There's little point arguing since it is mostly a matter of opinion but I'm curious what exactly you recall it looking like. Since we can't take a screenshot of your memory (how cool would that be?) let's try to describe things in words. The most significant things I see which make the graphics crappy are:
the obvious joints between segments (which is due to modeling and thus looks the same on all hardware)
the boring, repetitive, colorless background (which is due to the textures used and thus looks the same on all hardware)
the extreme pixelation of the background textures (which is due to the lack of anti-aliasing on older hardware; that feature wasn't developed until after VooDoo3)
Were these things not true for you?
the obvious joints between segments (which is due to modeling and thus looks the same on all hardware)
the boring, repetitive, colorless background (which is due to the textures used and thus looks the same on all hardware)
the extreme pixelation of the background textures (which is due to the lack of anti-aliasing on older hardware; that feature wasn't developed until after VooDoo3)
Were these things not true for you?