As video games develop more and more over the years, companies have been making them more and more realistic-looking. I can guess this is related to expectations, but am I the only one who doesn’t care about graphics? We could be using the same processing power to store worlds that have as much exploration potential as the Earth itself if we weren’t afraid to save on processing power by going back to 8-bit.
I’m with you. I think “peak graphics” for me was around XBox 360. I’d much rather have resources used for better gameplay, larger worlds, more expansive story, etc. Also, just less resource usage in general; I stopped PC gaming forever ago because I got sick of chasing the GPU dragon.
Not sure I’d want to go all the way back to 8-bit, but somewhere between there and XB360 would be fine. That said, I do like seeing new “retro” games that are 8-bit era appropriate.
Somewhere between 8-bit and XB360 would be PS1.
I dislike PS1 graphics. Too many games use 3D graphics for no reason, and they used dark and muted colours to be “realistic”.
N64 games are usually more colourful and more pleasing, even though they lack texture.
XB360 had enough power to finally show 3D without feeling “trying too hard”.
I meant it as more of a range than a hard point on a line, lol.
But yeah, PS1 games are pretty rough to look at.
Within the range, I would give: SNES: 10/10 (my favourite game graphics of all time. e.g. FF6) N64:6/10 (1st party games have good art direction) PS1: 5/10 (could be lower, but saved by games with pre-rendered backgrounds) PS2: 7/10 (some outstanding graphics such as Shadow of the Colossus)
Wait, was Pokémon Red/Blue 8-bit or 16-bit? You got me second-guessing now.
8-bit. They were released for the original Gameboy.