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Post by jameseightbitstar on Oct 21, 2006 7:18:43 GMT -5
Do a game's graphics really become "dated?" I say no.
Of course, I'm not arguing that something like Adventure for the Atari 2600 is a graphical masterpiece--obviously the graphics are quite bad. Rather what I'm arguing is that they're not bad because they're old, but rather that they're bad because they're, well, BAD.
I mean, I hear the rhetoric all the time that "at the time, this was fancy stuff" well it may have been, but that doesn't mean people at the time necessarily thought they were good. To use a modern example: I recall people who saw the early games of the Playstation and Nintendo 64 and thought that polygonal graphics were overrated and could never be good. Nowadays even with all the advancements, many people still think polygons don't look all that great even in their best examples. I find it rather hard to believe that people were really drooling over the graphics of Legend of Zelda and Mega Man 6 when they had television shows, the real world, and their own fervent imaginations that, by contrast, should make any video game look especially limited. I mean if people were picky over polygons, there is no way in hell they thought the undetailed blocks of the Atari 2600 or the short, squat NES characters (who couldn't even replicate the TV shows most of them were based on) were all that impressive.
To be fair, what got me thinking about this was a movie, specifically King Kong (the original 1933 version). Today, people call its stop-motion effects "dated." However, I found an issue of a magazine called Variety, printed in 1933, that had a review panning Kong's SFX as being unrealistic and silly-looking. It's not much, but it proves Kong's SFX had criticis even when they were new. For a more modern example, look at CGI and how many people think CGI look fake and lazy. In 20 years people will be calling CGI "dated," but that won't be exactly true because people ALWAYS thought CGI looked bad.
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Post by kal on Oct 21, 2006 9:22:19 GMT -5
It really depends on your own opinion, some of the graphics throughout the eras of gaming totally ripped me. When I saw MGS for PSX running I was like..wow that's pretty cool for real time.
Their have been other games..something like Sonic or Mario or FF6 or any of the other countless pixel animated masterpieces have impressed people at the time.
But because of the nature of Pixel graphics which have kind of reached their peak and are now all but in a subtle twilight where they become refined rather then better we can say that some of the great graphics of the NES era are dated but were great for their time quite easily, Street fighter 2 for instance (not NES I know) they were considered impressive for their time no doubt I believe (maybe their were sceptics but their impressiveness was undeniable) but now with GGX which has far more updated graphics we could consider SF2 to have become dated relatively.
Same with MGS as I mentioned before, it was good on PSX and now it's sequels have come along and dated it's graphics most certainly, they aren't bad but they are dated relatively.
And that's what dated is, it's merely relative to what we can achieve.
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Post by Weasel on Oct 21, 2006 12:13:32 GMT -5
I never consider technical level when I review a game's graphics. I judge it solely based on how pleasing it is to the eye. The original MGS, for example - low polygon characters, relatively undetailed environments (compared to later games), and silly things (like the bobbing heads when people talk). But does that make them bad graphics? No. The art direction behind the game was quite good. Even with the characters being rough around the edges (again, compared to later games), they still satisfy my eyes.
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Post by klausien on Oct 21, 2006 12:39:51 GMT -5
"Dated" never automatically means BAD to me, but anyone who frequents the forums of a site like HG101 probably agrees. I evaluate the graphics of every game based upon both its historical context and whether it accomplishes what it set out to do. For instance, the color palette of the Genesis makes the graphics on all of its software "dated" at this point, but it doesn't mean they cannot be enjoyed in the now. The Genesis Sonic games still look incredible to my eyes, as do games like Gunstar Heroes, Streets of Rage 2 and even their early arcade conversions like Altered Beast. One could say the same for the slow clock speed causing slowdown on the SNES. Sure, its a negative, but a game like Gradius III still has graphics that have stood the test of time.
Bad graphics are bad graphics, regardless of time period. The whole "dated graphics" thing is one of the most irritating ways current gaming publications add to their pile-on argument against games which have gameplay firmly rooted in the past. They apply the label to said gameplay far too often as well.
Has anyone else noticed how the divide has widened between post-PSX games and classic gamers? It is becoming a true generation gap; even more so than the one between the age of Atari and the NES age. Starting to feel old!
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 21, 2006 13:28:23 GMT -5
To me, the only real "dated" graphics are early 3D (PSOne/N64 era). Most 2D graphics from the NES onward still manage to look pretty decent.
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Post by MRSKELETON on Oct 21, 2006 13:31:47 GMT -5
I cant go back and play most early 3d games without it hurting my eyes, But I can always go back and play FF1 or Contra
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Post by Malroth on Oct 21, 2006 17:43:35 GMT -5
I remember thinking to myself how bad the graphics were for Star Fox Command, but when I went back to the 64, I realized what people meant by "dated." The SF64 graphics were great for their time, but they look really jagged and unpleasing in today's arena. Its strange, because Command's graphics are much better, albeit undetailed.
That said, I don't partically care about a game's graphics so long as the playablity is enjoyable.
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Kishi
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Post by Kishi on Oct 21, 2006 21:21:27 GMT -5
I'd agree that it's just a matter of opinion. There are indeed people who found formerly cutting-edge graphics to be lacking, but there are also plenty of people who were legitimately blown away by them at the time.
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Post by ahnslaught on Oct 21, 2006 22:26:54 GMT -5
I gotta admit, when I was about 7 and was playing the 2600, the graphics were pretty sweet. However, time hasn't been kind, whether it be the 2600's graphics or my imagination...
Anyway, I gotta agree with a lot of folks here that a lot of stuff NES and beyond look great even today, mainly because of its good artistic design (ex. Contra, SMB3, Phantasy Star). However, if the game had no imagination, it looked like ass then and ass now. I also think the early PS/SAT days begat games that are cringe-worthy in terms of both graphics and control, though there are some notable exceptions.
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Post by michiyoyoshiku on Oct 21, 2006 22:28:11 GMT -5
I hate when "dated Graphics" deter from a game's score and it's why I am letting all but 1 of my magazine Subs end.
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ed
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Post by ed on Oct 22, 2006 0:35:03 GMT -5
I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. All artistic works can be dated according to their characteristics; video games certainly don't buck the trend.
If you don't mind, I'll tender a definition: a game is 'dated' in the pejorative sense when it relies more on hardware than artistry.
This, I think makes a lot more sense than some of the needlessly defensive positions being taken in this thread. Dated, and graphics. Not gameplay, not good or bad.
Jaguar games are a varied lot. Some are obviously dated, but I'm sure a few of the Jag's proponents would claim that almost every game uses the minimalistic graphics to artistic effect.
Myst is also a mixed success. Some of the scenes are dated, but some scenes are objectively beautiful.
Bubsy 3D is most people's idea of a dated game.
Space Harrier, After Burner, Galaxy Force, Night Striker. All pretty dated? The gameplay is dated. The dependency on graphics is dated. That said, they offer a kind of gameplay that makes it pretty mindless to slap the label "DATED" on there like they were a pile of moldering wristwatches.
I personally I think that many PSX games use that thing I used to (mistakenly?) call affine texturing (it's the wavy effect that you get when pixels creep along a surface - on the PSX they will often pop dramatically - due to lowered precision of texel mapping). I actually feel some games are enhanced by this unrealistic effect (Tenchu is one). Yeah, that's still dated.
If I can be blunt, I think that these sorts of quasi-academic discussions are a damned waste of time. At least half the posters here would rather be offended that somebody dares call old video games dated than actually consider the reasons for the term being used. It's one thing to throw the term about wildly and to ignore objectively beautiful artwork - but in terms of idiocy that's not any worse than saying "graphics don't become dated." Of course they do.
The question should be "when are you justified in wasting the reader's time by saying so?"
Perhaps the answer is that it's never justified (or at least very rarely so) to say a game's graphics are dated because one should be making a simple case that the game does or doesn't look good. You can break that down into the simple asthetics, and how aggressively special features of the hardware were used. Add categories if you like!
It doesn't really matter if I agree with many of the points that are made in these points (for example, I agree with james that bad games are bad because they are simply bad, 1=1, quod erat demonstrandum, bitches). It's just that either they're damned obvious points, or that they're caught alongside needless yammering and general angst about shit that doesn't really matter.
Time will tell if games will hold up and whether better entertainment (better types of games) will take the place of what's here right now. Personally, I think games have been getting slightly more fun as time goes on, but that follows market trends and my bias as a single player - older games made for multiplayer with buddies by your side are hard to "get" in emulation (Wizard of Wor), and of course the industry has simply gotten more sophisticated. Regardless, I think that all current games will be judged pretty much evenly in the future. People in the future will likely look at the glut of JRPGs in the 90s and the mass of FPSes up to current times and view them as being pretty much the same. You can look at a 3D brawler/adventure game like Ninja Gaiden on Xbox and compare it to Raiden. How much happiness did each give me? Compare that with somebody else.
Anyway, I'd better stop before I start repeating myself three and four times over. Cheers.
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ed
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Post by ed on Oct 22, 2006 1:00:11 GMT -5
I cant go back and play most early 3d games without it hurting my eyes, But I can always go back and play FF1 or Contra Something about the 3D world being at a low refresh rate makes a 3D game harder on the eyes. A while back I also went to play on my N64 a bit again and my eyes were complaining for a while.
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Post by dartagnan1803 on Oct 22, 2006 15:05:53 GMT -5
I attach 'Dated' to games that appeared early in a console's library that look visably old and below par when compared to the games released in the console's final 2 years.
such examples are
Mystic Defender (genesis) Twisted Metal 1 (PSX) Extermination (PS2) (for that matter, most of the PS2's launch titles in general)
The graphics may not matter to the quality of the title, but the adjective 'dated' is still applicable. The problem is that asshat media outlets like Xplay (glad G4 is gone) will chastize a game for not looking as crisp and 3D as the HD channel.
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Post by Malroth on Oct 22, 2006 20:08:21 GMT -5
2D graphics have a tendency to hold up well against time, but it depends on the amount of effort the makers expended. For example, Mega Man 2 versus Deadly Towers.
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ed
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Post by ed on Oct 22, 2006 20:15:04 GMT -5
2D graphics have a tendency to hold up well against time 3D graphics can as well - it all depends on the hardware. Atari VCS and Astrocade games haven't done astonishingly well over time, and neither have the PSX. That's because these were overall rather rudimentary implementations of the hardware. Something like the SNES is closer to the apex of 2D, so the argument falls apart.
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