Retro: The Visual Odyssey

[Neon Ignition]

Tis the year of our imaginary Lord 2023 and over the last few years we have seen a protracted transition between generations. Where we once would currently be getting past the mid-point in a consoles lifecycle, we now still wait for any real titles that appear to make use of the systems on a meaningful level.

This elongated approach is reflective of the shrinking gains each generation brings, the best looking last generation titles able to more strongly compete with the new titles released today. It's part of what makes Retro increasingly harder to define, where the cut off lies.

Focusing here solely on visuals we take a visual journey through the best looking games of past years to discuss how well they hold up today and at what point do you look at a game and it visually speaks the word Retro back to you.


Beginning from the last generation of consoles and a line of five years ago:


2018

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2015

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2013

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2011

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2007

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2004

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2001

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1998

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1995

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1991

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And then into the 8 Bit era outside of Arcades

Do you have a point in gaming history where games hit a visual cliff edge and look retro, if so when is it?

Or are all eras timeless in your eyes?

How do you imagine the games of today will age in the coming years?

[Neon Ignition]

2D games for me have a very clear cut off - 16 bit. 8-Bit is an era that doesn't engage me which is particularly sigh worthy when so many indie games over the years have peddled it as nostalgic. It's an ugly visual style which coupled with the often simpler gameplay pushes it into too far back for me. 3D is a harder one to pin. From a visual standpoint I think my cut off lies somewhere around the Dreamcast era, there are some games from the PS2 era onwards that still remain visually impressive to this day but once you reach the 2013 era in particular the lack of visual leaps really rams itself home. Circa 2007 is a fine enough balance whilst going back to that late 90's early 2000's period was a time of rapid, major leaps in visuals but a clunkiness that just feels retro by comparison to everything else.

If I can see some games that are reaching decades in age and feel like they could almost pass muster today then it makes me feel like we're reaching a tipping point where todays games won't age much at all moving forward. It's visible in film as well, 80's and 90's movies are visually distinct and identifiable, early 2000's too in many cases but after that the differences in time become mostly restricted to the actors getting older.

[Asura]

2D games for me have a very clear cut off - 16 bit. 8-Bit is an era that doesn't engage me which is particularly sigh worthy when so many indie games over the years have peddled it as nostalgic.

I agree with this.

I think the 16-bit era is somewhat timeless. 2D graphics had hit a point where they could render attractive visuals which, as long as the art style was good, have stood the test of time. Games like Super Street Fighter II Turbo or Final Fight have, in many ways, become even more stylish over time as many of their esoteric visual features have become markers of their style.

While there are good-looking 8-bit games, I think they're the exception as opposed to the rule, and I tend to think of them as more functional than attractive. The features of that aesthetic don't appeal to me.

It's also that, going back to the 16-bit era, that there are games from that era - Metal Slug, for example - which represent what I would argue are the absolute apex of the low-res, limited colour pixel art style. Decades later they haven't been bettered. As a result, everything pre-16-bit feels "old" to me.

It's also helped by the fact that although I had 8-bit computers as a young child, the Megadrive was my first home console and I have strong early memories of the Amiga, both of which were 16-bit (even if games on the Amiga could look pretty ropey at times!).

3D games are harder. I tend to find 3D retro as anything prior to the PS2, because I see something of a throughline for 3D games which starts around Tekken Tag Tournament for PS2; a title which I felt looked amazing and I believe still does.

Even that's tricky though because it's hard to reconcile early 3D games like console Virtua Fighter or Jumping Flash with later games that generation such as Soul Reaver or Vagrant Story, which are so different in feel and technology. Clear stand-out technical innovations are skinning/deformation (so the characters didn't need to be like ball-jointed dolls, like if you compare console Virtua Fighter 2 with console Tekken 3) and Per-Pixel Shading; an effect techically faked on the PS2 and possible on the GameCube/Xbox which enormously affected the look of games when it appeared, having a really strong effect on the early life of the Xbox 360 (it's probably the main technical innovation that made Gears of War possible, along with the shader tools written for Unreal that made it easier for artists to manipulate it).

3D has that problem where I see Virtua Fighter 1 (the first 3D console game I ever owned) and today I played Street Fighter VI and while clearly one is retro and one is modern, divining the "line" between them is hard as it's more like a stream of technical innovations which take you through Virtua Fighter 2, Soul Edge, Bloody Roar, Tekken 3, Soul Calibur, Tekken Tag Tournament (console only), Dead or Alive 4...

[wakka]

I think that great visual art has been made in every era of gaming. Pac-Man's visuals are technologically crude but totally iconic. Meanwhile early PS5 title Godfall has the aesthetics of a bad Chinese mobile phone game, despite its use of modern technology.

Likewise classic Infocom titles, which of course are 100% text based, are still great to play today (and their legacy lives on in TWINE releases).

With that said, there are games that I try but then feel are too dated for me to really enjoy today. But that feeling tends to be governed by the gameplay more than visuals. A lot of 80s (and early 90s) era titles have crude and unforgiving difficulty curves that excessively prioritise challenge or do things which I don't think are all that fun, like demand lots of memorisation. An example would be something like Vigilante on the PCE.

Likewise, the late 90s are plagued with examples of developers trying and failing to get the hang of 3D development. A lot of PS1 titles in the most 'normcore' genres - racers, third person action adventure - can be rough to go back to because the conventions that make those types of games consistent today were still being worked out.

So for me there isn't an era I can point at and say 'That's not for me', but more types of game. 80s and 90s action games often fail to hold my attention, but slower paced adventure games and RPGs of that era can still give me great enjoyment. And of course there are always exceptions for exceptional games (like early Mario Bros entries, for example).

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, it's why indie attempts at making PS1 era styled visuals have left me cold. I'm nostalgic for that era but I don't want new games that look like that, they're ugly as sin and like 8-bit exist more out of necessity than out of artistic intention.

[wakka]

I think using 'retro style' visuals from any era is fine, it's just how you choose to deploy them and the intent behind them. I played Faith not long ago, which uses incredibly crude 8 bit style graphics in a really effective way. It actually makes it creepier than if you were clonking around a generic Unreal type environment.

But I know what you mean - when it's done without good reason, and the visuals end up worse than what talented artists were doing back at the time with that style, it becomes annoying.