They say graphics aren't important - but every
game I've ever played has had them.
Game visuals are the most obvious indicator
of their technology.
From naive origins, to an explosion of arcades
and home consoles, and the emergence and refinement
of three-dimensional games: graphics have
come a long way over the course of video game
history.
So, what are the most important graphical
milestones?
How has available technology shaped the type
of games we play?
And shouldn't it be about the gameplay instead?
In their earliest days, video games amounted
to little more than electronic novelties.
These pixel pioneers broke new ground with
every step - in an era when simply moving
a flicker of light across a television screen
was incredible.
Games like Pong were a space age wonder, tapping
in to a surge in sci-fi interest and becoming
the earliest major success of the video game
industry.
For the first time ever, video games were
cool.
It wouldn't last forever, of course - and
once the novelty wore off, the need for more
advanced hardware - and more impressive visuals
- became clear.
Full-colour graphics were an early threshold
for arcade games: and while colour television
had existed since before the second world
war, most early video games were limited to
a monochrome display.
Some games used coloured overlays to spruce
up their playfields - a translucent plastic
sheet applied on top of a black and white
display.
Obviously quite a limited solution, but it
was at least a cheap one: and while monochrome
games continued to rake in coins, technology
would have a chance to catch up.
The very first arcade game to use a coloured
display is difficult to pin down - some existed
only as prototypes, such as a colour variant
of Gotcha!
Some early multiplayer racing games used colour
to differentiate each player's car: Indy 4
in 1976 is one early example, and Car Polo
in 1977 was the very first colour arcade game
to use a microprocessor.
These early examples are normally glossed
over in favour of the first truly successful
RGB colour game: Galaxian.
Essentially a fancier version of Space Invaders,
each of the brightly-coloured alien ships
could flit freely across the screen: and perhaps
more impressive were the multiple colours
used in each sprite - for its time, the game
was an audiovisual treat.
By 1980, colour graphics were the norm: Pac-Man
just wouldn't be the same without its colourful
ghosts and the familiar yellow protagonist.
Pixels haven't always been the norm.
In the early days of the arcade, there were
two principal paradigms for rendering an image
on the screen: raster and vector.
Raster comes from the latin word 'rastrum'
meaning rake, - and today is the more familiar
method of drawing on-screen.
The electron beam rapidly sweeps every line
of the display in sequence, forming a grid:
and line-by-line, a picture is assembled.
Vector graphics directly manipulate the electron
beam to form their images, in a similar manner
to an oscilloscope: indeed, very early games
like Tennis For Two used an oscilloscope display.
The most famous vector arcade title is Asteroids:
and while its graphics might be sparse, the
perfectly smooth polygons do boast a certain
charm.
Compare the appearance of two similar games
using each of these methods: the smooth vector
lines of Space War! versus the blockier pixels
of Star Cruiser.
Vector graphics are cleaner, but less versatile:
while raster images can't reproduce smooth
lines, their ability to render more complex
scenes and filled shapes helped to secure
the pixel's dominance.
Early arcade games normally had fixed playfields:
a game's arena was sized to fit the screen.
Scrolling the display to slowly reveal a level
required more grunt: it demands the ability
to shift around large chunks of memory.
Early driving titles like Speed Race were
the first to introduce scrolling, although
the hardware limitations did force some concessions:
mirrored tracksides and a rather spartan roadway.
Defender in 1980 was an evolution of the space
shooter, and set the scene for future side-scrolling
shoot-em-ups: despite its simple graphics,
it offered freedom of movement across a planet's
surface - along with a host of aliens to shoot.
Similarly, the top-down view seen in Xevious
is often cited as the origin of the vertically
scrolling shoot-em-up: with the player's ship
at the bottom of the screen shooting upwards
as the scenery slowly unravels below.
SEGA's Zaxxon was the first isometric game,
complete with isometric scrolling: simulating
3 dimensions with a 2:1 dimetric projection.
This technique was employed by many later
games - particularly strategy games of the
early 90s - with a psuedo-3D appearance that
still fits the pixel grid.
Similarly, the use of sprite scaling - resizing
images on the fly - is sometimes seen in games
attempting to lend their otherwise flat graphics
a sense of depth.
Early Nintendo shooter Radar Scope shrank
sprites in the distance to give the impression
that you were gazing across a plane of space:
the goal to repel any invaders.
More impressive was the scenery in 1981's
Turbo: although painted in garish colours,
and with quite some distortion - the effect
is nonetheless outstanding when compared to
other games from a similar time.
The advent of 16-bit arcade hardware brought
about more colours, and the ability to shift
more pixels than ever before: and SEGA's 'Super
Scaler' tech in the mid-1980s blew everything
else out of the water.
Truly, a new era was beginning.
Hang-On combined smooth sprite scaling with
blistering frame rates - and alongside its
impressive lean-to-steer motorbike cabinet,
it certainly made an impact at the arcades.
Running on the same hardware was Space Harrier:
an into-the-screen rail shooter that would
set a benchmark in sound and graphics: as
well as establishing the basis for the Top-Gun
inspired After Burner.
Perhaps the most incredible graphics of the
early 1980s were those seen in Dragon's Lair:
leveraging the huge storage potential of laserdisc
technology, it was a bona-fide interactive
movie.
Too bad it wasn't much fun to play.
The middle of the 1980s saw the end of the
arcade's golden era, and the rise of the home
consoles instead.
Arcades would still rule the roost as far
as graphical power was concerned, but the
ground they broke earlier meant that cost-reduced
home consoles could deliver both colourful
graphics and smooth scrolling.
Join me in part two for the next stage of
video game graphic development: a time when
two-dimensional games reigned supreme; and
sprites were in their prime.
Until then, farewell.