For me it was encapsulated by doom 3 for the most part. Games with strong dynamic shadows like splinter cell chaos theory and stalker with a mix of shiny specular effects is timeless for me. When I go back to these games the shadows still feel as good as they did when they came out and the lighting perfectly crafting the mood. A lot of modern games now even though their fidelity on paper is much better just always feel extremely flat to me and don’t pop out of the screen like they used to. It seems like they’re missing contrast and UE5 seems to make this even worse where all the games using it just look like mush
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PC-98 is still unmatched. Nobody ever needed more than 16 colors.
The dithering on this image is nuts
Shame so much of that computer’s library of games is locked behind Japanese, tragic.
I never had one, but I am partial to gamecube level graphics. A lot of features, but not to the point of realism, leading to very visually interesting stuff.
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Can’t leave out Wind Waker especially. When Nint*ndo began promoting the game, a lot of capital G Gamers were malding about their decision to pursue a cartoonish art style rather than the more “realistic” style of other titles in the series (Majoras Mask before it, and Twilight Princess after). This was in stark contrast to titles like SSBM which were able to capitalize on low-complexity scenes, putting all the detail into character meshes and high resolution textures - to the point where you could see the golden seams on Mario’s denim overalls for the first time in the history of the franchise, and overall trends in the contemporary gaming industry (same year as the release of Halo: Combat Evolved, for instance).
To this day, the game’s artstyle is truly iconic, and though it wasn’t intended, the cel shading technique used in the game scales up very well, making it delightful to play in emulators to this day, while the reliance on texture resolution makes a lot of other “highly realistic” games from the era look disappointing on modern high-resolution displays.
the wind waker style hatred might be my first recorded instance of not even remotely understanding what the fuck the GAMERS were whinging about. i love the art of windwaker
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I dunno about favorite era overall but the transition from beautifully crafted pixel art sprites in fighting games to… this… will never not be a tragedy to me.
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its definitely possible, there are a decent handful of skilled and passionate pixel artists still out there. But yeah, its kinda like hand drawn animation where its just so intensive that almost no company wants to do it
Technically, Skullgirls exists but yeah, it’s outta the reach of many indie game dev
I don’t think they can really compare to godlike sprite art like 3rd Strike et al, but I have come to appreciate the current trend of super vibrant & detailed 3d models in fighting games. The last two Guilty Gears, Dragon Ball FighterZ, GBVS, & Street Fighter 6 are some of the best since they don’t aim for any sort of photorealism and embrace style. I absolutely love all the squishing & stretching of models ArcSys does to make super animations come to life
Truly a lost artform.
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Art.
1999-2004-ish has a lot of nostalgia for me. PC games from around that time and consoles like the psx, ps2 and dreamcast I spent a lot of time with. We were starting to catch glimpses of what next gen visuals were going to look like on upcoming consoles like the 360 and PS3.
The difference between a PS1 game to a PS2 game was huge. I think the last real PS2 games that were released between 2006 - 2008 felt like they were really pushing the PS2 to it’s limits, except for the weird PSP and Wii games that were ported for the PS2, those had bad graphics.
Yeah it was really exciting seeing what developers were cooking up plus it was a time when art direction was huge and you had really talented people making these games look visually interesting.
Can’t forget about MGS when talking about pushing the PS2 to its limits. Both of those games look absolutely amazing. Both quite stylized while having some of the most realistic graphics of the console
Gran Turismo 4 and the Silent Hill games (except the PSP/Wii version) were also very good. I think there were a few other fighting games and RPGs with very good graphics. And speaking of PSP, Parasite Eve 3: The 3rd Birthday looked just like a PS3 game on PSP, which is impressive.
Playstation. I know the ps2 graphics were technically “better” but i loved those pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed camera angles.
Sprites that look vaguely 3D:
They make 3D models from which to generate the 2D sprites which is why they look uncannily 3D.
Late Amiga 3D games. You could just tell the vision far exceeded the hardware’s capabilities, but that didn’t stop them from trying. Some really impressive technical tricks and code optimization in that era because you couldn’t just throw more hardware at the problem.
I remember the devs saying Homeworld had the graphics it did because they didn’t need to render terrain. They could then spend the polygon budget on the ships, punching well above its weight graphically. The original came out in 1999, the same year as Age of Empires II, C&C Tiberian Sun, and a year after StarCraft.
As an aside, the soundtrack is top five favorite ever. Sorry YouTube bot but I have to post the playlist.
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Fuck yeeaaah. Homeworld never ages its always beautiful
Older eve brings back so much nostalgia
I feel like part of why modern graphics look flat is that they’re so visually busy that you can’t appreciate entire scenes and end up just focusing on whichever part of the screen the action is happening on. But maybe that’s just me
maybe i’m just weird but i liked the Black Ops 2/Max Payne 3 era graphics, specially if they had the piss-filter on them.
i’m not really capable of articulating why i like them so much specifically, but something about the models having enough detail in them to immerse you in its facsimile of a real world while also not exaggerating the polygon count to an unhealthily heavy degree (looking at you, 500gbs Modern Warfare 2019), plus the weird flare-effects/mexico filters they usually had at least suggested some vague idea of a style they were aiming for, unlike the hyperrealist, bland Unreal engine slop they make nowadays
now… because you can play games from all eras
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PS2 had the better games, but I feel like original XBox had just the right level of graphics for me before the diminishing returns started kicking in. I don’t need good graphics, but if it just stops at good or okay that’s still nice. Detailed, but stylized enough to make up for the lack of detail. and leaning on the garish side!
I think the PS2 era had the perfect balance between fidelity, fun, creative limitations, and requiring fewest people to create. Previous eras were plagued by early hardware limitations (plus learning curve for 3D), and later eras grew so graphically intense it required armies of artists.
I so wish the PS2 was accessible enough for indie devs to make games for it the way that Gameboy, NES, and some older consoles are. I know it’s nostalgia speaking, but that really was the pinnacle for me.
Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I agree that it was a sweet spot for game development. Developers and artists were more confident with making games in 3d, and they could do it cheaply enough that even big companies would publish pretty experimental games.
Then the shift to HD happened a budgets and dev times skyrocketed, leading to the dreaded Brown and Bloom “Realistic” Third-Person Shooter with a bald protagonist.
