/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.7411505]

They are not that bad

[Anonymous No.7411532]

>>7411505
By Zelda's standards they are. They still would have been deemed average if not mediocre if they'd launched on a competent platform instead of the CD-i.

[Anonymous No.7411549]

>>7411505
They are modeled after the best game in the series after all

[Anonymous No.7411572]

OP, they're pretty bad.

[Anonymous No.7411614]

They look and sound great for the time (a kid in 1993 would have unironically loved the cutscenes), but they play like budget Spectrum games

But the fact that an action game exists on the CD-i at all is impressive in its own way

[Anonymous No.7411619]

>>7411505
great cutscenes but that's it

[Anonymous No.7411639]

>>7411619
I was watching this the other day and it is incredible how not a single animator managed to capture the charm of the cutscenes in any way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LY0kU0LV-0

[Anonymous No.7411651]

>>7411532
>>7411505
No, they ARE bad, did you actually play the games? Everything about the games are badly designed, jumping, attacking, enemy spawn points, everything.

[Anonymous No.7411810]

>>7411549
Based, that man

[Anonymous No.7411862]

Zelda's adventure could have been interesting if not for the eternal load times during screen transitions

[Anonymous No.7411864]

Oh my God, y'all niggas can't be serious

[Anonymous No.7412007]

>>7411614
>a kid in 1993 would have unironically loved the cutscenes
I disagree; we tend to underestimate kids' ability to discern quality, specially with a hammered-in frame of reference as the average 90s kid raised on saturday morning cartoons

[Anonymous No.7412029]

>>7411639
Well, they're generic Newsgrounds/YT-style animations. It's such a lazy and saturated market that the original cutscenes stand out on sheer quirkiness in comparison even though nobody on their right mind would call them anything more flattering than "interesting"

[Anonymous No.7412132]

>>7411639
I dunno why but they always reminded me of Ralph Bakshi's cartoons for some reason.

[Anonymous No.7412148]

The remakes with infinite continues and improved controls? They are roughly on par with Zelda 2 if a more sloppy and with poor level design. The originals are beyond janky. And 99% of the people here never played the original since CD-i emulation isn't retard easy.

[Anonymous No.7412889]

>>7411639

I don't have the language to describe it, but the way the CD-i games use keyframes and in-between frames feels a lot closer to claymation than what you see in modern animation. The characters linearly move between poses.

[Anonymous No.7412893]

I had a blast with the remakes that dude made.

[Anonymous No.7413140]

>>7411651
How can you play it? From what I understand CD-I emulation is not in a good place. I know it can be booted on a PC, but are the emulation problems negligible enough to make it a direct experience of the game?

[Anonymous No.7413169]

>>7413140
Not that anon but I had to use some rigged version of MAME that some dude archived specifically for these games as only certain versions of MAME would run this shit right. It was a pain in the ass but it eventually worked.

[Anonymous No.7414256]

>>7411639
I used to be obsessed with newgrounds animations ten years ago, but the older i get I dont see the appeal. The video you posted, its either
>look how self aware our comically bad our animating is
>try hard weeb who probably takes hentai commissions on patreon
>weird 3d model experiment

Not sure if i grown up into a bitter jaded asshole or if theres some truth to my statement.

[Anonymous No.7414265]

>>7413140
I actually bought a CD-i

[Anonymous No.7414289]

>>7414256
The only good reanimated was Mama Luigi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liqrfUYsOtA

It's helped that it's the only reanimated where the original's animation is both bad and boring that anything improves on it.

[Anonymous No.7414319]

>>7411505
They are honestly somewhat awful. Collision detection is a nightmare. Inputs are insanely delayed, this is one of the most unresponsive sidescrollers ever.
Level geometry is fuck, the hand-drawn backgrounds are really good looking but the programmers did a bad job making the collision match up with them making platforming a guessing game as to whether you're going to fall through or not.
All "bosses" die in one hit.

the only good things about the game are the nice backgrounds, the hilarious cartoons and characters, and the music.

[Anonymous No.7414518]

>>7414256
But characters go comically strabic at times bro that's hysterical

[Anonymous No.7414521]

>>7414265
Said literally nobody ever

[Anonymous No.7414540]

>>7414256
>Not sure if i grown up into a bitter jaded asshole or if theres some truth to my statement.
No, you are right. I blame John Kricfalusi who ten years ago posted a lot of enties in his blog defending funny expressions in classic and modern cartoons and lots of amateur animators misinterpreted that, which has caused a lot of bad and self-aware humor around funny expressions in recent cartoons.

[Anonymous No.7414545]

>>7414540
John K is a fucking obtuse douchebag that has been riding for 30 years on the value of barely 1 year of good work, but blaming him for those styles is not fair.
They are bad because they focus on that principle but don't back it with solid drawing or basic appeal, not to mention competent actual animation in most cases

[Anonymous No.7414610]

The CDi Zelda games are conceptually interesting. Side scrolling action adventure games with animated cut scenes. They just needed a competent dev team - I don't even think they need to update the unusual art style.

[Anonymous No.7414759]

>>7414256
Kids raised by the internet know neither restraint nor subtlety. Let these kids be their own director, and they will likely try to make something that's obnoxious and/or far outside of their skill level.

[Anonymous No.7414837]

>>7413140
Pretty sure there’s a PC port of the first one you can get

[Anonymous No.7414840]

>>7414521
There cheap here because Philips tried to push it hard on their own people

[Anonymous No.7414969]

>>7414545
>blaming him for those styles is not fair.
Yeah. He gave some pretty good advice but the problem is that plenty of artists took that to the extreme and thought that just putting weird facial expressions was funny or "creative". Even the most crazy classic cartoons were much more subtle and were more human than the maniac and weird poses you see in that Zelda intro remake (or in some modern cartoons too).

[Anonymous No.7415052]

>>7414969
I feel super old stating this sort of thing, but I do believe the main goal of the average YT animation is to force as many opportunities for a meme to get "spontaneously" started as possible. Every shot screams IM FUNNY-- SCREENCAP ME OR MAKE A GIF

Not that it stops at amateur animation though; current Spongebob or stuff like Teen Titans Go is based on that principle as well: story is secondary, just string 10 minutes of funny faces in a row.

[Anonymous No.7415450]

>>7412132
Probably what >>7412889 is trying to say, since Bakshi used rotoscoping a lot

[Anonymous No.7415471]

>>7412007
Very true. I always thought the cutscenes looked bad and cheap, and this Link was a terribly retarded excuse for a vidya character. Nothing would have made me want this literal garbage.

[Anonymous No.7415475]

>>7411639
I'm not gonna watch this whole thing or engage in some joyless boomer circlejerking but 0:41 to 0:49 is honestly good

[Anonymous No.7415487]

>>7412007
People like to call kids retards with low standards. Someone was talking about how kids don't care about weird off-model toys while I remember bitching about things not being show accurate as a kid.

[Anonymous No.7415520]

>>7415052
>current Spongebob or stuff like Teen Titans Go is based on that principle as well: story is secondary, just string 10 minutes of funny faces in a row
I wouldn't include TTG in this, they work on pretty limited flash and that show mainly carries itself on writing, but you're right on modern Spongebob's animation, at least from the little I've seen of it. Clips of very in your face over the top animation that feels more like an animator trying very hard to prove to someone that they didn't waste their life on cartoons. And I mean yes they're capable artists and animators but it feels so out of place.
I really don't know how to describe or feel about it. "Forced animation" is a hated term and it's fucking stupid to hate an animation for doing what it's supposed to do, but there's no restraint, nor the atmosphere that would justify no restraint.
I hate to be a weeb because so many people these days only care about anime and mimicking it and give little shits for other cartoons, but this is where I praise limited animation, that forced people to focus on shots and subtlety. Don't read this schizoblog.

[Anonymous No.7415525]

>>7415052
>I feel super old stating this sort of thing, but I do believe the main goal of the average YT animation is to force as many opportunities for a meme to get "spontaneously" started as possible. Every shot screams IM FUNNY-- SCREENCAP ME OR MAKE A GIF
Yes. You can see in the old intros that the animators made some weird drawings but they were odd in a more natural way. Less self-aware.
It was just a bunch of animators having fun animating even if they were not very good.

[Anonymous No.7415529]

>>7415525
>It was just a bunch of animators having fun animating even if they were not very good.
That applies more to the reanimated collabs people here are bitching about.
The original Zelda CD-i animations were drawn by overworked Slavs that were shipped to the US or some shit and had an extremely limited deadline to get their shit done.

[Anonymous No.7415556]

>>7415529
>The original Zelda CD-i animations were drawn by overworked Slavs that were shipped to the US or some shit and had an extremely limited deadline to get their shit done.
OK, that explains a lot. Nevertheless, the final result was more amusing and funny than the remake.

[Anonymous No.7415651]

>>7415529
Well, overworked they might have been, but that's kind of the business in animation. I do think they HAD a vision, they just sucked at realizing it. They were clearly trying to go for this style of animation popularized by Richard Williams' studio the previous decades: extremely dynamic animation with constant perspective shifts around a character. There's simply a gigantic gap of skill involved.

Just imagine if it had been animated at this level:
https://youtu.be/FsTnUDhONp4

[Anonymous No.7415823]

>>7415450
I think it's also how they are often simply superimposed on top of the game, using it as background, just like Bakshi cartoons do it with real life backgrounds.

[Anonymous No.7415960]

>>7415052
>>7415520
Its funny how this phenomenon is occurring all throughout the animation industry. Its like every show is doing this, even the very last season of the show banned from 4chan faced a lot of criticism from its fans for the very things you pointed out. The animation budget just spiked through the roof and ironically made it look worse due to how exaggerated and out of character it made the whole show feel with there being a le wacky maymay face every 3 seconds. Its kinda why I got out of the whole animation community because everyone was trying waaay too goddamn hard to be funny, and think "jokes" consist of loudness + ironic randomness + funny faces every frame + reference to pop culture or memes + self aware low quality animation.

[Anonymous No.7416146]

>>7415960
John K ruined a generation of animators. But generally that is done in hopes that one of the faces becomes a "meme face," it's the same reason Gumball was constantly full of this reaction, they wanted it to be a meme

[Anonymous No.7416296]

>>7416146
Everyone is blaming John K. But really, it was Egoraptor who was inspired by John K. I think every single YT and Newgrounds animator wants to be just like the old Egoraptor, but no one actually cares for John K himself.

[Anonymous No.7416917]

>>7416146
Gumball annoys me because it has legitimately good episodes, people who shit on it for "hurrr calarts" never seen anything beyond the main characters and only know shit from twitter drama, but as you said it's just become memebait. That image barely qualifies as an offender.
>>7415960
It's something that Korra was criticized for too.
AtLA had a lot of moments with some goofy faces, a few that only lasted for one frame and you wouldn't spot without randomly pausing, in the first or second episode of Korra they went out of their way to force gifbait.

[Anonymous No.7417014]

>>7415823
>they are often simply superimposed on top of the game, using it as background
I think this appeared in a lot of cutscenes for point and click PC games at the time. It's a very overlooked influence to stuff like Dilbert 2 and 3 in my opinion.
>>7416296
John K is a hasbeen cunt who I don't think has any fans anymore beyond a few edgy contrarians who never even picked up a pencil in their lives. It's a shame because even with childfucking, his conclusions and opinions on animation, his personality, and whether or not you like his work, he's still extremely knowledgeable on the medium. You wouldn't have always agreed when he opened his big mouth, but you would take note and listen.

[Anonymous No.7417063]

>>7411639
>>7415475
That entrance almost made me spit my drink, kek.

[Anonymous No.7417150]

>personally dont like the visual style of the majority of cartoons out now a days which all seem derived from the same source, mass term I have seen for this style is "Cal-Arts". Dont know what other name to refer to this style as because I have only ever seen it refereed to as this in last couple years. I dont like "Cal-Arts" in the sense that I dont like the modern widely used cartoon aesthetic.

Am I a shit person because I dont like modern most modern cartoon drawing styles, but only refer to it as Cal-Arts in conversation because I have no other way to describe it?

[Anonymous No.7417157]

if ninteny ever wants to do their own dark souls zelda game, please set it in the wonderful setting of faces of evil and gamelon

[Anonymous No.7417189]

Does anyone remember that HTML 1.0 page of a dude listing what being a hardcore Zelda fan entails? One of the points was recognizing the greatness of the CD-I games.

[Anonymous No.7417216]

>>7417150
Cal-Arts is a shit term that appropriately was coined by John K for shit like the Iron Giant.
Most of the people who spout it never read his blog to begin with. I don't think people understand how every generation of cartoons always falls into some kind of defining mold or style that gets stale eventually, or how ephemeral these trends are.
Cartoons like Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls all had this obvious trend of mimicking the very cheap 60's Hanna-Barbera look with some better quality and modernization. It was a faux-retro look that I doubt would have been popular if it wasn't for the channel that had Hanna-Barbera reruns. It's this flat, geometric, bold-outline look, often filled with abstract or minimalist backgrounds. Even less people point out how this was originally ripped from the UPA studio look. Eventually a bunch of shows from this period started having the same bold-outline flat art style, like Fairly Oddparents, arguably Invader Zim too. Butch Fartman's art looks so different from the actual end product, his shows would probably have looked completely different in another era.
This also goes to show how slapping a label onto everything can be pointless, a lot of these shows have clear distinctive looks from each other despite following a similar look. People bitch about everything looking like Adventure Time despite being able to admit how different that show looks compared to Seven Universe looks to Gumball. Also how there are always exceptions. Courage the Cowardly Dog didn't look like most of its contemporary shows, just like how the most popular cartoons among kids for the last few years, Teen Titans Go, looks nothing like the most bemoaned "art style" currently. Just like how the most popular cartoon 20 years ago, Spongebob(made by a Calarts graduate), looked more akin to that Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life era than all the other cartoons it was competing with.
Everything comes and goes.

[Anonymous No.7418014]

>>7417216
Well-said, señor

[Anonymous No.7418271]

>all these people blaming John K. and not the Calarts fag who can't make anything good irregardless