Yesterday I met up with Jean Snow – a writer who runs a great blog on design and Japan stuff; check it out – to chat and have a beer in Ikebukuro. We have a lot in common least of which is a love for games. At one point we started talking about the art styles in games and got on the topic of games from the past that still hold up visually today.
This topic was brought up because Jean recently re-played the classic LucasArts adventure game Full Throttle (1995).
Full Throttle still looks great. Sure, the screen resolution is not nearly as high as today’s standards which does give it a slightly dated pixelated look. But the well executed cartoonish and exaggerated art style allows the game to still hold up visually today. It can be hard to go back and play older games that are graphically so far separated from what we have today. A game like Full Throttle is mostly exempt from that since it was developed with an art style that emphasized design over pushing the limits of technology.
As a point of contrast, here is a screenshot of Destruction Derby (1995) from the PS1. It’s from the same era as Full Throttle and is a game I thought looked and played great at the time.
Frankly, it looks terrible by 2008 standards. The cars are extremely box-like and the billboard trees give it a Hollywood back-lot movie set atmosphere. It has not aged well.
While Full Throttle is a 2D game and Destruction Derby is 3D I don’t believe this is a 2D versus 3D issue. I will say that it is likely easier for a well designed 2D game to hold up for a longer period of time but there are exceptions. Take The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002) for example. This game in the Zelda series was released in late 2002 and uses a clever stylized cel-shaded art style.
It has now been nearly six years since this game was released and it still looks great. The expressiveness of the main character, the clean and simple ocean waves, and the stylized visible wind gusts all contribute to a unique style that doesn’t emphasize polygon counts and technology. Visually it is an extremely well designed game that I believe will continue to look great for years to come. The latest Zelda game, Twilight Princess (2006), uses a realistic 3D style and is already starting to look dated when compared to the latest high-technology 3D games.
Another recent game that will hold up for a long time is Pixel Junk Eden (2008). I’ve already blogged about my love for that game’s style here.
The graphic design lacks specific details but still manages to look very clean and harmonize well with the gameplay and music. I think it is that “less is more” design sensibility that will make PixelJunk Eden continue to look fantastic 10 years from now and beyond.
So what lessons are there to learn from these games? I think it boils down to two things:
- We have not achieved photorealism in 3D graphics yet. Realism focused 3D games that are made now will look poor compared to future games due to technological advances. That isn’t to say these games shouldn’t be made or anything along those lines – I love many realism focused games. They just won’t age gracefully.
- Artistic styles that abstract the visuals into cartoon, literal abstraction, or other forms of non-photorealism will visually hold up for a much longer period of time. That doesn’t mean that lazy or sloppy design in these areas is acceptable – it’s not. This is only true for well designed styles.
A lot of this comes down to current technical limitations. Great artists can’t create their best artwork because of limitations on texture sizes, polygon counts, number of simultaneous objects that can be simulated, etc. I believe that in my lifetime photorealistic graphics will be achieved. Once that happens success will be much more about the artistry and entertainment of a game than in supplying the latest technological eye candy. It will also become much harder for a realism focused game to become quickly dated visually.
But before that graphic plateau is hit if you want your game to be looked back upon fondly for its visual style then a realistic style is not the way to go.
Here are some other games whose visuals still hold up today:
Another World / Out of this World (1991)
Street Fighter 3 (1997)
Super Mario World (1990)
There are many others, those are just some of my favorites.
Clearly realism focused games sell well in the market because the large majority of games that are released are realistically rendered. I think that will continue to be true for quite some time but as the graphics hit a realism plateau gamers will become more and more bored and seek alternate visual styles.
Someone with a better art history background will have to correct me where I’m wrong but I believe it will be similar to what happened in the art world. Realism was the primary goal in paintings and sculpture for hundreds of years. When artists moved from the Renaissance art period into Impressionism, Abstraction, Cubist, and Modernist styles the visual presentations changed dramatically. The extremely realistic paintings created by the masters of the Renaissance period still look amazing today. I feel like the current realistic 3D games are stepping stones to reaching the master level of realistic quality that artists like Michelangelo achieved. They are necessary stepping stones but will not be looked back upon 500 years from now as pinnacles of artistic quality.
Eventually the art of games will achieve photorealism but in the current era developing games with non-photorealistic artistic styles will result in games that are much more likely to age well.
