By younger, I mean under 20 and especially under 16 years of age or so. This is how I grew up, I'm 30 and the first systems I played were Atari 2600, Colecovision, some of those old school Tiger handhelds. Anyone familiar with those know how absolutely basic those systems and their games were. I know a lot of younger gamers have likely played them at some point but it's different when that is all there was and we couldn't even yet imagine the quality of graphics to come some twenty years later. So as I grew up and got older and went through mostly Nintendo systems but also played many of the others as well such as Genesis, Turbograpx 16, Saturn, Playstation, Dreamcast, Playstation 2. It was always in gradual steps in graphic improvement from one generation to the next.

So I've seen the improvements over a long time and have been impressed many times. Now if you're under the age of twenty, the first system you may have played and can remember well might be when you're somewhere between 5 and 8 years old so that would be 12-15 years ago so figure SNES, Genesis  or possibly even later the PS2. Now if you're 16 or younger, the first system you might remember playing might just be from last generation. Now I'm sure many young gamers have played some of the older classics for fun but didn't grow up with them and play them firsthand when they were the top graphics of it's time.

I know many younger gamers do think the graphics of today look incredible but do they view it the same as someone older who really has seen how far we've come over the last few decades?

I think you have a point. When playing Super Mario Galaxy, my parents or my older sisters go "Wow! That looked so awesome, it's incredible how beatiful this game is".

When I play it, my though is somewhere ala "Hmm, that was relatively pretty. Bowser's hair looks a bit odd though."

I think if you were around when even the PS1 launched the graphics improvements since then have been enormous. So I think gamers even as young as 16 can definitely appreciate the visuals/graphics currently available, if they've managed to see the progression from that point in time.

Some older gamers, in my experience, are actually less impressed with brand spanking new visuals in games then some of the newer gamers. A number of them seem to have the attitude that "if it was good enough for me back then, it still is".

Although not all, of course.

Im 18, I played snes first, and at the time I thought it was great, then I got my gameboy color and I actually only played pokemon in it, the other games I played I didnt like it.
My first console was the ps1, at the time I thought the graphics where awesome, when I played games like digimon world I thought the graphics where amazing xD.
Then I got my ps2 like when I was 13, I didnt play y ps1 for a lot of time, and when I got back to play it I was like: How could I think this graphics where good?; and I actually thought the gameplay in the games wasnt so fun after all, not saying it depends on graphics, but the phisics in the newer consoles made the older ones look bad.
I even looked, like in 2006, after playing the newer ps2 games like FF12, GOW2, KH2 and SoTC; some of the first ones I had, like Hulk and Terminator and me and my brothers laughed at it, saying the graphics we once thougth looked super cool, where now just trash.
Now with my ps3 I go back and it happens almost the same, but I still enjoy my older games, the good ones, the average ones I dont play them anymore, its not just the evolution in graphics as some say, its the way they have made gamplay better.

to a degree but not nearly as much as those that sat threw ET and then moved onto bio shock

I'm in the old gamer category (28yo) and while I appreciate the advancements in graphics, they aren't what will convince me to purchase a game. I've read countless times on here stuff like "Wow this game has awesome graphics, first day purchase" mostly by younger users.

So I guess you're right when you say we view graphics differently but having seen great games in the NES and SNES era helps me to remember graphics are not what makes a game interesting.

Ignorance shouldn't be considered here. Your parents are only saying that because they haven't yet experienced graphics on other consoles. It's no different than saying how an immigrant from third world praised the wealth of $14K annual income... but most other people who lived in a first world country know better.

I remember being in awe about how great DVD looked once, let's just say that now with Blu-Ray, I haven't bought a single DVD for about 2 years now.

no

But I have the exact same ignorance, as I have not played a lot of the HD games either, and only on relatively small screens. We have pretty much the same background with playing games, except that my sisters' and parents' ones go further back.

I say... stick with Wii... don't try HD console on HD TV... or you'd never want to go back to it again. ;)

I mean, I'm okay with casual amount of Wii games, but if you tell me Wii is going to be my primary console after owning PS360. I don't think I can do it.