Do you care about graphics.

[Shuuda]

Tamara pretty much hit the nail on the head. Aesthetics and style in the game do matter; and we are not just talking about the action: text, menus/options/etc need to have a good appearance (in the sense of being clear). If the appearance of a menu is badly designed, then it will be frustrating. Text needs to be easy to read, so the appearance of it clearly matters.

Making a game look good is not about making it photo realisic (or whatever); although in many games, a degree of realism is appearance is needed to create the right atmosphere (FPS are an example of this). On the other hand, other styles that are not so "realistic" can be considered good graphics. Tamara already used the example of Yoshi's Island; but I can list other games which had a good appearance without being super high tech like games today are: Final Fantasy 6 (Which is more pleasing to the eye than lego block FF7, despite being technically inferior), Golden Sun, Advance Wars (I particularly liked Days of Ruin, which felt less cartoony than the others).

As Florina said, realistic graphics are not necessarily a good thing. Simply making something realistic does not cover up for lack of effort in other areas. Does the fact that TES: Oblivion looks more realistic than Morrowind hide the fact that in reality, Oblivion was just a generic Gondor clone? Whereas Morrowind atleast provided some more unique looking places that had lots of variety.

Personally, I am more partial to a good soundtrack and sounds myself.

Edited January 8, 2009 by Man of the Year!

[Knife]

Graphics are important, but they are not as important as the other gaming qualities. Be honest, would you really want to play the best game ever with NES graphics?

[Media Junkie]

I don't care about graphics I mean yes it makes a game more emjoyable but I don't think good graphics are a must have.

<3

You are more of a god than a human, sir.

[Tamara]

Graphics are important, but they are not as important as the other gaming qualities. Be honest, would you really want to play the best game ever with NES graphics?

If it's Tetris? Sure. But other best-game-evers? Nope.

[Celice]

That's just pure idiotic. If it's be default a "best-game-ever" then there's no room for improvement, and its graphical style would have no influence on the player's "fun" level.

Personally, it could be in pure black/white, two color indexes, and I could still have a fun time. Many great RPGs could easily transcribe into an environment such as this.

[General Spoon]

Before people start bitching about Windwaker's graphics, stop and think for a bit. What else would you want the graphics to be in, Twilight Princess graphics? The Great Sea would look fucking horrible. So don't even start, cel-shading was a great graphic style for Windwaker.

I don't care about graphics so much as long as they don't make the game hard to play.

Twilight Princess would have been a much better game if the enemies actually did damage and the puzzles wern't so damn easy. I don't care about how pretty it looks, the gameplay was a giant fucking downgrade. I really hate Nintendo's new policy of bending over for the casuals. Damnit, they even brought lube in Twilight Princess. For you thing, you could probably crap in Twilight Princess and rupees would pop out. The final boss only does 1/2 heart damage in an attack, and 1 heart with his best attack. I could keep ranting about this, but I won't.

[DeSu]

Graphics do affect me now... If the game is old, I can play it and enjoy know they did their best. I do, however, enjoy good graphics. I hate gritty graphics. Smooth it or lose it.