Well I’m glad I’m not the only one lol. Also, that’s neat. IDK I always see DC and see nothing more than a sup’d up N64… granted, I wasn’t even as much as a sperm cell by this point, let alone experience the generational jump firsthand. But seeing DC to GCN, for instance, just seems like sucha a massive upgrade.

Nothing on N64 comes close to Shenmue.  98-99 Nothing even on PC looked as good as Soul Calibur or Shenmue.  Sonic Adventure at the time was seen as Pixar like. Magazines did articles trying to explain this is not per-rendered cutscenes but real time. Crazy Taxi big city driving around with NPCs everywhere was pretty nuts. Characters having fingers and lip syncing was just insane at the time.  Having ports of NAOMI games like House of the Dead 2 and seeing real time damage on the zombies was something else. Seeing physics in console games was very novel. Even something as simple as 18 Wheeler with items on a dashboard moving. Shenmue also has simulated physics like turning off a light by a pullstring and it sways back and forth and slows down. The first Resident Evil in full 3D with Veronica. However DC is hardware from 1998. 4 years older than Gamecube so Gamecube was better looking.  One thing DC did better than everything sans Xbox was the 8MB for Texture memory. A lot of DC ports to PS2 look worse on PS2. (this is not saying DC was more powerful just had sharper textures) and could do AA where PS2 did not. 

DC topped out in real time performance at 3 million Polygons Per Second. Gamecube was 12 million (but the highest I know of is Rogue Leader at 9 million). PS2 I believe was 6 million. I don't know what Xbox was. Thing is in 1998 even 1 million on PC was considered pretty high. N64 was topping out at about 150K and piss poor textures. These numbers are taking real time performance with game logic,textures,lighting and such.  The best part at the time was DC was rendering games in 480P. N64? Typically 240P. DC was well beyond N64 and well beyond just suped up N64. It was a monster when it launched but 4 years newer hardware yeah it will be a bit better.

This was blowing minds in 1999. Now granted these are not in game models and just static but this was the era of using human faces to show how powerful new hardware was.

N64 to Gamecube and XBOX - specifically - by a large mile. Early PS2 games looked inferior to Dreamcast games. Dreamcast was a big leap in itself, but many of its titles (e.g. Nomad Soul or MDK2) looked like hi-res N64 titles, and it was only exceptions such as Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure, and Shenmue that looked truly 'next-gen'. Gamecube, on the other hand, had Wave Race (and its incredible water physics for the time), Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, and Luigi's Mansion that looked exceptional. XBOX, likewise, had Dead or Alive 3 and Halo: Combat Evolved that also looked outstanding, with advanced lighting and shadow effects never seen before. Later games, such as Splinter Cell or Riddick also did wonders.

PS2 did eventually come into its own, but it took its time, and for that reason I never quite saw it as the same kind of raw leap as XBOX and Gamecube were.

PS1 to PS2:

Tekken 3 to Tag, GT2 to GT3, AC3 to AC4, MGS1 to MGS2, GTA2 to GTA3, and SH to SH2. The heavenly feeling of 2001 will never be repeated (if partly because I'm old now). PS2's following years were strong but they didn't hold a candle to its 2001 imo. Wow factor, innovative games, cool new IPs, amazing sequels, etc

Just a reminder that this is specifically from one system to its successor, not just one gen to the next; the OG Xbox didn't have a 5th gen predcessor.

Dreamcast was the biggest jump in 3d gaming. I get the gamecube was more powerful than the Dreamcast, but DC was first. The jump to Soul, Dead or Alive 2, Code Veronica, Skies, etc was massive.

So I guess my answer is N64 to Dreamcast.  It was the first time where I could see where 3D gaming was going.

Dreamcast isn't the successor to the N64, Gamecube is.

Yeah, so by brand Saturn to dreamcast.

Not sure how to word it but DC was the first system where I thought photo realistic was possible.  I just recall stuff like NFL 2k shocking me.  It was just a massive jump.  

Of course the GC took it to another level.  But the detail in something like Skies was crazy to me.

Gotcha. Yeah Saturn to Dreamcast was massive, downright insane when you consider there were only four years between them.

1994:

1998:

Depends on how you look at it, since there are games with different focus on PC at the time.

For example, Outcast, which was TPP open world action adventure (not something you would expect in '99), was something that only PC could pull off in '99, and only PCs with very powerful CPUs, since its engine was running software renderer due to terrain that could not be made with 3D accelerators.

That said, Shenmue was indeed sight to behold.