They looked far better back then than Fallout 3 and look even better now that Fallout 3 has aged even worse. Fallout 1 and 2 also have style and personality in its graphics and animations, something Fallout 3 completely lacks.
Fallout 3 isn't butt ugly because of the green tint, it's butt ugly because of the horrendous textures, the awful animations, and just overall really badly put together models. Metroid Prime 1 looks better and that game came out in 2002 for the Gamecube.
And it's not like Fallout 3 had anything to make up for its poor graphics because the combat, rpg elements, the exploration, the writing, the world building, the story and most of the quests suck too.