Remember back in high school there was always that one kid who could somehow grow a full and luxurious beard? He always looked so mature, and interesting, and somehow more respectable. He was our de facto leader, the one true teen, blessed with the rich, rugged whiskers of a Brian Blessed or a Tom Selleck. While the rest of us made do with a paltry patch of lip fur - we still looked like late stage foetuses, regardless - this one kid was leaping way, way ahead of the curve. So, why am exactly I talking about this? Well, for a start, I owed Mr. Blessed a favour, and secondly - moustachioed adolescents just so happen to be the perfect metaphor for games that look light years ahead of their competition.

They may exist on the same hardware, but they're anything but equal - these are the gob-smacking, eyebrow raising, fist-pump inducing titles that looked so good they were very nearly next-gen, no new hardware required. Feast your eyes on these.

Egad, do you even remember what the Game Boy Color looked like? All those garish hues and simplistic sprites, swirling around the screen to the sounds of a Nokia 3210 begging for death. Doubtless New Nightmare was intended to be different - more immersive, and far darker than anything the GBC had previously witnessed. And different it certainly was - different from good, - but while the game itself was absolute grade-A human manure, New Nightmare's visuals were a cut above its handheld contemporaries. Squint and you might even mistake it for a GBA title... almost.

Ah the Atari Jaguar, the overzealous hare to Ninty's turtle and Sony's, err, turtle… and maybe Sega's turtle too. The point is that the Jag took a great big early jump into supposedly next-gen gaming, only to wind up losing the race in short order. Whether by ill luck or poor planning, Atari's final console found itself performing a weak, over-hyped, half-generational leap at a time when the rest of its competitors were revving up for the full double jump. It was the Dreamcast of its day, only without the great games and lasting legacy of warm, gooey feelings.

Yet despite its rapid obsolescence, Atari's machine did manage to produce one outstanding looker. It may not seem like much today, but at the time of its release, AvP was damn near the diamond-standard in home console visuals.

Seeing slick 3D graphics emanate from your humble SNES must've seemed like pure witchcraft back in 1993. The machine itself was already some two years old by that point, and the standard was seemingly locked in. Oh sure, later games would continue to look better and better (the SNES was a particularly cocky console like that), but the kind of total, seismic shift entailed by Star Fox's release was a ludicrous advancement, regardless.

The game didn't even require one of those ultra faddish stop-gap peripherals to play. No Sega CDs here, oh no. Star Fox's technical wizardry all occurs inside of the cartridge itself, newly kitted out with the powerful Super FX chip. For a more modern comparison, imagine buying an Xbox One title that suddenly started throwing holograms across the room, firing off game-appropriate scents, or making you a cup of tea. That's how wildly unexpected this baby was back in the early '90s.

As remarkable as Star Fox's appearance may have been to the comparative cavemen of the 1990s, DK's SNES outing was almost even more impressive. Not least because Rare achieved it all without the aid of the aforementioned Super FX. Instead the studio bet big on the relatively 'simple', hitherto underutilised technique of pre-rendering its art in 3D, before importing it into the game. The resulting title boasted some of the most extremely detailed graphics of the era, with the likes of Killer Instinct and Abe's Oddysee later following its lead.

Unreleased and largely unknown in the west, Tobal No.2 represented Square's efforts at a competitive fighting title during the genre's most proliferate period. Despite being bundled with a demo of the hotly anticipated Final Fantasy VII, Tobal No.1 fared poorly enough in the region that it effectively put the kybosh on No.2's Western release. Too bad, because the game itself looked eyeball-blastingly fantastic - or at least it did at the time. Fluid animations, semi-rounded edges, somewhat recognisable faces - it's practically the holy grail of PSOne-era design.

It seems the name Naughty Dog and the term 'visually spectacular' oftentimes go hand in hand. That's because the fine folks behind Crash Bandicoot are absolutely, positively bonkers when it comes to wringing out every last drop of potential from Sony's home consoles.

When it came to creating Crash, the team did everything from writing a new programming language to completely ignoring Sony's memory restrictions. In many ways the game was a completely custom job, and one that even internal Sony programmers were unable to repeat. Crash co-creator Andy Gavin wrote all about it - it's a fascinating read.

Conker's foul-mouthed tirades may have won him a great many admirers, but don't let that fool you - this scatologically-minded squirrel was no one trick pony. Rare's resident rascal also boasted some of the slickest, most lushly textured visuals of the entire 5th generation. Yes, he may have appeared late on in that cycle, but the visual difference between his game and, say, Super Mario 64 remains truly remarkable.

'Boobs'. There, I've just about summed up the entire advertising campaign for Fear Effect 2. Luckily, the game itself isn't quite so shallow, though it remains just as aesthetically pleasing. Where other games of the era were content to model a crumpled up dustbin and call it a face, both Fear Effect and its sequel gave us actual human features, albeit in a slightly stylized form - mixing FMV backdrops with smooth cel-shaded characters.

It’s no exaggeration to state that Fear Effect 2 could've easily passed for a PS2 title. Hell, it still looks good enough to be mistaken for a modern indie hit today. So, how on earth did developer Kronos accomplish this titanic feat? Perhaps through some sort of arcane ritual? Nope, they just shipped the thing on 4 full-to-bursting discs. That's four times the chances of your idiot uncle using one as a drinks coaster. No wonder they called it fear effect.

Poor old Dreamcast, you simply peaked too soon. Much too strong for the 5th gen, much too weak for the 6th. Though you might have had a chance, I suspect, if it weren’t for the poor fortune of facing off against the single most successful console of all time. Curse you PS2, and all of your brilliant games!

Still, the Dreamcast had plenty to recommend it, including the Shenmue series, a pair of ambitious open-world adventures boasting some seriously impressive visuals. Packed with colourful crowd scenes and vibrant environs that feel truly, uncannily alive, Ryo's epic tale looked every bit as revolutionary in 1999 as its 'real-life' RPG gameplay felt.

So beautiful, yet so cruel - Ninja Gaiden Black is the veritable cheerleader of the video game landscape. Smooth as silk and a joy to behold, if not always to play, (y'know, because it's so darn hard) - Black looks more like an Xbox 360 launch title than an original XB game. The very fact that its PS3 port (known as Ninja Gaiden Sigma) looked a little shoddier for the switch should speak volumes about just how pretty this original effort was.

Early Xbox fanboys certainly had their work cut out for them as far as the all-powerful PS2 was concerned. Sony had the sales - roughly 6 times that of the Microsoft machine - the lineage, thanks to the PSOne, and the vast majority of both the timed and non-timed exclusives. Yes, Halo was great, but not enough to compete with the likes of God of War, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy et al. The one solitary area in which Xbox aficionados could be certain of victory was in regards to graphical performance. Xbox games just looked better, and titles like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory were instrumental in proving it.

Detailed environments, smooth animations, and a quality of lighting unheard of on home consoles of the day made Chaos Theory the poster child for the Xbox's visual supremacy. It also didn't hurt that the game's PS2 port utterly paled in comparison. Of course, what most fans neglected to mention is that the game looked better than just about every other Xbox game too…

One of the single best ways to help a game stand the test of time is to try and eschew 'realistic' graphics in favour of a more artistic approach. Cel-shading - or 'the art of drawing big black lines around everything', because screw you high school art teachers - remains one of the most popular means to achieving that end.

2003's Dark Chronicle (aka Dark Cloud 2 in the states), stands as testament to the success of this method, looking just as good today as it did during the latter parts of the PlayStation 2's heyday. Though not as smooth as similarly styled Valkyria Chronicles, the titles remain a fair sight more comparable than any other '03/'08 pairing you could mention. Just ask the likes of Jedi Academy and The Force Unleashed, or Devil May Crys 2 and 4.

This spot could just as easily have been filled by Silent Hill 4, another gorgeously gory title that somehow managed to look like a million blood-soaked bucks. So, If that's your preferred option, I say go wild. Run with the antelope, sing it in the valleys, scream it from the highest mountain top. But for me, Silent Hill 3 looks just a smidgen better.

Whatever the case, neither title has any business whatsoever working on a PS2. It's quite simply stunning what the developers were able to achieve here. Ultra smooth textures, believable character animations, icky schlong monsters. This game has it all!

As visually striking today as it ever was, Okami represents further proof that a strong art-style can and will endure the test of time. Where other, more 'realistic' games quickly become little more than running sight gags - i.e. "I can't believe we used to think this looked good" - Okami and its ilk remain just as vital as ever.

Sure Capcom may have opted to give it the whole HD treatment later down the line, but in truth the game barely needed it. When viewed on a proper, standard-def CRT TV, Okami positively glows, marrying cel-shaded design - there it is again - to ink wash-inspired visuals. There's little more that needs to be said here, other than to perform that weird kissing gesture that cartoon chefs are so fond of. Bellissimo!

Black certainly isn't the prettiest game on this list, though that's largely by design. Few 6th generation titles nailed the grim and gritty aesthetic quite so well as this. What's even more surprising to note is the sheer level of attention being paid to destructibility, one of the game's biggest features and a major drain on resources.

With so much processing power being set aside for crumbly biscuit physics, you'd think the rest of the game's graphics would suffer. Not so, in fact they're some of the best on the platform. It seems the lesson here is a simple one: Don't compromise on anything ever, and everything will work out just fine. Just don't apply that to marriages. In every other respect, you're basically good.

Here's a rare example of a cross-platform title where the old-gen outing looks better than the new. Odd I know, and partially a matter of taste, but there are a few good reasons why this might've occurred. For one, the older system was far better understood than the then-cutting edge Xbox 360. With the game likely being made for the former and ported to the latter, there wouldn't have been many opportunities for true enhancement.

As such, the 360 title appears overly bright and blurry, representing a clear case of a studio throwing fancy effects at a game in the hopes of making it look somehow 'newer'. Still, that's one mighty fine looking Xbox game. Well done, you old geezer.

Proponents of the 'size doesn't matter' debate, look no further than this all-time great. Squished onto one of the GameCube comparatively tiny discs, Resident Evil 4 still managed to look a thousand times better than its eventual PS2 port. A few blurry textures aside, this is a title that could've shown up in the early days of the Xbox 360 and no one would've batted an eyelid.

This, of course leads to the obvious conclusion that the game was actually developed many years into the future, before being sent back in time as reward for our good behaviour. Cheers Capcom.

It's no secret that the longer a development team has with a console, the more power it's able to procure from it. Games at the end of a cycle simply ought to look better than those at the start, where the pressure to go cross-platform and get to grips with some new-fangled technology tends to weigh heavy on the developer. Normally, these visual improvements emerge at a steady rate, eventually reaching a plateau of sorts during the mid-point of a PlayStation or Xbox's life cycle.

Halo 3 represented its series' starting point on the 7th gen. Halo: Reach therefore was its plateau - a modest improvement all around. Except, of course that it wasn't, for after wresting control of the franchise from long-time developer Bungie, 343 Industries set about sacrificing every goat it could get its hands on in order to summon up the sheer level of black magic necessary to produce Halo 4. It may not be 8th gen, but it's damn close enough for a game operating on 2005 hardware. Sumptuous stuff.

Alright alright, let's just get this one out of the way good and early: The Last of Us: Remastered looks a whole lot nicer than this initial effort. I suppose that's kinda the point. And yet for my money the game's PS3 incarnation already looked as good, if not better than most 8th-gen experiences. The whole thing just looks so… soooo… well, I don't know exactly, I guess it defies description. No amount of swooning superlatives could hope to do it justice, and so I'm just going to go ahead and coin a new one myself - 'fansplanshish'. The Last of Us for the PlayStation 3 looks absolutely fansplanshish. Go ahead and jam it in your eyeholes.

Never have I been more sure of the Apple/ Satan relationship than after seeing this stunner in action. How else do you explain the sheer visual majesty on display on a smartphone screen? There can be little doubt about it. Some poor, unfortunate intern definitely wound up on an altar in order to make this happen.

The problem with adding a smartphone game to this list is that the format's generations don't tend to last so long or mean as much. Saying that Infinity Blade looked next-gen therefore doesn't really accomplish a great deal. Still, it's quite an achievement, and a clear winner over the medium's usual fare. When everything else looks like Angry Birds, Infinity Blade may as well be the second coming.

There, that should minimise the deluge of 'But you for got about Game X, you idiot!' in the comments. But it won't, will it? Have at it, I can take it.

NXT, Hall Of Fame, Axxess, WrestleMania, Raw: even for the most ardent of WWE Network addicts, the hottest weekend on the wrestling calendar can be a challenging one to keep up with. For four days, an entire city becomes over-run with 6 ft beastmen, beautiful divas and passionate fans, all wanting their super-sized slice of the sumptuous WWE cake. And as you’ll very shortly learn, that cake is an actual thing.

See, GamesRadar headed to San Jose ostensibly to talk video games with the likes of Xavier Woods and Sami Zayn, but couldn’t help noticing numerous happenings that go far beyond the realm of WWE 2K15, Monday Night Raw, and Seth Rollins’ shocking title win at ‘Mania. Here, then, are the 13 must-read secrets from our time spent in Silicon Valley – including Ronda Rousey’s love for Dragon Ball Z and Paige’s admission that she too is a secret glutton…

The New Day hasn’t done much of note since its debut last year. Despite that, trio member Xavier Woods might have just anointed himself GamesRadar’s favourite wrestler. Away from the ring, he’s living his WWE dream exactly as we would. “I have a briefcase that I carry with me when I travel, with a built-in 19-inch TV,” he reveals. “My PS4 straps inside along with the controllers and cords. When I get to hotels I pop that open, I get on the internet, and I play Final Fantasy XIV until I pass out.”

“I wasn’t very social as a kid, but video games were a good way for me to connect with other kids. I was obsessed with everything from Nintendo onwards – Mario, Duck Hunt – and I still have my regular NES. I even had a Virtual Boy – but that thing gives me migraines, so I had to get rid of it.” His favourite game ever? “Mario Kart: Double Dash on the Gamecube. If they put all the options from that into modern Mario Kart, the online game would be unreal.”

WWE wrestlers were housed in the Fairmont Hotel, eight miles from the hosting Levi’s Stadium, for the weekend. To enjoy a drink at the bar on any given evening was to live out every fan’s dream: Bret Hart and Natalya catching up with family and friends, The Miz and Maryse beaming with Hollywood smiles, John Cena’s dad enthusiastically congratulating Rusev and Lana on their bout with his son in the hours after Mania. And then there was… the cake.

Specially commissioned by the hotel and designed to mimic the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, this calorific wonder greeted wrestlers and fans alike upon entry to the building. It contained 50 pounds of dark chocolate, with red fondant and gold and silver dust added for that final jewel-like flourish. And it was being sold off after the show to raise money for Leukemia Lymphoma Society, at a cool $1500. Presumably delicious, /and/ made for a good cause? That is our kind of elevenses.

Friday night saw San Jose State University host a three-hour NXT show featuring what WWE hopes will be its WrestleMania headliners of the future. Japanese import Hideo Itami and Irishman Finn Balor got understandably loud reactions from the 5,000 strong crowd (who seemed especially well-fuelled thanks to an unconventional 10pm start time), but it was New Jersey trio Enzo Amore, Colin Cassidy and Carmella that popped the audience loudest. The trio's call-and-refrain entrance shtick echoes The New Age Outlaws, packing in more catchphrases than Roy Walker. Booked right, this unconventional trio can be huge on the main roster.

Also evident from the show: divas Charlotte, Sasha, Bayley and Becky Lynch are already good enough to compete believably with big stage ladies Paige, AJ Lee and Nikki Bella; Itami's future looks secure now that he's reclaimed the GTS finisher ‘borrowed’ by CM Punk; and Rhyno, the former ECW favourite defeated by Baron Corbin mid-way through this particular card, still has plenty of gore in the tank.

With former indie favourite El Generico – now better known to NXT fans as Sami Zayn – hotly tipped for a main roster debut on Raw which never materialised, GamesRadar was surprised to hear him cut a promo on Friday night in which he stated he was sticking around to reclaim the NXT title from Kevin Owens. Yet he categorically refuted our suggestion that he’s content to stay on the main roster’s periphery.

“I’m not in a rush. This time last year, everyone was telling me ‘I can’t wait until you’re on the main roster’, but this year I’m hearing much more of ‘I love you on NXT’,” he explains. “But I’ll never be happy being sedentary. As long as I’m with NXT my goal is to be champion and leave a void here that when I leave either can’t be filled or is very difficult to fill. The goal is always to move forward.” GamesRadar’s prediction? A WWE call-up and secondary title run (imagine an Intercontinental showdown with Daniel Bryan) at Summerslam.

WWE Axxess at the San Jose Convention Center featured Superstar signings (and ginormous queues for Superstar singings) with close to the entire roster, in addition to the ability to step inside the 16-foot high, ten-ton Elimination Chamber (although security was stepped up after one attention-seeking twonk decided to climb the structure). Its big pull, however, was a curtained-off Hall Of Fame showcase, packed with items familiar to fans young and old.

The casket bearing Brock Lesnar’s name which went up in flames before his WM30 contest with Undertaker was there, next to the real European and Smoking Skull title belts, and countless outfits worn by Randy Savage – most of them signed. Fans also delighted in being photographed next to a daunting life-sized statue of Andre The Giant. Most humbling were the many items taken from Ultimate Warrior’s always kaleidoscopic wardrobe, including – poignantly – the coat he wore for his final Raw appearance, just two days before his untimely passing last April.

Wrestling fans have long accepted that WWE merch is a bit naff. Shirts with noisy (and often senseless) slogans on the rear – made of heavy material that takes on twice its own weight the instant you add a single drop of sweat – have been a company mainstay for longer than Howard ‘The Fink’ Finkel. It never stopped us from buying them; but you had to accept a cloud of existential sadness would accompany every wearing.

Well, not this year. Packed with more than 600 items, the WWE Superstore in downtown San Jose showcased an array of shirt designs that could be worn in public without the threat of city-wide laughter. (The Mecha Powers tee featuring AI versions of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage? Oh goodness, yes.) Not only that, the $35 tees on show boasted a lighter, thinner material which enabled us to enjoy Mania in comfort //as well as// looking relatively normal. It was an experience almost as miraculous as that main event finish.

WrestleMania weekend tends to be a festival of cosplay. Spotted at Axxess alone were a pint-sized AJ fan wearing matching garb who could have passed for her sister (it felt un-PC to request a photo), and three huge dudes in full-on Shield attire – including bandanas across their mouths – who’d have been arrested for intimidating the public if they went out dressed like that in Croydon.

42-year-old Danny from Sacramento was our favourite, however. In addition to looking (a bit) like Macho Man, he had the voice and mannerisms down pat. He’s been attending events as a Randy Savage looklike for ten years, and has seven Macho-style outfits, all of them self-created. “It takes about two months to make one outfit, and it’s not as expensive as you think. It’s the belts that are expensive.” Do we sort of want him to make us one ahead of Mania 32 in Dallas next year? Ohhhhh yeeeah.

Though some mock its legitimacy – the Bushwhackers, really? - WWE’s annual Hall Of Fame ceremony has become a fixture of WrestleMania weekend. Glitz and glamour is laid on thick, with wrestlers and divas kitted out in all manner of designer suits and expensive gowns. The thing you don’t see on camera: their front row seats are reserved using nothing more than names on pieces of paper, just as yours might be at a local theatre for an amateur production of Battlefield: The Musical.

While we might lament Luke and Butch’s induction, one Hall Of Fame entrant deserves every last ounce of recognition. Connor ‘The Crusher’ Michalek, a young wrestling superfan who passed away from brain cancer at just eight years old, was inducted via a series of moving speeches from Ultimate Warrior’s wife Dana, Daniel Bryan, and his father Steve. It was a stirring reminder of how this fake sport touches very real lives, with the male bravado so commonplace among wrestling fans replaced by humility and tears throughout much of the speeches.

17 minutes, 23 seconds. That’s the total amount of time it would take for you to sit through Ronda Rousey’s catalogue of UFC fights, all of them wins. It’s unsurprising, then, that the most dominant woman on the planet got a near-deafening reaction from the 70,000-plus crowd when shown on the big screen at WrestleMania. But this was a mere hint at what was to come.

Rousey later joined The Rock in the ring to send cocky ownership duo Triple H and Stephanie McMahon packing – and she did it wearing a Dragon Ball Z T-shirt. As reported by , away from the Octagon Rousey is a huge World Of Warcraft fan, and also used to moderate a Pokemon forum. There’s always been a crossover between wresting and games, but this goes down as the most high profile example ever. The only way it can be topped? Goldberg returning at Summerslam in a Cloud Strife tee.

Anyone who’s seen the fantastic Fighting With My Family doc showcasing the Knights of Norfolk will be aware of Norwich lass – and two-time Divas champ – Paige’s initial struggles with homesickness on arrival in Orlando. “I’d lived by myself in England, but here it was so different,” she tells GamesRadar. “I’m different from the rest of the girls, and they weren’t very nice to me for the first six months. They were very territorial. I got a lot of crap, and was crying every night on Skype.”

She says the turning point was realising she wasn’t here to make friends, and in the 18 months since has grown to love her adoptive homeland. “Great food, great company, great people. You get to see so much more than in the England. Desert, mountains…. and the weather’s a little bit better, isn’t it?” As for the American thing she loves most: “I enjoy the junk food, I’m a big cheesecake fiend. When I came over here I put on 40lbs of cheesecake weight.” If only we could look similarly svelte after a twelve-pack of Krispy Kremes.

At a Fairmont Hotel conference call to promote WWE 2K15 on Monday morning, Hulk Hogan openly told journalists that he was meeting Kevin Nash and Scott Hall in the afternoon to go over plans for that night’s Raw. But when the time came, both his NWO troupe and rivals DX – who’d received huge ovations from the crowd when interrupting Sting vs Triple H at WrestleMania – were absent. So too Trips, Undertaker, The Rock, and Bret Hart, all of whom had appeared the previous night.

Instead, on what is essentially the start of a new WWE season, younger bucks and beauties were given a chance the shine, with sparkling results. Every match delivered. Lucha Dragons and Geordie high-flyer Neville’s aerial prowess shone through on their official debuts; both title bouts (Bryan vs Ziggler and Cena vs Ambrose) could believably have headlined most pay-per-views; and despite some unnecessarily base chants regarding their sexual preferences, the six-woman tag bout showcased particularly strong work from Natalya, Naomi, Paige and AJ, proving that the #givedivasachance hashtag has turned heads backstage. A sign that WWE finally recognises wresting fans love /wrestling/? We can but hope.

A full four days after the San Jose State University show, city-wide fan love for NXT showed no sign of dying down. GamesRadar saw more grown men wearing Bayley T-shirts than those bearing many main roster stars, even before AJ Lee adorned that particular purple-and-yellow garment on Raw. Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens merch was omnipresent, too.

Then there were the chants outside hotels, while waiting to head inside Mania and the Hall Of Fame, and – incredibly – throughout the six-man main event of Raw. Bayley, Zayn and Owens were clamoured for alongside Hideo Itami, Tyler Breeze and Sasha Banks, as veterans Big Show and Kane looked exasperated (and Randy Orton furious). But while the big names mightn’t like it, this fan love for its next wave of stars is exactly what WWE needs. Adam Rose and Bo Dallas floundered on the main roster as NXT’s cult-like popularity hadn’t reached wrestling fans’ wider conscience. Now the opposite is true, and names like Owens and Finn Balor should be instant stars as a result.

WWE announced the live attendance as 76,976, which, to our eyes, seemed slightly exaggerated. The stadium was sold out, but one entire side of it housed three massive video screens and the entrance way. Including the pre-show, 39 men and four ladies competed, 9 of them pulling double duty. With 23 matches and 22 wins Undertaker remains the most experienced, and successful, WrestleMania combatant. 11 wrestlers or divas actively participated at Mania for the first time, among them Sting, Paige, Rusev and Hideo Itami.

Three belts changed hands: Daniel Bryan scored his first Intercontinental title victory, while John Cena’s US Championship triumph kicks off his fourth reign with that particular strap. The total wrestling time on the show was two hours, six minutes and 51 seconds, with Sting vs Triple H having the longest match from bell to bell, at 18 minutes and 36 seconds.

That then, was WrestleMania weekend. We’d love to know your views on the event itself, as you saw it back at home. Match of the evening? To our eyes, the honour goes to the Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns main event, chiefly for the impromptu, unconventional title-winning introduction of new world champ Seth Rollins. And that ladder match. Good Lord, that ladder match...

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