Who remembers when the PS2 was first released and the number of discussions about "jaggies". And the Dreamcast ports, such as Grandia 2 and Skies of Arcadia, looking near identical but everyone saying the textures just didn't quite look as good as the Dreamcast originals.

Well how times have changed. Look at the current swan song of releases for the PS2 and then load up an old PS2 game and prepare to be blown away by the difference in quality. The contrast for many games is so big it can be hard to believe both games are running on the same hardware.

I was catching up on some older RPGs I've missed on the PS2 and got hold of Grandia Xtreme. It was released originally in 2002, so it's now over 4 years old. I loaded it up just to check it worked ok and the first think that hit me was how old, jaggy and blurry the graphics looked. A complete contrast compared to the current wave of RPGs such as Grandia 3, FF12 and Rogue Galaxy.

This definitely shows that the early PS2 defenders were correct. People saying the PS2 couldn't handly proper 3D anti aliasing and textures well can easily be proved wrong by looking at more recent titles. It has taken a long time to get the most from the PS2 over its long life, but it does go to show just how much power was hidden inside the hardware requiring time to truely learn and perfect.

Lets hope the PS3 is the same. The first wave of PS3 games already look amazing so if there is still a lot more power to unlock from the hardware as time goes on who knows how amazing the games released in 4 years time will look! I wonder if the High Def games on the next gen systems now will look as old in a couple of years time, as many of the first wave of PS2 games now do.

Isn't it funny how when gaming hardware is state of the art we are blown away by the visiuals, but 5 years later we look back on the same games with fond memories only to be shocked because the game doesn't look quite as polished and great as it once did. Many PSX games are a good case in point. When the original Playstation was at its height we all thought how great the games looked. Now they look very blocky and old.

Thank god 2D sprite based games from the past don't age as badly as 3D graphics do. Many Amiga games look just as great as they always have.