Everyone loves to reminisce about the 90s these days, and when you are a fan of video games, you have great reasons to do so. While the 80s saw the creation of many legends of the industry, it’s in the 90s that the business finally hit its stride. Far enough removed from the video games crash of 1983, companies let their creative juices flow and started pushing the envelope. Two-dimensional graphics started pushing the limits of the hardware, creating games that looked as pretty as any animated movie. It was also the infancy of 3D games, which means that developers had to be very imaginative to hide the limitations of the different platforms.
Of course, not everyone succeeded at these endeavors. 3D games were still incredibly hard to make, and just because someone could make 2D sprites look pretty doesn’t mean that everyone bothered. Caught between two technological eras, the 90s were a time of experimentation. It left such a big impression on gamers that those who grew up to make games themselves are often inspired by the era. It’s not rare to see new games forego graphical prowess to concentrate on intricate pixel art and retro 3D looks.
While many games from the 90s effectively show their age, a lot of them have managed to remain timeless because of the painstaking work that went into every visual detail. This article will look at both sides of the aisle, as we underline those that still look gorgeous more than twenty years later, as well as those that look desperately dated.
Remember that this is not a judgment of a game’s quality, just its visuals. Many of the best games of all time never required fancy graphics to leave their mark.
25 GOOD: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
Yoshi’s Island reinvented the Mario formula so thoroughly that it created an entire spin-off series. It did so with the help of crayon-inspired graphics, which had the advantage of looking timeless no matter in which era you are playing.
The visuals were hand-drawn by the artists, then scanned and recreated pixel by pixel on a computer.
The result: a game which still looks sharp and vibrant to this day. Not bad when you remember that the graphics were originally Miyamoto’s contrarian response when Nintendo asked him to create something “modern” with computerized graphics.
24 BAD: GoldenEye 007
GoldenEye 007 is just as good and fun as it was back in the days. The mission objectives still set the game apart from more recent first-person shooters. The one part where the game feels incredibly dated is in its graphics. It’s hard not to look at the characters’ flat faces and potato hands without laughing. The animations are smooth, but it looks like a bunch of really sharp dolls pretending to be human. At least you won’t feel bad shooting the bad guys because they look “too realistic.”
23 BAD: Final Fantasy 7
FFVII is a fantastic game, and its story holds just as much weight now as it did twenty years ago. But have you stopped to look at it lately? The cut scenes are still all right, but the rest of the game looks downright comical. Final Fantasy VII stars characters which seem like they are made out of pieces of ham held by toothpicks. Popeye’s arms have more realistic proportions. As laughable as the game was, I think that Quest 64 has better graphics than FFVII.
22 GOOD: Half-Life
It is rare to see early 3D games holding up so well, but Half-Life still stands the test of time. This is partly due to the incredible details that went into its textures: the characters and backgrounds might be blockier than what today’s games can achieve, but it dodges the blurriness issue that many products of the time faced. This attention to details, coupled with a moody atmosphere, make it a lot easier to look past the lesser number of polygons making up the visuals.
21 BAD: Tomb Raider
Have you taken a look recently at Lara Croft’s design in the original Tomb Raider?
Don’t look too close or you could put an eye out.
I think that people were in love with the idea of Lara Croft more than her actual appearance, because once you are past the game’s cover, the character design becomes ridiculous pretty fast. Thankfully, the rest of the game was tremendous, because it’s hard to look at Tomb Raider superficially and remember that this is what made gamers go crazy in the 90s.
20 GOOD: The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
Ocarina of Time is in a way the opposite of Half-Life. Nintendo could not work with textures in the same way as Valve did because of the N64’s limitations. Instead, it made up for it with tons of colors, creative character models and clever world design. Players are hit with a perfect example from the get-go. Just look at the game’s introduction, with Navi flying through Kokiri Forest. Nintendo demonstrated that you don’t necessarily need the most detailed graphics to make a world feel alive and lived in.
19 BAD: Resident Evil
Resident Evil still has a lot to offer. There’s a reason that this is the Capcom game that created a franchise which is still popular to this day and not Dino Crisis. The jump scares are still effective the 20th time you see them. This is a tour de force considering how blurry everything is.
The game’s visuals are a mess of low-resolution FMVs and out-of-focus backgrounds.
Thankfully, the sequels would keep improving until the fourth one finally got everything right.
18 BAD: Cruisn’ USA
Available near the launch of the Nintendo 64, Cruis’n USA was promoted as being a near perfect port of the arcade original. This was obviously a lie, since the graphics had to be toned down considerably, while the music was also trimmed. The result? A game which looks and feel decidedly low-tech compared to some of its contemporaries. The game looks all right as long as you stay in the middle of the road, but stray too far and you’ll be confronted with cardboard cut-outs of trees, lamp posts and street signs.
17 GOOD: Earthworm Jim/Earthworm Jim 2
The outrageous platforming series might have been praised because of its satire of common tropes of the genre, but being easy on the eyes sure did not hurt. The cartoonish graphics were about as close to a Saturday morning cartoon as you could get on a 16-bit system. It’s no wonder then that the characters eventually made the transition to the world of animation. While not as popular as the games, the Earthworm Jim TV series still became a cult hit because of its originality.
16 BAD: Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat shows that digitized actors somehow have not aged as gracefully as carefully-drawn sprites. The technique was revolutionary for its time, but things have evolved so quickly that it now looks primitive. In the age of HD graphics where computer-generated models sometimes look so lifelike that they make us uncomfortable, the grainy scans don’t cut it anymore. The sequels would get better by improving the characters’ resolution, but it’s hard to look at Scorpion’s and Sub-Zero’s original low-rent costumes without a laugh.
15 GOOD: Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest
The first Donkey Kong Country started a trend of computer-generated graphics which allowed Nintendo to stay in the game during the decade’s console wars. The sequel, Diddy’s Kong Quest, perfected the technique by showcasing gorgeous levels and detailed, oversized sprites. The process was dubbed ACM, or Advanced Computer Modeling, and consisted of creating computerized 3D models before capturing them in various poses to create the 2D sprites. While no one would ever think of going through such a stringent process these days, the results were gorgeous for the time, and still look fantastic to this day.
14 BAD: Body Harvest
Body Harvest is fascinating in that it plays like an early, science-fiction version of a 3D Grand Theft Auto, but it was hard to take seriously because of the graphics. Your character is a tiny man stuck under a gigantic orange suit as to minimize the amount of details needed.
The outdoor locations are so foggy that you’d think you’re stuck in London.
Still, there’s a lot of fun to be had driving the different vehicles and taking on the admittedly ugly aliens populating the game world.
13 BAD: Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem 3D was never truly ground-breaking, but it was incredibly influential. Shooters were all over the news in the early and mid-90s, often seen as too crass or violent.
Duke took a genre that was seen as controversial to its logical end.
Despite being nearly three years younger, Duke Nukem somehow managed to age worse than Doom. At least, Doom has a scary atmosphere and perfect level design going for it. These days, Duke Nukem’s world is eerily reminiscent of a pixelated version of the Super Mario Bros. movie.
12 GOOD: Grim Fandango
Grim Fandango might not have reached as many gamers as it deserved to, but the game was still revolutionary for its time. This 3D game managed to make it past the limitations of jagged polygons by infusing every character and every scene with personality. Even the characters that would otherwise look grossly underdeveloped come off as funny and intentionally quirky. This look was achieved with detailed texture, and a lot of attention paid to make sure that the game’s aesthetics fit its atmosphere perfectly.
11 BAD: Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire
Although it is one of my favourite Star Wars game, I have to admit that Shadows of the Empire looks better in screenshots than in action. Though I love the levels, which take us through many of the original trilogy’s most famous locations, even I can see that the characters’ animations seem off. The game also suffers from the same fog issues as many early N64 titles, and it’s hard to appreciate the visuals when you can barely see ten feet ahead of Dash Rendar.
10 BAD: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is without a doubt a classic, and it looked amazing for its time. However, it’s one of those games that looked instantly dated the moment its sequel was released less than two years later. Everything was sharper and brighter in THPS2.
In comparison, the original just looks too dark, too grainy, and too shaky.
It really is a shame that the HD remake ended up being as janky as it was, because it would have been the definitive edition of a seminal game.
9 GOOD: Super Metroid
While everyone praises the game for its gameplay and exploration, I would like to point to Super Metroid as one of the finest examples of sprites design and moody setting you will ever see, every era included. The game uses every trick available to make the 16-bit graphics pop in a way that makes it stand out even against more recent 2D-based titles. The beautiful model of Samus’ ship is a great example, but it’s the battles against Kraid or the Mother Brain that truly show what makes Super Metroid special.
8 BAD: Crash Bandicoot
While Super Mario 64 went for vibrant colors to hide the sharp edges of its world, Crash Bandicoot decided to push the envelope a little further. The result is that graphics are slightly more detailed, but a million times blurrier than Nintendo’s influential platformer.
The whole game plays like Vaseline was smeared across your television screen.
The game is still a lot of fun, but let me put it this way: Super Mario 64 did not need an HD collection to be more enjoyable in a modern setting.
7 BAD: Game Boy Camera
This was more a gadget than a game, but the product was hyped with so much fervor by Nintendo that it’s hard to forget about it. It was revolutionary at the time, but the Game Boy Camera was nothing more than a novelty.
Every picture ever produced by the camera made its subject look ghastly and lifeless.
Turning yourself into a sticker was fun at first, but lost its appeal when you realized that you looked totally unrecognizable anyway. It was outdated as soon as digital cameras became widespread a few years later.
6 GOOD: The Neverhood
The Neverhood was not the first game to use clay animation: However, it was the first one to do it in such a detailed way that it made you believe you were watching a movie. Using nothing but clay to bring its characters and backgrounds, The Neverhood was fully animated using stop-motion techniques and nothing else to bring its world to life. The game was, unfortunately, a commercial bust but was saluted by contemporary reviews. If you are into retro gaming, you should give it a shot. Even as a point-and-click adventure, it looks like nothing else you have ever seen in a video game.
