I always find it funny when people say things like this. If you thought it looked great before it cannot look 'piss poor' now, that's just silly. Don't buy into the industry hype.

yeah its alot of fun doing that, the graphics back then seemed so amazing.

A person's standards can't change over time as the industry evolves?

I think CES was where a lot of the big "reveals" were made at the time, although Nintendo and Sega both used to hold their own expos -- not sure if Nintendo's Spaceworld is still something they do today.

There isn't much relevant video that I can find from the old CES shows (it wasn't the circus that E3 has been) and I remember having to catch glimpses of all the new stuff when CBS or NBC did segments on their morning news shows... That said, the Jaguar seems to have gone over pretty well at the time:

The Virtual Boy was shown at the first E3 in '95 and didn't create much interest. Nintendo wasn't in a particularly good spot then, either, with almost nothing to show aside from the VB since the SNES was headed out the door and the N64 hadn't been finished yet.

Hey now there's one console that has 2003 graphics that is doing very well these days.

Hardware sales wise the PSP has been doing just fine. I think it's about 50% of DS world wide sales and has old sold the DS in Japan from time to time. They obviously have significant problems with piracy that has been hurting their software sales. In fact, out of all the people I know with PSPs in real life, not a single one has ever bought a PSP game. A pretty sad statistic. Clearly they need to go digital only and the PSP Go is a step in that direction. To compare the success of the PSP to the Game gear, Atari Lynx, Wonderswan, or TG16 is a joke.

I actually, almost prefer my PSP over my DS. At least it's pretty close. Still, I'm extremely happy with the DSi redesign even though I don't give a shit about the camera or DSiWare. And there's more than enough software to keep any normal person busy.

I dunno, there are a lot of original Xbox games that still look better than what's on the Wii, assuming that's what you're talking about.

In a couple years, we'll all still be laughing about the "trying on dresses" game Microsoft thinks we are all dying to play.

Nintendo also had a dressing game.

Fixed!
(For the DS, obviously.....)

Law of diminishing returns has been in full effect for many many years now.
What really makes a game stand out these days visually is the art design, style, and execution + how it all complements the gameplay.

IMHO of course.

I loved the Game Gear too and, like dan30oly, I don't ever recall the battery life being an issue. I'll second the Game Gear having better graphics than the then current Gameboy. Now, two systems that were junk were the Sega CD and 32X.

So clever. That console has control schemes that are well beyond those of the other consoles with "better graphics." And gameplay is all about control, right? (Oh wait, I'd rather push buttons on my hi-def wowza graphics golf game instead of actually swinging to hit the ball! Uh-huh. And cardio boxing with my thumbs on a dual-shock controller is far more invigorating than actually throwing real punches and dodging.)

B-But I liked Call of Cthuhlu. Just because the fanboys prefer games that involve stealing cars and blowing away drug dealers doesn't mean CoC sucked. *grumble, bitch*

IMHO what sucked about CoC was the fact it went from fairly easy to nearly impossible pretty quickly.

I think we all need to get over the fact that some people like the Wii and some don't and just need to let it go. For me the control is a big gimmick that doesn't even remotely make the game more fun (not yet at least there is still time to change my mind) and if I can get the same game with better graphics, a larger install base (more online players), and not have to use that controller I will jump all over it. If I want to go golfing I will go golfing plain and simple it's ok to leave your house sometimes. On the other end of the aisle you have people that love there Wii and like the controls and think it makes it more fun to those people good for you at least you are playing games and for that I thank Nintendo the more people playing games the better. For me the best part of the WIi is Fit and the people that actually try to use it to lose weight that I love.

I don't know if I made it to the impossible part. I got as far as trying to kill the boss with the deck gun before I got bored and gave up.

Come to think of it though, some of the puzzles were damn near impossible without a walkthrough.