Circa 25 years ago, I spent a lot of time with my (Borland Turbo C, Mode 13h) implementation that was just a vanilla Game of Life, but depicted as a red-to-blue heatmap. Every time a cell changed state, it'd become R gradations redder; every time it didn't change state, it'd become B gradations bluer. This produces a visualization where the background "space" is a uniform blue, blinkers are hot red hollow diamonds, and the actually interesting chaotic parts are appealingly fuzzy shades of reddish purple. Because it takes a while for a cell to "heat up," a glider can be almost invisible, depending on how you choose the constants R and B.

I'm not saying this is mechanically interesting (it's just a simple filter) or will change your life or anything, but I do remember spending a lot of time tinkering with and watching that particular implementation.