/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.3435136]

Why do pre-common 3D games look more realistic than later fully 3D-rendered games?

[Anonymous No.3435181]

My guess is that back before 3D, devs/artists actually used their brains when deciding the direction for graphics.

Then 3D meme landed, everyone suddenly decided that Lara Croft was legit fap material, and came to the consensus that if a game was sprite-based it sucked by definition and the devs were sore losers who didn't have enough sex. Polygon count became an actual marketing buzzword, and everyone bought into it.

Also I read that when SNK tried to release their fighting games on some 6th gen consoles (IIRC), they weren't allowed to do that without adding 3D elements. That could be wrong, but still the desire to shove 3D everywhere with and without need was apparent.

Never mind that in many cases, 3D on PS looked simply awful. Sprites were simply axed to keep up with the latest marketing trends.

[Anonymous No.3435273]

>>3435181
>tfw i will never know if anyone died playing a videogame before 1997

man i hate seeing interesting old gaming magazine covers and having no way of reading them

[Anonymous No.3435409]

>>3435273
If you're serious about, you can find quite a few of those online easily. I remember undergroundgamer had a lot but nowadays I find more of them on soulseek,dc++,etc type of networks.

[Anonymous No.3435418]

>>3435136
Because somewhere along the way the goal went from making things like realistic by making them look GOOD to making things "realistic" by making the polygon count as high as mechanically possible.

[Anonymous No.3435423]

>>3435181
Nintendo was the biggest offender in the "force 3D on everything" department. It's the reason why Sony had such a colorful library in contrast.

[Anon No.3435445]

>>3435423
Theres 2d on n64.

[Anonymous No.3435458]

>>3435445
Some Japanese Bomberman comes to mind when talking about fully 2D games on N64. Technically Paper Mario and Killer Instinct could be considered 2D but that's because they only play on 2 dimensions while the game is rendered in 3D with sprites for characters which is within this topic's scope coincidentally. Haven't seen any other fully 2D games on N64.

[Anonymous No.3435460]

>>3435423
It's true that compared to other consoles, Nintendo was hell bent on ditching 2D everywhere with 64—from Zelda and Mario to fucking Tetris. Still, this said, they were left pretty much on their own by many developers who switched to PS, so they couldn't dictate the market what to do. And to give them their dues, they managed to create a blueprint for console 3D games along the way—or so says every game journalist on planet, at least.

Otherwise, 3D was still a hot market trend which many publishers were seeking to exploit—just like "retro gayms" today. The hype around 3D was insane. But it didn't stop many genres from sticking to good old 2D, take PC for example—Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Starcraft or Age of Empires, and plenty other games still were really popular.

[Anonymous No.3435462]

>>3435423
>Nintendo was the biggest offender in the "force 3D on everything" department.

Pretty much everybody around that time was shoving 3D onto people's faces, Sony being an equally big offender early on as well.

[Anonymous No.3435467]

>>3435458
> Paper Mario and Killer Instinct
Those 2 feel kinda like exceptions. Well, I wouldn't even list paper Mario here because of its "flat" aesthetic.

As for KI2, I guess since it was made for arcades and was a big hit on SNES too, Nintendo allowed it. I also see a distant parallel with Yoshi's Story here.

[Anon No.3435469]

>>3435458
Namco museum, midway classics, Mortal Kombat Trilogy.

[Anonymous No.3435474]

>>3435136
cause they sampled real textures instead of creating their own, so you get a more timely look with older games and a cartoony look with newer games

[Anonymous No.3435491]

>>3435458

[Anonymous No.3435504]

>>3435458
Yoshi's Island

[Anonymous No.3435507]

>>3435504
Sorry, Story. Yoshi Story.

[Anonymous No.3435510]

>>3435458
There are a couple of 2D games on the N64, but like 3 with actual sprites. Wonder Project J and Bangai-0. Nothing compared to the PSX or Saturn.

[Anonymous No.3435512]

>>3435491
what game is that?

[Anon No.3435520]

>>3435510
The entire industry switched to 3d for bigger franchises except 2d fighting ones.

Nowadays Street Fighter and soon King of Fighters are 3d.

[Anonymous No.3435528]

>>3435512
Wonder Project J2

[Anonymous No.3435543]

>>3435491
Holy fuk that game is pretty.

They abandoned something that looked good and played nice, for something that looked bad and played like crap.

The 2D games named for the N64 are all there is, and they are the ones that promoted the jump to 3D, they moved all of the valuable IPs to 3D, shitting on the gaming comunity, literally creating the retro fad.

5th gen was the time for the best 2D games of all times, the technology was on the perfect spot, but everybody wanted to play 3D games, so shit like FF7 could sell millions of copies while looking so bad, that even FF7 fans can't play it now without changing the graphics.

Meanwhile things like wonder project couldn't get a translation.

[Anonymous No.3435564]

>>3435543
.>so shit like FF7 could sell millions of copies while looking so bad
To be fair, like many other developers of that time, it was one of Square's earliest 3D projects, so of course things were gonna look rough as shit; that said, the graphical style still had its merits in a few spots. Anyways, they stepped up their game with FF8 and 9 so it all worked out well in the end.

[Anonymous No.3435612]

>>3435543
>FF7 could sell millions of copies while looking so bad
Honestly, the ugliest part of FF7 are the chibi 3D sprites which is unfortunate since there's assets left in the game that implies that they were going to go with proportionate models that look much better than what we got. There's a mod that uses those for the main characters and updates the NPC models to match the style with varying results. It's good for the most part, though.

[Anonymous No.3435649]

What console was best for 2D? N64 or Saturn?

[Anonymous No.3435667]

>>3435649
Saturn

[Anonymous No.3435748]

>>3435649
Neo Geo. Saturn/N64 2D was actually just flat textured polygons.

[Anonymous No.3435753]

>>3435649
Saturn

[Anonymous No.3435907]

>>3435748
>Saturn 2D was actually just flat textured polygons
>Saturn 3D was actually just distorted sprites

[Anonymous No.3435921]

>>3435649
It was actually the 3DO

[Anonymous No.3435941]

>>3435649
PlayStation

[Anonymous No.3435954]

I don't know why everyone shits on FF7, I think the little chibi models are fine for the time. The other two games definitely look better, but I played FF7 recently and didn't mind the graphics at all.

[Anonymous No.3435970]

>>3435612
>not liking the qt chibi models
Really nigger?

[Anonymous No.3435975]

>>3435941
Nah, 16 bit color and too little memory compared with Saturn.

[Anonymous No.3435996]

>>3435649
>>3435921
>3
>>3435753
>>3435667
>>3435941
>not the PC Engine

[Anonymous No.3436036]

>>3435996
>PC Engine

[Anonymous No.3436052]

>>3435996
PC Engine probably has the best 8-bit graphics, yeah.

[Anonymous No.3436136]

>>3436052
>>3436036
>>3435996
Fucking this!

Developers are so fucking uncreative they know their hashed out shit won't survive on a niche console like the PC-Engine/TG-16. Even the very few NA games on there were pretty amazing.

[Anonymous No.3436195]

>>3435649
Hard question.

The Saturn has some of the best looking 2D games but the N64 could probably do better with the expansion cart.

Some of the best looking games that I'm aware of it's Mickey Mania in the genesis, most 5th gen 2D games don't look that good.

>>3436036
Some of the games that were ported from the PC Engine look a lot better on the PC Engine, maybe the PC-FX could do the best 2D of the 5th gen we will never know, the console died before having too many games, but the Zenki game for example, it's really impresive.

People often overlook how good NEC was at building hardware, just look at this NEC SX 5. most powerful super computer of his time.

[Anonymous No.3436241]

>>3435970
FFIX had qt chibi models. FFVI had cute chibi models. FFVII's looks blocky and ugly. The "hands" alone are terrible and I don't know why they didn't put any effort into it. FFVII definitely has the ugliest overworld models in the series.

[Anonymous No.3436261]

>>3435649
Saturn had serious limitations even for 2d. Mostly transparency related, but also colour depth, and serious speed problems.

It's only saving grace was having a powerful line buffered background hardware.

N64 was mostly limited by cart size, and the fact that you had to re-code all those linescroll effects into its hardware. The 4k texture limit was also an issue but not something that would be difficult to get around - developers doing cutting edge 2d games were already used to tiling, since pretty much all older 2d hardware worked like that.

[Anonymous No.3436554]

>>3435181

>Unreal on the N64
>that canyon in front of the ISV Kran
>the Sunspire
>Bluff Eversmoking
>all covered in fog

lol

[Anonymous No.3436993]

>>3435136
baked lighting, sprites and limited camera allow for photographic assets and the players will still suspend their disbelief due to resolution and gameplay. These games are closer to composite photo sketches than 3D imagery.

>pre-common 3D
shit phrase is shit

[Anonymous No.3436995]

>>3435181
so much ignorance and lack of understanding in that post, it's sad

[Anonymous No.3437193]

>>3435181
>Polygon count became an actual marketing buzzword

Yeah because the same shit totally didn't happen with 16 bit or anything. I mean it's not like they went and even named a console after it to get more sales no man that's just crazy talk.

[Anonymous No.3437228]

>>3435181
>permanent fist hands
Still can't believe this was done in nearly every game back then.

>Better than Quake? Unreal could be the best looking PC games of 1997. And it's coming to Nintendo 64...
This might have had a nice scene on the N64 rivaling GE007 and PD since Id butchered Quake on 64.

[Anonymous No.3437234]

>>3437228
>Still can't believe this was done in nearly every game back then.
what would you suggest instead? Your budget is 10-20 polygons

[Anonymous No.3437240]

>>3437234
It's unbelievable. could consoles not handle loading up an open or straightened out hand when not holding something then swapping back to a fist?

[Anonymous No.3437247]

>>3437240
go model an open or straightened out hand in that budget. And be sure to have that extra texture for it ready, or rather, the whole new texture atlas, since the hand is just one tiny part of the character's texture atlas. Bonus points if you manage to efficiently assemble the model just in time, since all the vertex indices change, unless you keep the count and stripe/fan structures

[Anonymous No.3437258]

>>3435181
BLAST
PROCESSING

[Anonymous No.3437263]

>>3435649
As N64 had a secret blitting mode with a peak fill rate of over 100 32 bit megapixels per second, then I would say in THEORY the N64.

Not that much 2D actually happened on the system.

>>3436261
The size of the texture cache was absolutely not an issue. It is literally a meme by hardware illiterates. Point fingers at the unified memory architecture instead which gets choked up on trillions of RWM cycles to produce high quality 3D pixels, something at wouldn't be a problem with 2D. 2D tiles of that era were hardly ever bigger than 64x64 anyway.

[Anonymous No.3437271]

>>3437263
*RMW
fucking mobile

[Anonymous No.3437278]

protip, we all wanted 3D, pc and console gamers were stoked about it. we had been playing 2d pixel games for decades at that point and were ready for a change.

[Anonymous No.3437286]

>>3437278
>we all wanted 3D, pc and console gamers were stoked about it
PC gaming was using various 3D rendering techniques for quite a while when the mainstream consoles picked it up. The time before the 3D accelerator was super creative in terms of engines and capabilities. Nobody was "ready for a change", at least on computers, because there was no such thing. At least not until the 3D accelerator came along, and pissed on everything that's not polygonal

[Anonymous No.3437294]

>>3437286
yes they had 3d but not BA 3d until things like the early voodoo (it piggybacked the vga out right?) pre accelerator 3d pc games play worse than star fox.

[Anonymous No.3437306]

>>3437294
3D accelerators were the beginning of the end, when all the creativity got suffocated in favor of low polygonal 3D. Some tried to go against it, like Outcast, but they couldn't keep up. Calling the creative 3D explosion of 1989 - 1995 "worse than star fox" just makes you look ignorant