The ugly 95-99, FMV, 3D, digitized/prerendered lowres in few colors

This thread is subjective, my general feel of games from 95-99, a distinction should be taken more abstract than absolute.

Before this era you had pixel artists. Pixel artwork used several special techniques to produce the highest quality image within a low resolution grid, often with limited colors. Games like Shadow of the Beast, Agony and Apidya is just 32-64 colors and can still be appreciated for it's beauty. The last games of this type like Lands of Lore used 256 colors and looks great even today.




Scanned backgrounds
Sierra was one of the first I know who handpainted backdrops and scanned it. This looked decent in 256 colors and awful in 32. This was done I guess because it was easier and faster to use a regular artist instead of a pixel artist.

Space Quest IV



CDROM drives, 3d software and DOOM would then lead us into an era in which games really look ugly.

All three had in common that the PC hardware couldn't handle the resolution and color depth required to make the graphics look more than a mess of garbled, discolored, lowres pixels.


FMV
FMV in 256 colors 320x200, even in 640x480 looked bad, with floating blobs of pixels.

Phantasmagoria, 7 CD's didn't make this look good.


Some didn't use FMV, but they photographed actors that was then used as characters.
Ishar 2's pixelated artwork looks great even today. Ishar 3 used photos slapped together with character portraits taken from the first two games. It looks cheap.



Prerendered 3d
Prerendered 3d graphics looked terrible compared with the clean and colorful pixelled artwork. It was often difficult to see what the rendered low-color lowres images was supposed to represent, not to mention that the 3d software wasn't sofisticated enough for complexity. The objects were simple in features. The renders also got a lot of grey, brown and other crappy colors which gave an ugly result.



Early 3d
Finally early 3d in 640x480 with low resolution, low texture resolutions, low polygon models and very little complexity created rooms more empty and blocky than realistic or exciting.




Conclusion
For this reason it's difficult for me to give examples of favorite games from this era, or games I want to play/replay. Graphics is always a barrier when dealing with this era. I also think that during this experimental period many simply forgot to make games fun.

In my MM7 thread I wrote:

"Actually had a discussion on that very topic today with a friend of mine - dating of graphics. HoMM and M&M are great examples: Where HoMM (the whole series really) has aged really well, and looks fine even today, M&M and other 3D games look.. well, they're not too impressive.

More or less every 3D game released around the same time as Baldur's Gate or HoMM3 will look rubbish today compared to BG or HoMM. Quite a triumph for 2D games."

In short, I agree with you. Old 3D games have aged horribly compared to 2D games where the majority was drawn by hand (i.e games made with the infinity engine).

Certain artistic styles tend to be timeless, but more realistic ones depend on the technology in use. It doesn't have to be 2D vs 3D, just look at World of Warcraft - it still looks decent, despite being well over five years old (it was never even state-of-the-art).

Don't get me wrong; I enjoy games with a realistic look if the gameplay is good. However, I find it hard to replay them years after they've been released. The only exception I can think of that I still replay is Gothic, but I have to admit it doesn't exactly look great nowadays (in my mind it looks something like Gothic 3, but when I start playing it.. it doesn't).

Well, it's pretty simple - isn't it.

If your primary visual aesthetic is about technology, you'll suffer greatly after years have passed.

That's why Avatar will look like shit in 10 years, but The Fountain will never look anything but fantastic.

The same is true for games. Before the fad of prerendered 3D, games primarily used "handdrawn" art - and the perfect example is the difference between Legend of Kyrandia 2 and Legend of Kyrandia 3. I was always a great fan of the old Westwood - because they were fantastic in terms of handdrawn art - so I consider Hand of Fate (LoK2) to be absolutely beautiful in that way. You can easily overcome the low resolution, as that's about the only technical barrier.

But even upon release, I found Kyrandia 3 underwhelming visually - and the less said about the game itself the better. Ok, it was decent, but in my view was much less charming than Hand of Fate.

The CD-ROM technology allowed streaming of "real" video - but unfortunately computers weren't very powerful, so it was low res and obviously had limited interactivity.

Still, I think it's about the mindset of the person "going in". I can still appreciate those games - like Realms of the Haunting - because I'm fully aware of why it looks as it does.

I think, to me, it's more about whether it was the right decision "back then" - and I never cared for games like Rebel Assault or 7th Guest at all, even back when they supposedly looked good - because they were shallow.

Maybe that's why I can appreciate System Shock so much still, even though I can see that - objectively - it looks like crap. But I clearly recall how ahead of its time it was, and for some reason that's enough for me.

I guess the conclusion has to be that I've always cared more about the creative side, than the technological side.

But, I'm still a graphics whore to a certain degree. I can't appreciate text-based games, nor have I ever. In that way, I think it's about my lack of imagination more than anything else.

I guess I am more tolerant towards old 3D graphics than most. I can still enjoy Ultima Underworld or Daggerfall and actually find a certain appeal in their pixelated looks. It helps to play such games windowed these days, if possible. But I can easily see where you are coming from.

I wouldn't say that i usually judge games badly because of their graphics / look but every time i compare wing commander privateer(93) to wing commander prophecy (97) i find the older not only much better but also the later unbearable, of course i can totally tolerate X-beyond the frontier (99) 3D .
I think some games look good and other just look bad despite of technology and artwork , a good example can be arcanum vs diablo .

I think, 3D was just a hype. Everyone wanted it to be 3D, no matter at hich ploss or price, and mostly the marketing or managing men wanted it, I guess.
And those who expected the public expecting it to be there, I guess.

By the way, the best looks of some of the "classic" LucasArts Adventures are said to have the "FM Towns" computers - japanese only.

Their graphics for - for example McCracken - were never ported to the PC - to any wider audience outside of Japan, that is.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I think, 3D was just a hype. Everyone wanted it to be 3D, no matter at hich ploss or price, and mostly the marketing or managing men wanted it, I guess.
And those who expected the public expecting it to be there, I guess.

By the way, the best looks of some of the "classic" LucasArts Adventures are said to have the "FM Towns" computers - japanese only.

Their graphics for - for example McCracken - were never ported to the PC - to any wider audience outside of Japan, that is.

Click to expand...

No, I disagree. I very well remember the wow effect when I first saw a 3D FP game (in my case Ultima Underworld II, IIRC). It may look bad and pixelated now, but to actually see movement in a real 3D environment, and throwing things around, etc. was just overwhelming.

There's two directions for graphics and it's not a matter of 3D and not 3D, but in history there was a link. The first direction is realism and details, the second direction is style. Obviously you can have a merge of those both direction, a good example for me is Myst, a game from 1993.

Games focusing on realism and details get rather soon dated graphics and for good reason, because they forget the style. Games focusing on style have much more chance to get graphics never dated, with two exception, the pixelated graphics, and the mode in the air.

That's that simple. From long time Japan is aware of that, but there's an obsession of realism in occident, in games. Torchlight, in my opinion, an important game of its time, targeted the problem and with quite much talent. It's not the first and won't be the last but my little bet is that this game will have more impact on occident games, that could have had some past occident game using the same approach.

Also in history of video games during a period of time, games had the power to make clean graphics but not up to reach a significant realism. That force those games to target some sort of style making them look less dated apart the pixelated problem.