There is a certain beauty in well-designed pixel art.
It speaks of a simpler era - a time when sprites reigned supreme.
Designed to move across a game's playfield, sprites are two-dimensional images that represent
the player, enemies, or other non-static aspect of a game.
Often drawn with the help of dedicated hardware, they have been an essential facet of computer
graphics almost as long as games have existed.
Early sprites were small in size and limited in palette, but as the pace of technology
increased they became larger; more detailed; and much more colourful.
Huge sprites meant huge arcade impact.
Games like Strider were held in high regard for the sheer scale of the action: towering
characters and huge sweeping plasma swords.
This was made possible by the powerful CPS-1 arcade board - with custom sprite chips capable
of drawing 256 16-colour sprites per scanline.
This was the board that would power Street Fighter II: a title which would set a benchmark
within the fighting game genre, with large and diverse character sprites coupled with
fluid action.
It sent the popularity of fighting games skyward and kickstarted a new wave of arcade popularity.
Graphics might not be important, but they certainly attract attention.
One technique that proved particularly popular during the 2D era was parallax scrolling:
splitting the foreground or background into a number of layers which move at different
rates, to give the impression of scene depth.
Moon Patrol was one of the first games to make effective use of the technique, with
its colourful mountain vista background.
It's a striking effect - and home computer users were quick to imitate: with games like
Parallax on the Commodore 64 even named for the scrolling effect.
By the time of the 16-bit machines, it was a far more attainable technical feat: and
would become a common sight in 2D platformers.
Shadow of The Beast's colourful implementation impressed: and as hardware power increased,
scenes became more complex: and the blast-processing power of the SEGA Megadrive gave games like
Sonic The Hedgehog more character than ever.
It was an era of cartoon mascots, and platformers were en vogue.
The arcades were no stranger to animated heroes: tie-ins to popular television series such
as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or The Simpsons were major draws, and their frantic
paced four-player action was the perfect fit for the social nature of such amusements.
On the home consoles, the success of games like Mario and Sonic inspired a large number
of similar games - and the familiarity of film licenses made tie-ins like Aladdin a
huge success.
The colourful world and expressive animation of Disney gave the game a great visual grounding
- and ensured its place as a best seller.
Some characters were home-grown: Shiny Entertainment's Earthworm Jim had all of the style and flair
expected of the platform genre, but did so with a new creation: a powered-up worm wearing
a cybernetic super suit.
Its zany sense of humour and unique style made for a memorable close to the 16-bit era.
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island embraced a painted aesthetic: rather than a push for
showy effect or realistic appearance.
It's this style that helps the game's visuals stand up today: while it might not be technically
impressive, there is a hand-drawn charm consistent throughout.
By the mid 1990s, sprites were starting to become passe: the focus was starting to shift
towards a new wave of three-dimensional games, and the potential that lay within another
dimension.
That's not to say that 2D games went away entirely: there were still plenty about, and
the mature tech behind them made for some particularly impressive visuals towards the
end of the decade.
The lush spritework in games like Metal Slug remains a pinnacle of the style: unbound by
colour or size restriction, and with fantastic animation.
Some games work best in 2D - and while 3D fighting games eventually rose in popularity,
there were still plenty of traditional sprite-based ones: such as SNK's long-running King of Fighters
series.
Beautiful, but a dying breed: the best hand-drawn sprites require good artists.
However - there are some techniques that serve as a passable alternative.
Animation is a vital part of making movement in games believable - and in the days before
motion capture, some artists would draw from reality using a process called rotoscoping.
The original Prince of Persia's sprites are traced directly from video: A labour intensive
technique, but one that delivers natural-looking movement with realistic inertia.
Similar techniques were used in other cinematic platformers, such as Another World - and Flashback.
Both made use of rotoscoping for in-game sprites and for cinematic cutscenes: fluid in motion
yet compact enough to fit on a couple of floppy disks.
Digitised sprites were fashionable for a while, too - images taken directly from photographs
or video of real-life subjects.
The earliest example is Journey, which featured black and white images of the band - but the
technique wouldn't become commonplace until the early 90s.
Winners don't use drugs - nor do they have any qualms in slaughtering drug dealers by
the dozen.
Narc was a very early 32-bit arcade machine, with thousands of on-screen colours and hugely
impressive digitised sprites for its time - and unabashed ultra-violence paired with
realistic images certainly courts controversy.
The realistic characters and large number of animation frames found in fighting games
were a good fit for digitisation.
Reikai Doushi and Pit Fighter paved the way, but it was one game in particular that flung
such sprites to the forefront: Mortal Kombat.
Photo-real characters and brutal action made the game a controversial one - which in turn
ensured its popularity.
Like Streetfighter II before it, Mortal Kombat's realistic sprites were particularly influential
- titles like ClayFighter were clearly moulded in its image, and the previously hand-drawn
riders of Road Rash were replaced by real bikers in the third instalment.
The impressively-rendered Donkey Kong Country was perhaps the pinnacle of 2D 16-bit platformers:
colourful; beautifully animated; and a smash hit to boot.
The advent of multimedia technology meant more room for pre-rendered content and full
motion video.
Games like Myst took full advantage of the huge amount of storage space that CDs brought:
enabling atmospheric prerendered backdrops.
The serene island setting of Myst proved a shining example of what the emergent technology
was capable of.
Most early CD-based games were pure tripe, however.
Games like Night Trap for the SEGA CD are remembered not for their groundbreaking technology
- but instead for their awfulness.
All the bluster of new tech, and none of the impact.
The future wasn't in interactive movies - and while the compact disc's extra storage would
become very useful in the years ahead - FMV would eventually give way to games with more
depth.
Join me in part three when we'll be delving into the origins of gaming's third dimension.
Until then, farewell.