Blog Post 4: Is It Hip To Be Square?

This week’s entry is going to be a little different to those prior. Instead of looking at technology as it was newly developing, we’re going to take a look at something that has, seemingly, been brought back from the 80s: pixel art and its role in modern gaming.

Although it might be surprising at first to see art direction from the 1980s coming back, if you think about it long enough, it makes sense. According to the Entertainment Software Association, “the average gamer is 35 years old” (p. 4). The gamers of the 80s and early 90s are now adults, and many of the most popular games released in arcades and on home consoles during this time frame made heavy use of pixel art. There were few alternatives at the time – as we saw in the previous blog post, 3D graphics were still quite primitive and would be until the mid-to-late 90s.

Figure 1. Dino Run, by PixelJam Games. Notice the outline-free graphics (and thus bright colors) and also the simple shading (PixelJam Games, 2008).

Something you shouldn’t forget when comparing pixel art in modern games with that of 80s home consoles and computers is that our computers today are much less restricted graphically, in many different ways. The computers of yesteryear have to contend with their own hardware – they were restricted to low resolutions, few colors, and sometimes only a few colors in close proximity.

Figure 2. Example of the Commodore VIC-20’s graphical limitations on how many colors can appear in close proximity – notice the color of the dirt around the enemies (Murray, 2017).

On top of that, they had to contend with the monitors and video interfaces of the time, with color bleeding and artifacting a natural result of the then-current composite video connections.

Figure 3. Super Mario World for the SNES, zoomed in. On the left is an image over composite video, and on the right is the same image using a more modern YPbPr interface (HD Retrovision, LLC).

With modern computers, we don’t have to worry about any of these things – we get millions of colors in much higher resolutions now. This new-found ability to create games with 80s-style or 90s-style graphics without truly needing to worry about hardware limitations allows for a graphical style that appears old-fashioned but is, in reality, a blend of old and new.

Figure 4. Super Time Force Ultra. Despite the pixel art graphics, this game's system requirements far eclipse anything available in the 80s or 90s (Capybara Games, 2014).

That's not to say that all games eschew the limited palettes of yesteryear. Some games targetted towards modern platforms adopt graphical limits as a stylistic choice.

Figure 5. Tiny Dangerous Dungeons, an example of a game for modern computers that adopts the resolution and color palette of an original Nintendo Game Boy (Adventure Islands, 2013).

Nostalgia isn't the only factor in favor of a pixel art graphical style, however. Cost is a factor as well; pixel art is relatively quick and inexpensive these days. I would imagine that, for a game developer without an art budget or a particular talent for art, the prospect of picking up a 2D paint program to create pixel art is far less scary than the prospect of picking up a 3D modeling program. Anecdotally, I agree.

It's also quite possible that, as the demographic who grew up with these graphics ages, fewer people will have a sense of nostalgia for pixel art, and fewer people will appreciate it. In other words, pixel art might once again fall to the wayside; only time will tell.

References:

Entertainment Software Association. (2017). “Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry” [PDF Report]. Retrieved November 30, 2017 from http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/EF2017_Design_FinalDigital.pdf

PixelJam Games. (April 30, 2008). Dino Run: Escape Extinction! [Video game]. Retrieved November 30, 2017 from http://www.kongregate.com/games/pixeljamgames/dino-run

Murray, D. (Jun 16, 2017). “VIC-20 Overload - Penultimate Cartridge, Pentagorat, & Planet X1” [Screenshot from video file]. Retrieved November 30, 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Fj8SALkbg

HD Retrovision, LLC. (n.d.). “SNES YPbPr Component Cable” [Image from webpage]. Retrieved November 30, 2017 from http://www.hdretrovision.com/snes/

Capybara Games. (August 25, 2014). Super Time Force Ultra [Image from webpage]. Retrieved November 30, 2017 from http://store.steampowered.com/app/250700/Super_Time_Force_Ultra/

Adventure Islands. (November 19, 2013). Tiny Dangerous Dungeons [Video game]. Retrieved November 30, 2017 from http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/22535

Blog Post 3(D): Gaming in Another Dimension

We will move from the introduction of sprites to the introduction of 3D graphics in games with this post. While this seems like a bit of a jump, it’s definitely worth exploring as 3D graphics define many of today's games, with increasingly realistic environments.

One could make an argument that scaling sprites based on their distance to the player and vector-based graphics have made 3D gaming possible for a long time. An example of a game that tried to make early use of 3D-style graphics is Atari’s Battlezone, released in November of 1980 as an arcade cabinet. Battlezone took the vector-based approach, as seen below:

Figure 1. Atari’s Battlezone, released in 1980. An early example of a 3D-style game using wireframe vector graphics (FunCade 64, 2017, 0:11).

However, games with fully-rendered 3D environments – even simple ones – were a bit out of reach for the hardware of the time period. Of course, this didn’t stop anyone from making games that toyed with the concept of a 3D perspective. An early example of this would be 3D Monster Maze, first released for the Sinclair ZX81:

Figure 2. 3D Monster Maze for the Sinclair ZX81, released in 1982. The walls appear 3D, but the T-Rex doesn’t, though it does grow larger as it approaches (Evans, 1981).

3D Monster Maze is one of the earliest examples of a game that takes a “2.5D” perspective. The walls and surroundings take on a 3D appearance scaling as they get “further away,” while enemies and powerups appear as 2D sprites.

A better-known example of a game that takes on a 2.5D perspective is Wolfenstein 3D. The walls were drawn using a ray casting algorithm while the enemies were flat bitmap graphics, scaled based on their distance from the player:

Figure 3. Id Software’s Wolfenstein 3D, released on May 5, 1992. Many of the concepts from 3D Monster Maze are apparent (Id Software, 1992).

This approach of 3D-rendered walls combined with scaled flat enemies persisted in many games for home PCs and video game consoles, such as in 1993’s Doom:

Figure 4. Id Software’s Doom, released on December 10, 1993. The walls and floor are rendered using a better algorithm than Wolfenstein 3D, but the flat and scaled enemies remain (Id Software, 1993).

By now, there were indeed games that used 3D graphics with polygonal players and enemies. A striking example of this is the arcade title Virtua Racing:

Figure 5. Sega’s Virtua Racing, released in 1992; this is the arcade version, though a graphically-reduced version for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive was also released (VideoGamerJunkie, 2012, 0:57).

If you take a close look, however, you’ll notice that all of the polygons are flat-colored; there aren’t any textures being applied! The early 90s were too early to have games that were both fully-rendered and textured.

By the mid-to-late 90s, Quake had been released on home PCs, and consoles designed with 3D in mind like the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were mainstream.

Figure 5. Super Mario 64, one of the most popular 3D games of the mid-90s, with 3D NPCs, players, and environments (Nintendo EAD, 1996).

Figure 6. Quake, by Id Software, one of the earlier and more popular fully textured and rendered games (Id Software, 1996).

These more recent examples are much closer to the many 3D games of today, though modern 3D models have far more complicated meshes and textures, thanks to the ever-increasing might of computer hardware.

References

FunCade 64. (2017, March 6). “Battle Zone (Atari 1980) - AAE (Another Arcade Emulator)” [Video file]. Retrieved November 2, 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2E8gs6On9Q

Evans, M. (1981) 3D Monster Maze [Image, screenshot]. Retrieved November 2, 2017 from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/83/3D-monster-maze-T-rex-2-steps-away.png

Id Software. (May 5, 1992). Wolfenstein 3D [Image, screenshot]. Retrieved November 2, 2017 from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/Wolf3d_pc.png

Id Software. (December 10, 1993). Doom [Image, screenshot]. Retrieved November 2, 2017 from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Doom_ingame_1.png

VideoGamerJunkie. (2012, January 5). “Virtua Racing – Arcade” [Video file]. Retrieved November 2, 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zxjAEyT7Ng

Nintendo EAD. (June 23, 1996) Super Mario 64 [Image, screenshot]. Retrieved November 2, 2017 from https://www.mariowiki.com/images/thumb/8/81/SM64BobOmbBattlefield.png/236px-SM64BobOmbBattlefield.png

Id Software. (June 22, 1996). Quake [Image, screenshot]. Retrieved November2, 2017 from http://wiki.quakeworld.nu/images/Quake_1_screenshot_320x200_e1m3.png