Super Mario Land 2 in terms of graphics as well. Even when you consider the GB has a lower resolution and lacks color, it rivals or exceeds the graphics of Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3.

On the whole, I don't know if it's a technologically better game than 2 and 3, but it seems better than SMB's graphics minus color and resolution. 

All great choices - I'd argue except for Doom 3.

Doom 3 came just few months after Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay - and while everyone and their grandma was looking forward to it, it didn't, neither visually or gameplay wise, lived up to hype, with Riddick being better in both. And that one is also on OG XBOX.

I'd say game that was really bringing OG XBOX to its knees was Morrowind.

I never heard much disappointment about Doom 3 graphically, more that its gameplay diverging so much from the older games was controversial. Riddick was definitely an impressive showpiece in its own right; I believe it was one of the earliest games to utilize dynamic resolution scaling, which was how they gained the headroom to it off on Xbox.

Well, it is anecdotal, since it is my experience with it - at the time, all my mates were PC gamers as well, and new id Tech game was always something that was anticipated, both for gameplay and visuals.

But Riddick launched just a couple of months earlier, and it really took us all by surprise - so when DOOM3 popped up, it really didn't do much for any of us. By itself it was quite fine, but it didn't look as good as Riddick (in addition to being a lot duller gameplay wise, both compared to Riddick and previous DOOMs).

An interesting perspective; thanks for that.

I guess I never heard that side of it as wasn't much of a PC gamer at the time (outside of Age of Empires and other older stuff, as our family PC was nowhere near up to the task of handling Doom 3) I just heard about how amazing it looked online, and eventually played it on my Xbox, where it blew away any of the other games I owned.

2004 was one of really great years for PC gaming in general, but especially for FPS aficionados - prior to DOOM 3 we got FarCry 1, which looked stunning and is one of earliest examples of linear-wide FPS games, Battlefield Vietnam, which for me was not as good as Battlefield 1942, but still lots of fun and paved a way to brilliant Battlefield 2, already mentioned Riddick, DOOM3, and then Call of Duty: Unfited Offensive expansion, do this date one of the best all around expansions in gaming, and to top it off, Half-Life 2 toward end of the year.

I'll also throw in Tears of the Kingdom on Switch; the amount of interlocking systems and all the craziness made possible by Ultrahand, all set in a massive open world where you can dive from the skies to deep underground without a loading screen would have been ambitious for a PS5/Xbox Series game; that it runs on a mobile chipset from 2015 is sorcery. 

The games that come to mind for me are On PS1 Quake 2 and that's without including the 4 player split screen and mouse control, Vagrant Story, Gran Turismo 1/2 and continuing the Gran turismo theme, GT3 on PS2 this one stood out at the time because, I remember talking with a friend about imagining what it would be like to play a racing game with car models that resembled the CGI ones shown in Gran Turismo 2 with my friend saying that they were rendered on Silicon Graphics computers that cost back then an exorbitant $10,000 dollars a piece, so even with taking Moore's law into account at least a decade or more, so imagine the look on our faces when Gran Turismo's 3 in game models didn't just equal but surpassed those CGI models.

Anything with 4 player split-screen feels impossible now. Motorstorm for example, 4 player split-screen just worked.

GT7 is one of the few modern games that still honors 4 player split-screen. But PD have always been technical wizards. Now they have an 8K mode as well as 4K120 for the Pro.

Maybe this is the Sonic fan in me talking as I'm currently going through the older 3D games and getting hyped for the 3rd movie, but the fact that they were able to get a visual marvel like Sonic Colors to run smoothly on the Wii was VERY impressive!