After having a think, I realised there has been a few really good games I've played which have been let down by their graphics.
The first one which springs to mind is "Touch the Dead" or "Dead 'N' Furious" on the DS. Which had some excellent game-play, even multiplayer, but was seriously let down by its shoddy graphics.
The other one is Loki, a rather overlooked RPG which I actually never completed. The game play was always pretty light and breezy, and I felt it really never got bogged down with anything. Unfortunately the animation within the game was horrendous, and the texturing and bump mapping was bad for something that came out in 2007.
Anyway, I thought people might like to share some more retro gaming gems, which were unfortunately let down by their graphics when they were released.

ewwww
after playing titan quest for three hours those loki screens are making me a little nauseous.

Loki lacked the depth fun I needed to enjoy it, showed some promise but I could never get into it.

Ultima Online thanks to the new 'enchanced' client. Take 10yr old graphics and make them high res so that old stick in the muds that have Win98 won't complain that they can't get the best experience.
But do so by removing a superior client with better graphics, makes sense!
*Rage fit*

Do games that people refused to play and give it bad reviews due to the dated graphics even though they aren't really that bad count?
If so then, Mount and Blade among others. Though that still has a pretty decent community, thankfully.

??
what's wrong with Loki graphic?
I never had any fascination with super graphic. HL2 amazing graphics got boring after 30 minutes of playing and stopped noticing it all together.
I hate pixelization tough. It is quite hard to play origilan transport tycoon on 21 inch screen although i love this game and spend more time playing it than studying.
but with openttd modification which allows to set any resolution!! game looks perfectly fine.
HL1, Loki, arcanum, nox, pharaoh, monkey island 3, grim fandango etc. I don't mind graphics at all.

Arcanum is indeed a pretty good example. Fallout 3 also has pretty ugly graphics and animations but over the top gameplay.

Pretty much any good game from the 3D transition period, particularly if it was a sequel to something that was 2D. Monkey island 3 is an example of that, there are still people who bitch about it losing something when going to 3D

Haven't really played much of it to say anything about it, but Operation Flashpoint is probably the most ugly 3D game I've ever seen in my life.

NO.

Go try Ghost Recon.

I already have. Methinks Operation still looks worse. Rainbow Six is a contender though.
YES.

I second this. Basically any n64 or ps1 game suffer from this. The last generation of 2d games has aged much better as they relied more on the work of artists than crappy generation one 3d tech.
As a result of this the games like Doom2 that used "low tech" sprites for enemies actually end up looking a lot better than the first few years of fumbling with models.

Even though I agree with you I must say that there was some responsability in the hands of the artists too. Quake 1 and 2 aged much better than Half Life 1 in terms of visuals. Because id software artists could always work greatly with serious limitations. Of course, there's the high resolution patch for it that replaces all uglyness, but the original stuff still haven't aged as well as the first couple of Quakes.