this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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Especially the "worse" graphics part. If you can't make your game look good while running at 144hz on my 3080TI, you're just bad at art. They were making amazing looking games in the 90s that I can run on my fucking phone. No amount of "technological advancement" is going to make up for being artistically incompetent.
They'll eventually hit actual photorealism, and then they'll be forced to start focusing on the art.
The pursuit of realistic graphics is the root of all of modern gaming's ills.
Stylized graphics age significantly better than "realism". Jet Set Radio looks amazing today. Katamari Damacy another great example.
I don't have time to look it up right now, but I'll edit this comment later today with a few videos that go into the specific graphical techniques Nintendo used to make Wind Waker and Super Mario Galaxy look so good
edit: idk if editing and tagging in a reply works, but @regul@hexbear.net, here are the links I mentioned:
How The Wind Waker Redefined Cel Shading
How scrolling textures gave Super Mario Galaxy 2 its charm
If you enjoy those videos, definitely check out the longer videos as well as the shorts on that channel.
Fully agreed. I will once again admit to appreciating videogamedunkey, whose Bad Graphics video's prescience lives on.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I always used to say that Microsoft and Sony spent all of their time measuring each other's dicks, vis-a-vis graphics. But Nintendo was in the corner, pushing out underpowered devices, that focused on the fun.
Unreal Engine 5 is ruining everything, just as UE4 did when it first came out. All these first gen games using it run so horribly. Someday I'll get to play Clair Obscur without constant microsutters.
Nothing really needs to look better than Gothic 1, maybe some more physics in there. Half Life 2 still looks really good and that's two decades old at this point.
I constantly use Half-Life 2 as an example! Especially regarding faces and facial animation. "Why the fuck is this running at 25fps when Half-Life 2 looks better and ran on my 9500GT"
There's a like a period of visual improvement for about 15 years after Half Life 2, basically none of it really worth it, before it turned into using AI to do some bullshit and now every modern game looks like you're having a migraine
Real, I had more fun with Deltarune this year than any long ass AAA game, and some of the graphics are (on purpose admittedly) crusty as hell