10 Amazing Video Games With TERRIBLE Graphics

1. F-Zero X

At a glance the 1998 racing game F-Zero X doesn’t seem to have the worst graphics on this list. The N64 game has received near universal praise for its soundtrack and controls, especially due to just how smoothly it ran.

But there’s an important catch to note there, it ran smoothly because developer Nintendo decided to sacrifice graphics so it could run at 60 frames per second on the N64.

This is a fascinating call to make in a year where sacrificing graphical integrity would mean plummeting your game into a sea of foggy backgrounds and polygonal 3D models. That’s exactly what happened, of course, but the game ran so well that it didn’t matter. The joy was in the gameplay design, the characters, the feel of racing, the tracks, and the boost in responsiveness at the cost of visual fidelity was actually what put this game on the map as a must play racer. The decision meant that the frame rate wouldn’t drop even with all 30 racers on screen at the same time.

Though it meant dropping background detail and render distance, F-Zero X was one of the only N64 games at the time which could run at 60fps which is pretty freaking cool.