In the '90s, the arcade scene was all about games where you bury your fist in an opponent's face. Great sprite art isn't as commonplace as it used to be, but if this list is any indication, neither is it in danger of fading away.ĭungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom / Shadow Over Mystara (Arcade, 1994) This roll-call isn't limited to games from the '90s, the heyday of sprite art: there are plenty of modern sprite-based games that do a fantastic job combining nostalgic NES chunkiness with today's advanced engines. Thus, we put together a list of the loveliest sprite games.
(Not to say those fans aren't out there.) We sigh over Alucard's fluttering cape in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, but you won't find as many fans of the primitive, often muddy polygons that guided mainstream video games into the 3D space. We still admire sprite-based games, not just because they whisk us back to past console generations, but because they look good.
While Atari dabbled with vector graphics by way of Tempest and the Star Wars arcade game, most games were assembled on grids. Think about how sprite artists create these characters-and indeed, entire worlds-pixel-by-pixel, like a puffer fish building grand patterns in the sand shell-by-shell.įor a time, pixel art was a necessity in video games. Think about how Sonic the Hedgehog's quills stir in the wind as he runs. Think about how much work went into making Mario a real human being instead of a triangular spaceship or a rectangle.
When you next have a little quiet time to yourself, sit down and think deeply about the artistic evolution of early video games.
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