Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder. I find early 3d polygons to be very ugly, and early ps one / n64 / Saturn games don't hold up. Pixel art on the other hand, still stands the test of time.
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Why don't we have a "low-poly PS1 inspired" games craze as we have pixel-art SNES/MD/NES?
- Thread starter newtonlod
- Start date
It's funny people are so hostile to this style. I think it's so pretty and interesting and not over done to death like pixel art.
I like the whole wonky thing, warping textures, gritty low rez textures and flickering.
Some people like styles that you think are ugly. It's subjective. It's ok.
Of course nostalgia plays a part, but not any more here than in the attraction to pixel / snes art.
I like the whole wonky thing, warping textures, gritty low rez textures and flickering.
Some people like styles that you think are ugly. It's subjective. It's ok.
Of course nostalgia plays a part, but not any more here than in the attraction to pixel / snes art.
There's some being made. One I relatively enjoyed from a few months ago was the indie horror title, "Helltown":
Helltown on Steam
I liked it personally.
Whoa this game looks interesting. Things for mentioning it! Deffo gonna check it out
I loved the look of the era and indies have and can make great looking stuff that is evocative of that low-poly style without the tech holding it back (texture warping, fog, etc). I think it's just a matter of time and the various engines making it easier to pull it off.
Having grown up with PS1/N64 I get really nostalgic for that visual aesthetic. Sure, doesn't hold up like pixel art, but they have a charm to them. It might be a difference in age/what you played when, but going back to Mega Man Legends, Spyro, DK64 and Banjo gives me tons of good vibes.
As people have already mentioned, I think retaining the general limitations of lower polygon count and lower resolution unfiltered textures but enhancing the visuals with something closer to a "beefed up" PS1 is what most people are talking about here and would like to see more of.
Which is basically something like NDS level graphics rendered in a much higher resolution (shamelessly posting Krammy's wonderful gifs):
The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road
Solatorobo: Red the Hunter
Phantasy Star 0
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
Nanostray 2
Avalon Code
This combined with a CRT filter in Retroarch could be really interesting to see. Might give it a shot.
FF 4 Heroes of Light is still my favorite FF game both in gameplay and visuals.
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I think would be fun if devs made more low poly 3D games.
I don't think they should necessarily emulate PS1/64 aesthetics, the same way 2D pixel art doesn't need to be retro 8/16 bits.
People have this notion that indie devs resolve around nostalgia and retro stuff, which is far from being true.
I don't think they should necessarily emulate PS1/64 aesthetics, the same way 2D pixel art doesn't need to be retro 8/16 bits.
People have this notion that indie devs resolve around nostalgia and retro stuff, which is far from being true.
I'd be down if they captured the look, but didn't necessarily adhere to all the limitations of the hardware... kind of like how Shovel Knight is somewhere between 8-bit and 16-bit. There were a lot of beautiful PS1-era 3D games, but I think the argument might be that if you're going to do stuff in 3D, might as well make it look as nice as possible with modern tools. Doing high-quality 2D takes a lot of time and effort if you are creating a lot of animation frames, so I think that's why when it comes to 2D games, there is a tendency to go with 8-bit or 16-bit stylings without pushing into Neo-Geo or SF3 territory. Then I look at DBFZ and think that approach might be the answer to bridging the gap in the 2D (or 2.5D) space.
Yeah I feel this was a big part of it, even if it was previously on a subconscious level. Emulators when they get rid of the texture warping for example, and clean it up, just look wrong.
I think the issue is people pair low poly with low Rez, unfiltered textures like in the old days.
Instead, I think low poly with more moder. Sized textures and non realistic rendering like cell shading or the line could be fun. Sort of like late ps1 games running on a ps2 with texture filtering turned on. Build around the style, like Minecraft did, with a high Rez texture pack installed.
Or heck,look what interstate 76 did back in the day. They made the low poly visuals work by making it almost feel like part of the wold setting. Though it would be cool to see that game with a modern facelift.
Instead, I think low poly with more moder. Sized textures and non realistic rendering like cell shading or the line could be fun. Sort of like late ps1 games running on a ps2 with texture filtering turned on. Build around the style, like Minecraft did, with a high Rez texture pack installed.
Or heck,look what interstate 76 did back in the day. They made the low poly visuals work by making it almost feel like part of the wold setting. Though it would be cool to see that game with a modern facelift.
Having gone back and played several PS1 3D games recently, none of them look good, most of them are like ink blot tests now. It's a technological limitation, not an aesthetic choice or art style. Doesn't surprise me that not many indie devs are going for "intentionally eye-bleedingly ugly" as a selling point.
This is it. The snes was top of the line 2D sprite work. Take that, push it to native 1080p, and you'll have a great looking game. Ps1/N64 was early 3D vs. late 2D for snes. It simply doesn't look as good.
real talk I love the PS1 aesthetic for horror games, always managed to create great atmosphere, of course a lot of that was also helped by the camera angles that have gone out of style.
They never went away with portables, even now with mobile. It just isn't used as much for nostalgia reasons.
It would all come down to art direction and aesthetic. There's games like Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor that manages to modernize that look in a cool way, but it could easily teeter the other way into "Indiegala bundle" quality.
I don't even think retro 2D games are going 100% for a SNES look. They want to remind you of the era, but they also have obvious tech advantages. Something like axiom Verge or rogue legacy may looks SNESish but those gfx are doing waaaaaay more than 10 SNES put together could ever handle.
This is like asking why we don't see more animated shows use old CG from the early 90s instead of 2D animation. It's because the latter looks infinitely better. You can see a 2D show from decades ago and it'd still look spectacular today, like Trigun for example. Compare that to something like Reboot which looks like a technical disaster now.
The reasoning seems pretty clear.
The reasoning seems pretty clear.
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I don't know if it's because I'm old (started on Atari era) or because I skipped completely the Ps1/n64 generation, but I always, even back in the day, found that aesthetic ugly as hell.
I think it's because if you make bad 2d art, you get a pass for being "retro", but if you make bad 3d art, you'll just be known as a terrible artist. However it works out sometimes. To this day I'm amazed at how Minecraft took off.
Probably for the same reason 2D indie games often aim to be evocative of late 80s/early 90s pixel art rather than Atari games. Low-poly games haven't aged that well visually as it was tech limitations, very few such games are the ones people talk about now, even compared to the pixel art games of the PSOne era, which is funny considering how fast developers were to drop it at the time. There's a huge market for pixel art as it's ageless to a large amount of people that grew up with it- 16-bit and 32-bit 2D games still look amazing to me whereas I haven't gone back to an early 3D game in a very long time.
I really want to see a PS1 era RE clone with similar "pixel art" textures to Leon and Claire in RE2.
I created Never Stop Sneakin' with this aesthetic in mind (was deeply inspired by Teleglitch), and yeah, even low-poly 3D is in many ways harder than 2D (I've now done both). Of course, 3D also makes some things much easier, particularly stuff like animation (assuming you know how to animate in 3D).
I'm not sure there will be a ton of games following suit. It takes a very specific type of nostalgia to appreciate that look, and it's a relatively small amount of effort to go from PS1 to say, PS2 level visuals.
Interesting note, I played around with the idea of texture warping for NSS, and in the end decided it was going a bit too far (especially since most of the aliased-polygonal games I played were on PC anyway, where texture swimming was less of a thing).
I'm not sure there will be a ton of games following suit. It takes a very specific type of nostalgia to appreciate that look, and it's a relatively small amount of effort to go from PS1 to say, PS2 level visuals.
Interesting note, I played around with the idea of texture warping for NSS, and in the end decided it was going a bit too far (especially since most of the aliased-polygonal games I played were on PC anyway, where texture swimming was less of a thing).
Drift Stage
Back in 1995
Anatomy
Sky Rogue
It's out there, it's just not as prevalent as sprite work (yet).
Back in 1995
Anatomy
Sky Rogue
It's out there, it's just not as prevalent as sprite work (yet).
^
pixel art is while what was available at that time, still "stylized". low-poly 3D isn't really a style. they were aiming for realism, that's just the most they could do.
If devs are gonna go through the trouble of making a 3D game, they'll probably want to make it look legitimately good. There are indie developers making stuff like FAST Racing Neo, IronFall Invasion and Yooka-Laylee. In comparison, a game going for a PS64 look runs the risk of just looking like shit. The art style needs to be really, really solid and resources tight enough that making it look modern is out of the question. It's a very hard look to pull off.
One of these aged well while the other did not. It's that simple.
The games people are trying to emulate with both these styles were a product of platform limitations of the era. Games can imitate pixel art from SNES games and achieve beautiful and expressive results. The same cannot be said for people trying to emulate the limitations of, say, PSX hardware. Well, the latter isn't entirely true, but if you try to emulate that, your game just looks like low-res butt fruit because polygonal models are the default in this era so your work looks elementary in comparison.
The games people are trying to emulate with both these styles were a product of platform limitations of the era. Games can imitate pixel art from SNES games and achieve beautiful and expressive results. The same cannot be said for people trying to emulate the limitations of, say, PSX hardware. Well, the latter isn't entirely true, but if you try to emulate that, your game just looks like low-res butt fruit because polygonal models are the default in this era so your work looks elementary in comparison.