shenmue back in 2000 was incredible, especially the facial detail.

Vrtua Fighter 3 on Model 3.

I agree it does hold up well. But it's not a terribly complex game from a technical perspective.
They achieved what they did by using powerful workstations to have extremely high quality (for the time) 2D art assets... It wasn't a technically demanding game on the SNES like StarFox was, as it didn't require any secondary processors to aid in the processing of the game.

That said... It was still fantastic. I remember the day it came out, I couldn't put it down for months.

They truly were. Especially when they leveraged GLIDE.

Super Mario 64. I'd never seen a 3D game before and didn't even know the game existed when my folks got my an N64 for Christmas. I'll never forget all the time spent murdering that baby penguin on that Christmas Day.

To be honest, no other game has really impressed me anywhere near that much before or since, but young me's lack of knowledge of the industry at the time played a huge role in that.

Images I saw of Crysis for the PC. It's a game where if they remastered it, especially in 4K, I'd love to see if they could raise the bar in the same way again.

Alan Wake as well. It's very visually dated now but looked stunning on release. Another game I wouldn't mind seeing remastered.

Also the original Assassins Creed. It's strange looking back and remembering that in 2007 it was by far the best looking game out there (on consoles at least).

Some of the few SNES games that used the FX-2 chip impressed me back in the day, like Dirt Racer and Winter Gold.

Then there's Cop: The Recruit, which got a GTA-esque open world running... on the DS

I thought FF7 was the most incredible thing ever.

DoA 2 was amazing to me. The movements were great, the girls were hot, and the way it changed environments was a huge "WOW" moment back then.

Gran Turismo 3 blew my mind. It was such a massive jump. I used to always watch the intro and just marvel over it.

World of Warcraft when it first released. It was so far above other MMOs that it was almost unfair.

How the hell was the Super Nintendo able to not explode while playing Donkey Kong Country 2 and StarFox.

Donkey Kong Country comes to mind first.

An early example: Pole Position. It was one of the most sophisticated games of its time. Now it is seldom ever included in Namco Museum.

Wow.  That snow sports game looks amazing.  Framerate looks slid for a 3d SNES game and there doesn't seem to be any problem with the draw distance.  I seriously had no idea a game on that level was possible on the SNES even with the Super FX 2 before.