How abstraction is too much? I love the simplistic nature of some retro games, it really feels like it was designed for my imagination to fill in the gaps.
>>12756182Anything before the nes is just awful to look at and too abstract
>>12756182>How abstraction is too much?No such thing, ASCII roguelikes and text adventures are awesome.
>>12756182Abstraction? Dude, at that time you couldn't have better graphics than this.
>>12756239Go to an arcade
>>12756218NES graphics was a downgrade from the older Atari 800, Vectrex, and C64 in many ways.
>>12756245More colors and more coherent sprites >>>>>>>>> wireframe wannabe 3d shit
>>12756254>more colorsMore garish colors.>more coherent spritesSorely limited to 8x8 blocks and ROM capacity. No bitmap capability whatsoever.>wireframe wannabe 3d shitYou mean vectrex? It's 2D vector graphics running at 60 fps flat with no stutters, flickers, screen tearing, and framedrops. Can't say the same about NES.
>>12756218Wrong, colectovision is just fine, bally astrocade isn't bad either
>>127562848x8 blocks were used in all these consoles, even if they had a framebuffer the pattern that emerges is grids of background tiles
>>12756245This. NES games were a total fucking eyesore. Third generation was awful.
>>12756182I kinda like the short and simple design of Atari era games sometimes. You can play and experience basically the entirety of a game in about 5 minutes and spend the rest of your time just trying to improve your skill at it to get higher scores. It's a welcome change sometimes from games that take dozens of hours to complete.
>>12756284>muh hardware speccs!Means jackshit if all the games look like shit, are you going to say the atari jaguar has better looking games than the snes and genesis too because "it's more powerful" or "has some specs!"
NES was perfect Atari was too much
Castle adventure was my first video game( I am 41)
>>12756305being a specsfag must be miserable existence, they have been racking up L's for decades.
>>12756293What are you on about, the NES looks great!
>>12756289>8x8 blocks were used in all these consolesNot really. Many games had 6x12, or 24x8, or whatever suits the art style the best. Atari 800 sprites only had width restriction. And also in some consoles and micros there's also more freedom in rendering colors. Amstrad CPC can draw any color anywhere on the screen. Atari consoles allowed swapping color palette in every scanline. And there's C64 that could render snow and tiny particle effects with very minimal CPU usage, VIC-II can be programmed to do so.
>>12756305>if all the games look like shitBut they look good.>are you going to say the atari jaguar has better looking games than the snes and genesis too because "it's more powerful" or "has some specs!"Yes? Rayman, Iron Soldier, AvP, Skyhammer, even fucking Bubsy look leagues above anything on SNES and genesis.
Imagine going over to your friends house to play videogames but instead of Mega Man, it's Space Lobsters.
>>12756345Stealth was not an atari 2600 game it was an Atari 8-bit home computer game. (An expensive system hardly anyone owned). You could also play on C64 but the colors were much worse.And ultimately, that screenshot you posted is almost the entire game. It's one scene as gameplay loop repeats itself multiple times until you reach the ending. The ground can change color and maybe the skybox changes a tiny bit. The plane has 3-4 colors and the field sprites are mostly 1 or 2 colors.Even Super Mario Brothers, which is hardly notable for great graphics, depicts several different overworld environments (not counting palette swaps, which they also use), plus the water, underworld and castle environments. Taken as a whole, it absolutely wipes the floor with Stealth, it's downright embarrassing to even try comparing them.
>>12756345Neat, that's damn nice looking Atari 800 (not 2600, though) game. Picrel is from the c64 port, which also looks quite sweet.
>>12756345>>12756376Post the gameplayYou won't.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9jccDxFCwc
>>12756345That's mid as fuck, nowhere near the best nes games>yes the atari jaguar games look better than snes and sega games specifically the ones that look exactly like 2d snes games and genesis games which made buying a jaguar even more pointlessOh you're retarded, yes the messy unfinished shit that's bubsy looks better than all the gorgeous classics because bubsy's sprite is a bit bigger despite the general art direction being shit
>>12756403>Post the gameplay>You won't.What's wrong with a simple arcadey rail shooter?
>>12756345on the atari it's mindblowing to just have font on the screen lmaooo
>>12756345OK you put 2600 in the filename to troll here, fuck you
>>12756418Because it's posted as if it was evidence of superior (to NES) graphics. Anyone who actually watches footage of the game will realize that it is not.
>>12756403Here's the actual atari 2600 version. It looks pretty good aesthetically, but it's not on the technical level of other systems.
>>12756182>How abstraction is too much?Depends on the person. Next stupid thread.
>>12756436That's Solaris (prototyped as The Last Starfighter), I don't think there's a Stealth port for the VCS.https://youtu.be/f68IjW7_w98
>>12756218ok faggot>>12756284ok mark(make another omega ronin album pls)
>>12756218No visual imagination, eh?
>>12756302This, exactly. I feel the same way about the control schemes for these games, you only got a joystick and one button to press, so you fuck around and figure out how it works in no time. I don't always have time to settle in for a huge story campaign kinda game, but I can and will always fuck around in Missile Command for a bit and it's good every time.
>>12756716A game doesn't even need graphics if the gameplay is good enough. Those ancient video games usually don't have enough gameplay to bother imagining the scnarios. I generally don't believe in the idea of things "aging poorly" and I find proto rpg and adventure games fascinating but that era is really best spent playing simple arcade games. Basically Ultima is when adventure video games became truly viable.
>>12756886>A game doesn't even need graphics if the gameplay is good enough. Basically Ultima is when adventure video games became truly viable.What about Zork?
>>12756890Fair point. I can vividly picture the locations I visited in zork decades ago. What I should have said is that graphical adventure games were too primitive until Ultima, which desu is rough one for most people as well.
>>12756716When you play Pong, do you imagine two sweaty asian men in a gymnasium standing on opposite sides of a ping pong table swinging their paddles with each bounce of the ball?
>>12756716>Just imagine 99% of the game bro
>>12756182>bad graphics are now an "abstraction"New cope just dropped
>>12756403>>12756431>7 six unique color sky>sprite scaling >60 fps>no flickersThat does look good though. NES could never. But there are far more accomplished games on the system graphically.>BallblazerTextured 2.5D graphics with anti aliasing running 60 fps. Compare it to the NES version, it looks miserable.>Elektra GlideFast first person 3D racer with sprite scaling and Parallax scrolling. Very simple game, but nice graphics.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM4Fp1rdDUQ>Rainbow WalkerShow me a single 8-bit system that could display remotely as many colors. Let alone with pseudo 3D graphics this smooth. You can't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNtYlqDTkkw>The Last StarfighterThe best looking 8-bit first person shooter ever.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aE_Z-42jis>Dimension XAnother insane textured 2.5D game. Probably even more insane looking than Ballblazer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_uAdh0F99s>Deflektorhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAk6Mxq4nh0This is the game that gave birth to the laser reflection puzzle genre. Not as good looking as the C64 version, but still a respectable port. NES can't even draw lines. >Alternate RealityAn RPG game with awfully nice presentation. The graphics are really vivid and colorful.
>>12757371Nta. Very cool list.>Show me a single 8-bit system that could display remotely as many colors.Well, there's the MSX2+, but it's so much more modern & advanced that mentioning it is kind of cheating:https://youtu.be/fC3KALVDaewhttps://youtu.be/ilN4r9Va1GYBonus, multicolor raster wizardry on the Spectrum:https://youtu.be/24cbXBAUhM0>Alternate RealityAlternate Reality (picrel) is impressive for how ambitious it was.
>>12757371>Discussion was about games before NES looking too abstract>Exclusively lists post-NES games
>>12756182Behold, a dragon!
>>12757536Is your post supposed to be a sarcastic one in terms of "i actually want things depicted as things and not abstractions!" (this variant could be because of your choice of the phrase (which just might be the reference to certain ancient greek philosophers and a chiken), or because, apparently, there are people, who literally can't into any amount of imagination and you just might be one of them, or because not only it is 2026, but also a summer, so you might be just a young inexperienced contrarian, or because your visual input actively blocks your imagination), or is it "Look, we can use a bunch of a random assets, but either through a proper storytelling, that might range from a full-blown Tolkien-tier descriptions to a few vague hints and "at-first-looking-random" references (that would be converted by the mind into a story of its own), or through merely naming the experience in a certain way (thus giving just enough context for the mind to change its current constructing course into that particular direction) this duck can easily be a dragon (given the one, who percepts the picture, DOES have a habit of imagining things let alone is an autists, whose imagination never ceases its work outside of being dead) - the kind of people heavily represented in programmers, mathematicians, writers, artists, musicians and composers (serious ones), who just happen to form both creators and the main audience of fantasy and sci-fi in general and various tabletop adventure games with a lot of numbers and heavily inheriting from them videogames specifically both in early western in overall japanese parts"?
>>12756182As soon as something stops being visually interesting or very interesting to play it's too much. Lots of very old, now relatively abstract games look great, but what you posted has the artistic value of a toddler's incomprehensible scribbles. Compare that to picrel which is visually very interesting to look at, you get a whole story from this screenshot
>>12757578What is that blue or those orange objects near that bear?
>>12757589shit that he's throwing at you. tom cunt could figure that out even of he somehow never saw the art on cabinet, sticker on the cartridge or had never heard of donkey kong.
>>12756319They both look like dogshit.Seethe more nintendie.
>>12757004>When you play Pong, do you imagine two sweaty asian men in a gymnasium standing on opposite sides of a ping pong table swinging their paddles with each bounce of the ball?Yes.To this tune, specifically:https://youtu.be/Wz-RuCT_mQg
>>12756319>ninja gaidenLooks pretty meh compared to some of the best Atari 8-bit, C64, and Amstrad CPC title/ending screens.
>>12757732>you can immediately see how it struggles with colorsLol
>>12756886>Those ancient video games usually don't have enough gameplay to bother imagining the scnariosDon't know about that
>>12757389>MSX2+Almost forgot about this system. You're right, and it's technically not cheating, MSX2+ is still an 8-bit machine with 8-bit wide GPU VRAM bus. Although it's a very late 80s system, long after the NES. Just like Sam Coupe. >multicolor raster wizardry on the SpectrumReally nice for speccy, but still not as cool as what atari is capable of.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB4Yrk6v96c
>>12757765I prefer the VCS cover (similar to the arcade flyer) for the 70s sci-fi looks.>>12757732Neat!>>12757768>not as cool as what atari is capable ofVery nice, I like how the sfx are synced to the music.I dropped a bunch of videos of Atari 8bit demos in the other thread, might as well do it here too:https://youtu.be/UuWEEms1IX4https://youtu.be/CYNItr19RUohttps://youtu.be/6ua8mZx-6sk
>>12757756It has 16 colors though. That Ninja Gaiden screen only has 12, although it's selectable from a palate of 56. C64 does only have 16 in total, all pale and subdued metallic colors. Amstrad CPC has nicer set of 16 colors. But color wise, Atari 8-bit is boss, 256 colors can all be displayed on screen at the same time, with 16 per scanline limit.Even worse than colors though, NES struggles with graphics memory. There's only 256 8x8 tiles possible, only enough to fill a 128x128 resolution screen, but NES has a 256*240 resolution with alternate screen sizes. There's not nearly enough tiles to fill the whole screen. That's why that Ninja Gaiden screenshot has tiny people, a tiny castle in the distance, dark sea with repeating patterns and mostly black at the bottom, and an empty sky. Meanwhile C64 and other systems have no problem filling the whole screen with unique graphics.
>>12757765>>12757806Early Atari box arts are god tier. iterally lost art. You could tell Tramiel cheaped out on the box art. So did other game companies at the time and today.
>>12757528Are Pitfall and Barnstormer too abstract for you? Must suck being blind, man.
>>12757912No, the VCS is one of my favorite consoles. I was merely pointing out that the guy went off topic.
>>12757850>m-muh specsSo why all those game look worse than nes games then?
>>12756234win the game already you munchkin faggot
>>12757536i fucking love duck-dragonsbring them back
>>12758008Heh, I hadn't even realized that the (shamelessly pinched from the intertubes, miss the ancardia servers) shot was from a L50 char.Don't worry, my wins (regular ending) were at more reasonable levels.
>>12756182That mother fucking dragon
>>12757558It's both a joke and a reference to Diogenes you nonsense paragraph vomiting moron.
>>12756409>because bubsy's sprite is a bit biggerBigger everything, more details to every object, way more colors on screen, sharp high resolution image instead of SNES' 256*224 blurry image stretched to 4:3? I'm curious which SNES masterpiece you think looks better.
>>12756182
>>12758328Is your post supposed to be a sarcastic one in terms of "i actually want things depicted as things and not abstractions!" (this variant could be because of your choice of the phrase (which just might be the reference to certain ancient greek philosophers and a chiken), or because, apparently, there are people, who literally can't into any amount of imagination and you just might be one of them, or because not only it is 2026, but also a summer, so you might be just a young inexperienced contrarian, or because your visual input actively blocks your imagination), or is it "Look, we can use a bunch of a random assets, but either through a proper storytelling, that might range from a full-blown Tolkien-tier descriptions to a few vague hints and "at-first-looking-random" references (that would be converted by the mind into a story of its own), or through merely naming the experience in a certain way (thus giving just enough context for the mind to change its current constructing course into that particular direction) this duck can easily be a dragon (given the one, who percepts the picture, DOES have a habit of imagining things let alone is an autists, whose imagination never ceases its work outside of being dead) - the kind of people heavily represented in programmers, mathematicians, writers, artists, musicians and composers (serious ones), who just happen to form both creators and the main audience of fantasy and sci-fi in general and various tabletop adventure games with a lot of numbers and heavily inheriting from them videogames specifically both in early western in overall japanese parts"?
>>12756218>characters can only move left, right, up, and down because 3D perspective is not possible>human characters jump 50 feet up the air because with only 2D graphics being possible, that's the only way to add challenge>everyone is a squeezed out pudgy gremlins made of multiples of 8x8 pixel sized sprites>environment is made of repeating 8x8 pictures>cant keep track of object permanence because there's not enough RAM to do soNES games are abstract as fuck. So abstracted that there are 2600 games that seem more sophisticated and realistic in some ways.
>>12758328Thank you for your clarification. It also clarifies your general position on the matter. However, it does not clarify reasons for your position. Also, have some ",,,,,,,", you are clearly in dire need of them already.
Anon makes an amusing on-topic joke.Schizos gang up on him with LLM generated drivel.This is how a board dies.
>>12758436So by your logic all pixel art is worse than a hd drawing of a turd because the turd has a bigger resolution, okay spec retard
>>12757536Well, it is a drake.
>>12758624the day sincerity died on the internet, collective iq dropped by about 40 points and at this point it may as well all be replaced by the bots
>>12758624>zoomer newfag anon discovers people arguing with technical terms beyond his understanding (not much different from many gaming forums in the early 2000s) and can only think of chatGPTYeah, this is how the whole internet dies.
>>12758624>t. retard with AI Derangement Syndrome
>>12758650>drawing of a turdSNES was full of it btw
>>12758624Proof?
>>12758624>amusing
>>12759195>>12759180If your writing barely reaches AIslop-tier you should give up and turn yourself in at your nearest onions green factory, at least you'll be of some use then.
>>12756234>>12756182i prefer graphical tiles in roguelikes and angbands. i am fine with textbased games, and games that literally books, and after being amazed by PC VGA graphix and Genesis games back in the day,i can't really go back beyond that. Gameboy monochromes are ok, many of their games had higher detail than some olde DOS games.
>>12756241not /vr/ but arcade game graphix have basically frozen in time. the 10 + year old Transformers rail-shooter(based on the Micheal Bay movies) have ricer graphix and sound design than the newest racing games i've seen. modern graphix is overhyped realtime raytracing memes.imo, all you need is DX8-tier graphics to make a beautiful game. everything else is bloat. devs tend to waste resources on "realistic" physics and lighting. nevermind modern devs not optimising their textures.
>>12758471I really hope you just told chatgpt to write some nonsensical rambling post for you because if not that is the saddest post I have seen on the internet in over 30 years.
>>12757850Atari 8 bit machines were much more expensive than the NES. Therefore the install base was tiny so gamedevs didn't go out of their way to target the platform as they did with the Nintendo. There were "home computer" games that released on lots of platforms and maybe looked a little better and ran more smoothly on atari 800 but were still fundamentally in the same game class as lesser systems like C64. Hell the computer my family had in the 80s cost like $2,000 and only had 2 colors.And didn't have Super Mario, Mega Man RBI baseball, or Tecmo Bowl
Crude shapes at least.
>>12759679>Atari 8 bit machines were much more expensive than the NES.Not really. Atari 600XL was launched for $190 in 1983. 65XE was launched for $200 in 1985. A bit more expensive than the $150 NES, but you're getting 16KB or 64KB RAM. The only reason these computers failed was for being more expensive than C64.
>>12756319yeah when they know how to use their color scheme. most NES games don’t look like this, they’re a muddy mess of brown, red, and harsh blue that’s visually unappealing. only Nintendo a few other key devs knew how to get mileage out of this color palette but most devs shat the bed
>>12756284>No bitmap capability whatsoeverThat's mostly, but not entirely, true. There are clever & hacky ways to have a framebuffer on the NES. Cartridges could have CHR-RAM instead (or on top) of CHR-ROM allowing the CPU to dynamically generate tiles there and pass them to the PPU for drawing.That's how the vector graphics in the NES port of Elite work, for instance.
