I believe one can return years from now to the likes of Super Mario Bros. or other classic hand-drawn sprite games, like say Street Fighter 2, and they would still hold up.  I would argue Tetris would also fit into this, and a modern game like Geometry Wars would also.  I would also argue the case for Metal Slug would still be able to hold its own.

However, take a look at some earlier efforts to use polygons, with possibly some texture mapping, and my take is they don't look good today.  "Riiiidge Racer" yell is a joke arguably because of this.  Maybe some could argue against this, but does anyone today want to argue the original Virtua Fighter still looks good?  My feeling is they haven't aged well.

So, I am going to asked whether or not we have sufficient horsepower that people could return to modern polygon-based graphics to be considered timeless.  Like, how well would God of War hold up?  I believe it could hold up well even 20 years from now, while perhaps the original Playstation Metal Gear, wouldn't.  A LOT of Saturn games that were in 3D don't look good now, in my opinion.

Your thoughts?

I think GC/Xbox/Wii is where graphics are good enough, and will be good enough in the future. PS2 and below is where things start to age in general.

Depending on the art style one uses, they already are. It won't ever happen for photorealism -there will always be more insignificant details for developers to add in as marketing fodder- but most other styles seem to fit well.

I agree with Chrizum. Last generation graphics were at the point where they were good enough. That's why a decently-made Wii game can still look nice--if it were at N64-quality, I'd be very upset.

You have the PS2 being the drawing line?  Would you say God of War would hold up?  I believe both Katamaris on the PS2 should hold up.

You're right, alot of 5th and some 6th gen games aren't going to be looked back on as fondly as say a 3rd or 4th gen 2D game, because 2D is much easier to render and was reaching perfection in the 4th gen.

However some games like Super Mario 64, Mega man Legends, Metal Gear Solid (1,2 and 3), Crash Bandicoot, Resident Evil 4, and Final Fantasy VIII IX and X just have a timeless way in how they look that cannot be replicated. It'll be the madden games and constant sequel games will be most hit by age (although i really still love the sega genesis versions) because gameplay AND graphics are getting better in those series.

Its  generally the shooters that age faster than anything else. The best exmple the J man can give is socom 3 , the J man use to love playing the game but after a year of playing the 360 and going back to socom , it just looked awful.

Playstation 1 games look horrible in general:

The first Tekken, for example... UGH!

I believe that the earliest game that I can return to without being turned of by the horrible textures is Half-Life.

Playstation 2 games can mostly hold up their own if they are artistically well done.

This generation of games might look somewhat old in 20 years, but they won't be frowned upon I think. Naturally, handhelds might be doing way more than that by then.

last gen was fine. Playing N64 is not so easy nowadays, I think if you have no memories about the games you wouldn't like most of them too much if you'd play them now. I think this is also why we see so little real 3D efforts on the DS.

Any idea what leads to a game having a timeless look? My take is a game like Galaga still looks good. But you go back to some earlier polygon fighting games and they haven't aged well at all.

Of course, play mechanics is an entirely different issue.