Am I the only one who doesn't really care about graphics?
As video games develop more and more over the years, companies have been making them more and more realistic-looking. I can guess this is related to expectations, but am I the only one who doesn't care about graphics? We could be using the same processing power to store worlds that have as much exploration potential as the Earth itself if we weren't afraid to save on processing power by going back to 8-bit.
I'm with you. I think "peak graphics" for me was around XBox 360. I'd much rather have resources used for better gameplay, larger worlds, more expansive story, etc. Also, just less resource usage in general; I stopped PC gaming forever ago because I got sick of chasing the GPU dragon.
Not sure I'd want to go all the way back to 8-bit, but somewhere between there and XB360 would be fine. That said, I do like seeing new "retro" games that are 8-bit era appropriate.
Within the range, I would give:
SNES: 10/10 (my favourite game graphics of all time. e.g. FF6)
N64:6/10 (1st party games have good art direction)
PS1: 5/10 (could be lower, but saved by games with pre-rendered backgrounds)
PS2: 7/10 (some outstanding graphics such as Shadow of the Colossus)