History Main / OurGraphicsWillSuckInTheFuture

* At least they did better than ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'', which doesn't even have [=GUIs=] who knows how many centuries in the future. [[WordofGod Word of God]] has hinted that the "Universal Century" (the [[AlternativeCalendar main timeline]] of Gundam) begins in the mid-2100s, putting the original series into the early 23rd century. Given that the [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam first TV series]] was produced in 1979, five years before the Apple Macintosh debuted with a built-in GUI,[[note]]First experimental [=GUIs=] did already exist at the time, but they were created in the rarified world of bespectacled, bearded and lab-coated computer scientists working with UsefulNotes/MainframesAndMinicomputers, and had yet to enter the public consciousness.[[/note]] it's not a surprise that they didn't show advanced [=GUIs=] beyond hand-drawn line images.

** Played with in ''Series/TheMandalorian, when a tank targets a Scout Trooper trying to toss a grenade into the tank's hatch. The targeting graphics are still simple-looking, but apparently update in real time, down to the trooper's limb movements.

** This was later retconned as a defence against industrial hacking. Using antiquated technology reduced the number of attack vectors a rival corporation could employ.

* ''Film/SexMission'', made in 1984: It is set in 2044, but computers still use wireframe 3-D green-lined graphics... and, at one point, what is clearly UsefulNotes/ZXSpectrum graphics.

* In ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' their scientific advisor took a look at what the effects people had come up with for their viewing screen tactical displays, and told them "I can do better than that on my UsefulNotes/TRS80," so what we see in the movie is what he did on his UsefulNotes/TRS80.

** In the 1982 episode ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E1Castrovalva Castrovalva]]'', it turns out that the fantastically advanced TARDIS computer has a display that is outperformed by a UsefulNotes/ZXSpectrum. Justified in that later it turns out that the whole interface was a phony produced by the Master so that Tegan and Nyssa would ''think'' they were piloting the TARDIS.

** While [=DS9=] has considerably more animated displays than TNG, it makes it look like the Cardassians [[SaltTheEarth trashing the station on their way out]] replaced [[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bajoran_Intelligence_net?file=Bajoran_Intelligence_net.jpg certain displays]] with 377-year-old UsefulNotes/{{Macintosh}}es, if the Chicago font is any indication. At least some of us wouldn't put it past those AffablyEvil Cardassians....

* In the mid-90s UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}} adventure game ''VideoGame/DreamWeb'' (taking place in the near future), home computers similarly have no graphics at all, and no user interface either. The user is stuck with a clumsy DOS-like interface to access everything from his e-mail to fetching the latest news broadcast (which consists purely of text, too).

* In ''VideoGame/MegaManX'', the intro has Dr. Cain working on a circa-2114 machine with 8 ''petabytes'' of "real mem" (probably RAM) and 32 PB of "avail mem" (probably space in the swap partition of the hard drive) whose power-on self-test sequence still looks like [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoIR4dFwfwk this.]] (By contrast, a [[UsefulNotes/AppleMacintosh Mac Pro]] can be configured with 64 gigabytes of RAM (1[=/=]131,072th) of the fictional computer) and 8 terabytes drive space (1[=/=]4096th the fictional) and, [[ExtremeGraphicalRepresentation well...]]

* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-eXQevSDzQ intro]] for the UsefulNotes/SegaMasterSystem version of ''Super'' ''VideoGame/SpaceInvaders'', even if the game takes place in 2073, features CRT-like graphics and a BeepingComputer.