Enjoyably Hideous Graphics

[asids]

Nobody's said LSD Dream Emulator yet? What a horrific/beautiful game:



The whole digitised sprites thing everyone started doing after Mortal Kombat was very ugly by today's standards but also kind of enjoyable in their own way that it felt like you were playing as (or against) "real people". Good example being Alien vs Predator on the Jaguar:

[Ferris]

Crash Bandicoot looks really charming now I think. Crash and the bosses all have a lot of personality despite being proper jagged.  The colours are great and the characters are designed to suit the limitations of the graphics.

Oh yeah I agree, it looked great in spite of the fact that it definitely also looked like shit. I was trying to think of a game where the crappy graphics actually endeared the game to me, otherwise it's just "think of an obscure PS1 game from the late '90s/early '00s".

For comparison, 1999's Tenchu: Stealth Assassins has similar graphics clarity to the eponymous bandicoot (blocky polygons with textures added and some pre-rendered backgrounds, but it just looks so drab and shit and is taking itself so seriously that it is difficult to enjoy. I remember thinking it looked amazing at the time though.

[fucking ponderous]

Check out this mess Enviro_Bear https://youtu.be/x06KCWwsDBI?t=374

This run made me laugh lots.

I refuse to hear bad things about Enviro-Bear 2000

I actually downloaded this game knowing nothing about it, and realizing that in order to move the vehicle I needed to hold a large object down on the gas pedal is possibly the hardest I've ever laughed at a video game. It's so gloriously broken.

[St_Eddie]

I refuse to hear bad things about Enviro-Bear 2000

Hmmm...

*watches video*

Oh, Hell yeah!

*downloads Enviro-Bear 2000*

[buzby]

I was quite fascinated about how the original psx copy-protection worked as well; it's just the start of the disc has a jitter - effectively an AM signal in the track that gets read of the laser tracking mechanism. Thinking about it, it's quite surprising that you couldn't get cdr's with this signature baked in.

CDRs use a similar tracking wobble in the same pregap sector of the disc to encode the disc properties for the burner to read. Sony deliberately used the same region for the copy protection wobble (that also had the SCEA/SCEE/SCEJ region string encoded into it), safe in the knowledge that it would never be possible to produce a CDR blank with a duplicate of the PSX copy protection in the pregap that could also be written to by a standard CD burner.

Despite what some people say, using a bottom layer on the discs that was opaque to visible light (but transparent to the IR laser of a CD drive) was part of the copy protection - it meant the pregap wobble section of the disc wasn't visible to the naked eye.

[bgmnts]

I fucking love FFVIII for some unknown reason but I laughed quite heartily.

[St_Eddie]

Rinoa's legs aren't looking too great either.  I've seen soggy noodles more stable than that.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Nobody's said LSD Dream Emulator yet? What a horrific/beautiful game:

[Noonling]

Daggerfall cities are alright, but the dungeons...I feel I can barely tell up from down. It's basically the reason that I've never got into Daggerfall, even though I want to love it. Ugly, never-ending dungeons.





And then you had terrible pixellated ladies:

[Sebastian Cobb]

That last picture is making me feel wistful about Duke Nukem 3D.

[Lemming]

Daggerfall still looks fantastic to me, I think a lot of the problems with the dungeons visually, just like all the other problems with Daggerfall, come from the random procedural generation aspect. Jarring texture changes, rooms that don't make sense, out of place models and sprites where they ought not to be, etc

Daggerfall Unity is pretty much unplayable at it's current point in development, but the increased draw distance unveils just how amazing the world they created was for 1996:

[Phil_A]

Daggerfall cities are alright, but the dungeons...I feel I can barely tell up from down. It's basically the reason that I've never got into Daggerfall, even though I want to love it. Ugly, never-ending dungeons.

I had the same problems you had with the dungeons, they're so sprawlingly random and overly-complex, and the fact that the map is utterly useless as a navigation tool doesn't help. I'm hoping modders will eventually add in enough quality of life improvements to make the game worth persevering with.

Daggerfall still looks fantastic to me, I think a lot of the problems with the dungeons visually, just like all the other problems with Daggerfall, come from the random procedural generation aspect. Jarring texture changes, rooms that don't make sense, out of place models and sprites where they ought not to be, etc

Daggerfall Unity is pretty much unplayable at it's current point in development, but the increased draw distance unveils just how amazing the world they created was for 1996:

It's come a long way in the last year. I believe the main quest is finishable and they have a working spell system now. It's updating so quickly a few of the mods have already become obsolete.

[St_Eddie]

That last picture is making me feel wistful about Duke Nukem 3D.

"Shake it, baby."

[Twed]

Mario Kart 64 is ugly. SNES looked better.

[ASFTSN]

Fuckin' hell, every post I have ever read about Daggerfall makes me want to both despise it and give it a go urgently.  Maybe one day.

[Zetetic]

This feels as good a place as any to mention the existence of Battlespire.



Bethesda is sort of astonishing.

[Glebe]

"Hardest game in the world. Thirty years, man and boy!"

[Ferris]

"Hardest game in the world. Thirty years, man and boy!"

^if a coconut and a tin of beans produced human offspring, that would be the result.

[Hecate]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URcvdDtnM_0

[Ferris]

Actually- the throne room in Civ2 is a wonderful example.

The graphics were shite, but in a warm '90s PC sort of way. And the satisfaction of getting a slightly nicer trim for the walls because of prolonged economic prosperity.

Euphoria.

[Noonling]

The throne room and the live action council are what make Civ2 THE BEST CIV GAME.

[gmoney]

Trying to get my head around why Civ3 didn't have a live action council was tough as a teenager.

[St_Eddie]

The throne room and the live action council are what make Civ2 THE BEST CIV GAME.

More specifically, it's Advisor Elvis, whom makes Civ2 THE BEST CIV GAME.

[Twed]

Actually- the throne room in Civ2 is a wonderful example.

The graphics were shite, but in a warm '90s PC sort of way. And the satisfaction of getting a slightly nicer trim for the walls because of prolonged economic prosperity.

Euphoria.

Agreed, there's something very comforting about Windows Civ2. A lot of Windows-based game UI around that time felt strangely right.

SimAnt was the Amiga equivalent of that for me:

More specifically, it's Advisor Elvis, whom makes Civ2 THE BEST CIV GAME.

I love this anarchy compilation. It's so rewatchable. You can focus on the individual advisors each time and identify their running theme. I love how Diplomacy keeps walking out of frame.

[St_Eddie]

I love this anarchy compilation. It's so rewatchable.

You're not kidding.  I just watched it seven times in a row.

[Replies From View]

Trying to get my head around why Civ3 didn't have a live action council was tough as a teenager.

And did you work out why?

[gmoney]

They didn't want to pay any more actors?

[machotrouts]

The never-released Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll.

[ASFTSN]

SimAnt was the Amiga equivalent of that for me:

I had it on IBM PC but that was really a lovely game, wasn't it?

[Twed]

Yes!