I simply love their style, with The Chaos Engine likely being their absolutely best looking title, followed by Gods. And who could forget the awesome character portraits in Speedball 2? There's something about the comic-book style of their graphics that's very appealing to the eyes.

Honorable mentions have to go to Team 17 (Project X, Assassin, Superfrog), Delphine Software (Cruise for a Corpse, Flashback, Operation Stealth), and of course, Psygnosis published some stunning games as well (Agony, Shadow of the Beast).

I think Cinemaware had some graphically stunning games. It Came from the Desert I and II and Wings are examples of this. A lot of details and very realistic.

Personally it has to be Psygnosis for me, closely followed by Team 17 then the Bitmaps. Factor 5 games had some amazing artwork too but they were nowhere near as polished as the above.
Trying to decide on the most graphically impressive game is also quite hard - Stardust was visually outstanding but it was developed towards the end of the A500's commercial life and typically developers find new ways of squeezing horsepower out of old systems by the end. Agony was gorgeous but, in honesty, it was slow and suffered from frame rate issues when busy. Project X, Gods and First Samurai were stunning but at time of release there were plenty of impressive contemporary games. Due to this it has to be Shadow of the Beast - realesed relatively early in the life of the A500 there was nothing to rival its beauty on the Amiga or any other system for years.

For me this is between Psygnosis and Delphine Software.

Shadow of the Beast was definitely one of the most stunning early Amiga games, also many of Psygnosis' other games were very polished and you could practically guarantee a game from them would look very good. One lesser known Psygnosis game I loved the graphics from was Baal. I remember waiting months for that game to be released and getting the bus into my local city that weekend just to buy it and then rushing home to play the game. And it was great.

But there is also Delphine Software, who gave us Another World, Future Wars and Flashback, along with all their other games. Some of the most innovative and unique graphical styles seen on the Amiga with some amazing intro sequences too.

hmmm not sure about the best but there some wonderfull examples of great work-indeed.

firstly this is not in any order,

Bitmap Brothers
With the exception of a couple of games, BB games have always been more Style over Substance for me, but on them few occasions (Chaos Engine / SB2) they really hit the nail on the head!

Team 17
I have to admit, most of the work they produced is highly polished from Project X, Alien Breed series, super frog... even Body Blows... although the latter was seriously laking in game play

Delphine Software
The art here is awesome, but i fear its one of those, hit or miss to your taste, however, when combing these awesome visuals with great gameplay, you have perhaps the best platform game EVER.... Flashback...

Psygnosis
Here was a development team that was always trying to push the envelope, some absolutely amazingly absorbing atmosphere that was certainly a large part attributed to graphics... however, i aways feel there games are left unfinished.... strange eh?

Thalion
Some amzing graphical talent from this ex demo/hacking group.. clearly i am yet to find a game i am not impressed with thier art works. one that comes to mind a lot is No Second Prize from the music to the super slick visuals... absolutely amazing....

For me theres one game from the early amiga days that made me want to get one and thats Defender of the Crown. It blew the socks off everything that was around at the time. Other than that i would go for Team 17 as although there graphics were not realistic as such you knew when you bought a Team 17 game that there would be an incredible amount of detail and that they were pushing the most that they could out of any system.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zetr0

Thalion
Some amazing graphical talent from this ex demo/hacking group.. clearly i am yet to find a game i am not impressed with their art works. one that comes to mind a lot is No Second Prize from the music to the super slick visuals... absolutely amazing....

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I had completely forgotten about this game. I remember first trying it out and being amazed by the 3D visuals. Bloody hard game though! The mouse control was great once you got the hang of it though.

indeed, once one mastered the mouse,.... the game is absolutely sublime!

however, when I got to revisit this wonderfull game i was presented with a slight problem.....

it was pretty darn hard to begin with.... however going from a stock A1200 to an 060 equipped monster kinda made the game a little more challenging.........

....... to actualy make it round one lap..... OMG its too quick.....

The one thing that amazed me with that game was how smooth the 3D was on a standard unexpanded Amiga.