Video games that pushed their consoles to the limit iceberg

Video games that pushed their consoles to the limit iceberg is an iceberg chart topic. A text version, "Video Games that Pushed Their Consoles to the Limit" by Voxelvill2, is hosted on IcebergThreads, where it had 756 views as of 29 October 2026.

The IcebergThreads author describes it as: "This iceberg chart will cover games that demonstrated remarkable and unique features on consoles no one thought would be possible, given the hardware circumstances. Everything is categorized by decade."

Entries reflect the chart authors' choices and are not verified fact.

Tiers

Tiers and entries from the IcebergThreads version. Notes after a dash are shortened from the author's explanations.

1970s

• Space Invaders
• Galaxian – One of the first arcade games to be in color, and not just black and white.
• Speed Freak – 3D first person driving game from 1979.

1980s

• Solaris
• The 3-D Battles of Worldrunner – An NES game that looks like it was made with the SuperFX chip.
• Hard Drivin
• Winning Run
• Hang On – Used sprite scaling to give off the illusion that you are racing on a 3-D plane. Yu Suzuki would carry this technique over to his other arcade game projects like Super Hang On, OutRun, After Burner,…
• Super Hang On
• OutRun
• After Burner
• Space Harrier
• Super Mario Bros 3 – SNES looking graphics on an NES game. This was in 1989
• Solstice – Has what is quite possibly the heaviest soundtrack you will ever hear in an NES game.
• Phantasy Star – The dungeon crawling segments look really good for the time period.
• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin – Pseudo-3D on the Intellivision, predating Phantasy Star's Pseudo-3D dungeons by nearly 5 years!
• Dragon's Lair
• Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns – A platformer on the Atari 2600 with complex level design and background music, 3 years before Super Mario Bros on the NES.
• I, Robot – This is a fast running fully 3D game from 1984.

1990s

• Star Fox – Everyone was blown away by the Super FX chip's capabilities of producing full 3D polygons for the starship that you pilot.
• Rascal – It was impressive for its time to have the game run at a full 60 FPS, which seemed beyond the PS1's capabilities. The actual gameplay on the other hand, is something else.
• Donkey Kong Country 1 to 3 – The pseudo 3D graphics used for the character models were very revolutionary for its time.
• R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 – One of the few PS1 games to use Grouder shading for the polygons, and it still looks impressive today. Such a high honor because most 3D PS1 games didn't age well because of how ugly the polygons…
• Virtua Fighter (32X) – Sega AM2 went all out on the 32X's capability's by rendering 3D polygons for the fighters. The movements are so fluid that you could easily mistake this for the original arcade game.
• Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island – Super FX chip at its best.
• Sonic and Knuckles – The lock on cartridge allowed you to play as Knuckles in Sonic 2 or 3. Very impressive feature for its time.
• Resident Evil 2 (N64 Port) – The PS1 and Dreamcast versions were split into 2 discs while the N64 version had all of the games data stored on one cartridge. Isn't that impressive?
• Vectorman 1 and 2 – Late Sega Genesis titles that utilized pseudo-3D graphics for the titular Vectorman.
• Killer Instinct – The Donkey Kong Country esque pseudo 3D models used for the characters were impressive for its time.
• Sonic CD
• Doom
• Rayman
• Super Street Fighter II Turbo
• Aliens Versus Predator
• Dead or Alive
• Metal Gear Solid – The fact that Psycho Mantis can read your memory card and make different comments depending on the data was impressive for 1998.
• X
• F-Zero X – All props go to the game's postmodern sound design that feels like it is CD quality, which is normally beyond an N64 cartridge's capabilities.
• Duke Nukem 3D
• Gran Turismo 2
• Tomb Raider II
• Tekken 3
• Half Life
• Donkey Kong 64
• Pokémon Red and Blue
• Plok! – Very postmodern sound design for a SNES game. The title screen music sounds CD quality like and the boss music sounds like it something on the Sega Genesis.
• Alien Soldier
• Gunstar Heroes
• Radiant Silvergun
• Kirby's Adventure – The first game has a secret room that cannot be accessed in Nightmare in Dreamland because it made use of "unorthodox programming". Just in general, it's a late NES title that had a wide variety of…
• Smash TV (NES) – With two controllers plugged up, you could use the d-pads to mimic the twin stick controls of the original arcade game. Quite impressive that it worked right out of the box without needing any…
• Cannon Fodder – A Game Boy Color war game
• Final Fantasy VI – From a technical standpoint, people give props to the game's sound design, especially with the final boss music Dancing Mad, split into four movements. A YouTube commenter once likened it to…

2000s

• Conker's Bad Fur Day – Voice acting that was done by two people and MP3 music on a N64 cartridge made Rare's swansong hit a worthwhile experience.
• God of War 1 and 2 – The God of War games were generally limit pushers for the PS2. Producing some of the best graphics you will ever see in a PS2 game, and having everything stored on a dual layer DVD, a media format…
• Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy – Imagine a 3D collectathon platformer where all of the worlds are on one map and your could transition between them without any loading screens. This was a mind blowing achievement because a lot of…
• Super Smash Bros Brawl – You better love how the game uses realistic looking textures for the backgrounds and character models, an adventure mode with cinematic FMVs, and an edgy undertone that is usually unheard of for Wii…
• Kingdom Hearts: Chains of Memories – It faithfully recreates the console gameplay style with a bird's eye camera and even has full motion cutscenes. Truly the GBA's hardware at full blast.
• Crazy Taxi: Catch a Ride – Despite how dogshit this port is, you can't deny how impressive it is to see the GBA's hardware render 3D models for the taxi, roads, and the passengers.
• Super Mario 64 DS – Launch title for the DS, and it is already pushing its hardware to the limit. For starters, nobody imagine that a 3D collectaton platformer would be playable on a handheld, especially one that only…
• Kiilswitch (GBA Port) – Faithfully recreates the console version's gameplay by rendering 3D models for the characters and environments, and even having the same camera viewpoint as the console versions. This is why you…
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – An open world game where you transition through areas on a large map with little load times.
• Zelda: Majora’s Mask
• Banjo-Tooie
• Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days – You thought Birth By Sleep was the only Kingdom Hearts game that accurately replicates the console games? Think again.
• Metroid Prime Hunters
• Mercenaries – Ported from Xbox to PS2
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots – Kojima wanted it to be on Xbox360 too but the console wasn’t powerful enough. It would have required 7 discs apparently
• Blue Dragon – One of the few early Xbox 360 games to be multi disc.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Substance – Ran at 60FPS, unlike the vanilla game.
• Gran Turismo 4 – One of the few PS2 games to be compatible with the PS2 VGA cable, which could project games at 1080p.
• Black
• Crysis – Even after it was downgraded it struggled to run on 7th gen hardware
• Doom 3
• Half Life 2
• Deus Ex
• Perfect Dark – The main campaign required players to have the N64 expansion pack.
• Tekken 5 – Was able to get Starblade and Tekken 1-3 to run on hardware that would otherwise struggle to run arcade games of this nature. Not to mention the base game had incredibly gorgeous graphics and…
• Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal – Not only was the main story as big (if not bigger) than the previous 2 Ratchet games, it had an added online multiplayer mode which was revolutionary for the PS2 at the time. Would also run at…
• Resident Evil 4
• Soulcalibur 3
• Shenmue 2
• Serious Sam: The First Encounter – The massive level size and amount of enemies onscreen at once was very impressive for the year 2000
• Silent Hill 3
• Medal of Honor: Underground (GBA Port) – Yes, the game runs like absultoe ass but the fact the game is able to run 3D models at all is an impressive feat in itself
• Various Game Boy Advance Video
• The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey (N-Gage)
• Half-Life Surivor
• Warlocked
• Left 4 Dead Survivor
• Starcraft 64
• Enter Asktirx XXL – Antoher GBA game managed to have 3d models and envirments inside a GBA cart that
• Asterix and Obelix XXL – 3D platformer/beat'em up with large levels on a GBA. At points it looks like a PS1 game.

2010s

• God of War: Ascension – The game's graphics are so gorgeous that you can easily think this game was being played on a PS5. Also the largest PS3 game in file size at around 80GB.
• The Witcher 3 (Nintendo Switch port) – CD Projekt was able to port not just the entire game, but all of the DLCs onto one tiny cartridge. Think about that for a minute.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3D – Xenoblade Chronicles on the 3DS seemed too good to be true, but Nintendo made it happen. Also it only works on the New Nintendo 3DS.
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker – You know it is a limit pusher when the game installs additional data to the memory stick upon starting the game for the first time. Also the face buttons are used for camera controls, showing that…
• Halo 4
• The Last of Us
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Devil May Cry 4: Refrain – If Capcom could port DMC4 to smartphone hardware that would struggle to run contemporary console quality games today, then DMC4 should have no trouble being ported to the Switch.
• Xenoblade Chronicles
• Mortal Kombat 11
• Any 8th gen port the the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 – It’s amazing how they managed to get games like Destiny, Metal Gear Solid 5, Grand Theft Auto 5, Little Big Planet 3, Persona 5, and Forza Horizon 2 to run on 10 year old consoles. But then, Madden,…
• Just Cause 3 – Had one of the largest open worlds a video game for it's time, plus the amount of destruction physics and explosion effects really pushed the hardware
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Wii port) – Considering the Wii was significantly less powerful than Sony and Microsoft's consoles at the time, alot had to be changed to get the game to run on the Wii
• Crysis 3
• Neir Automata (Switch Port)
• Pokemon Black and White versions.
• Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 versions
• DOOM 2016 (Nintendo Switch Version) – Bethesda really worked their magic in getting a triple A first person shooter onto a Nintendo handheld. A formula no one thought was possible except for the DS Call of Duty games.
• Minecraft (3DS Edition) – This was a limit pusher and it shows, genuinely the worse version of the game.

2020s

• Final Fantasy VII Remake – Very impressive cinematic graphics for this game, and when played on a PS5 or high end gaming PC, it will run at 60FPS. Also the game was split into 2 discs.
• The Last of Us Part II
• Tekken 8
• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
• Dreams
• KinitoPET – That fact the game manges to read your steam profile let alone the fact will actavate your webcam to mess with the player is impressive in itself
• Yakuza Kiwami (Nintendo Switch Version) – Considering its sequel only got ported to NS2, I'd say this is a limit pusher in all accounts.
• Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (Switch 1) – Nintendo managed to get a game that was designed for next gen hardware to run on an eight year old system.
• Helldivers II
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (Switch Version) – You can go into the games settings and override the 20 unit cap

See also

• Iceberg chart
• Video game consoles iceberg

Sources

• IcebergThreads version: Voxelvill2. Video Games that Pushed Their Consoles to the Limit. IcebergThreads. 19 January 2026. Retrieved 29 October 2026.