1 00:00:02,669 --> 00:00:08,703 They say graphics aren't important - but every game I've ever played has had them. 2 00:00:09,009 --> 00:00:14,050 Game visuals are the most obvious indicator of their technology. 3 00:00:14,005 --> 00:00:20,027 From naive origins, to an explosion of arcades and home consoles, and the emergence and refinement 4 00:00:20,027 --> 00:00:25,032 of three-dimensional games: graphics have come a long way over the course of video game 5 00:00:25,032 --> 00:00:25,083 history. 6 00:00:25,083 --> 00:00:30,116 So, what are the most important graphical milestones? 7 00:00:31,016 --> 00:00:36,595 How has available technology shaped the type of games we play? 8 00:00:36,739 --> 00:00:43,739 And shouldn't it be about the gameplay instead? 9 00:00:45,339 --> 00:00:51,370 In their earliest days, video games amounted to little more than electronic novelties. 10 00:00:51,649 --> 00:00:56,654 These pixel pioneers broke new ground with every step - in an era when simply moving 11 00:00:57,149 --> 00:01:02,177 a flicker of light across a television screen was incredible. 12 00:01:02,429 --> 00:01:08,700 Games like Pong were a space age wonder, tapping in to a surge in sci-fi interest and becoming 13 00:01:08,007 --> 00:01:11,636 the earliest major success of the video game industry. 14 00:01:12,329 --> 00:01:17,329 For the first time ever, video games were cool. 15 00:01:17,329 --> 00:01:22,990 It wouldn't last forever, of course - and once the novelty wore off, the need for more 16 00:01:22,099 --> 00:01:27,100 advanced hardware - and more impressive visuals - became clear. 17 00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:33,189 Full-colour graphics were an early threshold for arcade games: and while colour television 18 00:01:33,189 --> 00:01:37,271 had existed since before the second world war, most early video games were limited to 19 00:01:38,009 --> 00:01:40,108 a monochrome display. 20 00:01:40,999 --> 00:01:46,025 Some games used coloured overlays to spruce up their playfields - a translucent plastic 21 00:01:46,259 --> 00:01:50,294 sheet applied on top of a black and white display. 22 00:01:50,609 --> 00:01:55,638 Obviously quite a limited solution, but it was at least a cheap one: and while monochrome 23 00:01:55,899 --> 00:02:01,957 games continued to rake in coins, technology would have a chance to catch up. 24 00:02:02,479 --> 00:02:07,538 The very first arcade game to use a coloured display is difficult to pin down - some existed 25 00:02:08,068 --> 00:02:13,260 only as prototypes, such as a colour variant of Gotcha! 26 00:02:13,026 --> 00:02:18,087 Some early multiplayer racing games used colour to differentiate each player's car: Indy 4 27 00:02:18,087 --> 00:02:25,087 in 1976 is one early example, and Car Polo in 1977 was the very first colour arcade game 28 00:02:25,009 --> 00:02:28,070 to use a microprocessor. 29 00:02:29,051 --> 00:02:33,125 These early examples are normally glossed over in favour of the first truly successful 30 00:02:34,025 --> 00:02:37,034 RGB colour game: Galaxian. 31 00:02:38,015 --> 00:02:43,039 Essentially a fancier version of Space Invaders, each of the brightly-coloured alien ships 32 00:02:43,039 --> 00:02:47,122 could flit freely across the screen: and perhaps more impressive were the multiple colours 33 00:02:48,022 --> 00:02:54,028 used in each sprite - for its time, the game was an audiovisual treat. 34 00:02:54,028 --> 00:03:01,028 By 1980, colour graphics were the norm: Pac-Man just wouldn't be the same without its colourful 35 00:03:01,329 --> 00:03:07,010 ghosts and the familiar yellow protagonist. 36 00:03:07,001 --> 00:03:09,001 Pixels haven't always been the norm. 37 00:03:09,001 --> 00:03:13,097 In the early days of the arcade, there were two principal paradigms for rendering an image 38 00:03:13,097 --> 00:03:19,109 on the screen: raster and vector. 39 00:03:20,009 --> 00:03:24,100 Raster comes from the latin word 'rastrum' meaning rake, - and today is the more familiar 40 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:27,068 method of drawing on-screen. 41 00:03:27,068 --> 00:03:32,162 The electron beam rapidly sweeps every line of the display in sequence, forming a grid: 42 00:03:33,062 --> 00:03:37,681 and line-by-line, a picture is assembled. 43 00:03:38,239 --> 00:03:43,430 Vector graphics directly manipulate the electron beam to form their images, in a similar manner 44 00:03:43,043 --> 00:03:50,043 to an oscilloscope: indeed, very early games like Tennis For Two used an oscilloscope display. 45 00:03:52,012 --> 00:03:59,012 The most famous vector arcade title is Asteroids: and while its graphics might be sparse, the 46 00:03:59,129 --> 00:04:04,193 perfectly smooth polygons do boast a certain charm. 47 00:04:04,769 --> 00:04:10,010 Compare the appearance of two similar games using each of these methods: the smooth vector 48 00:04:10,001 --> 00:04:17,000 lines of Space War! versus the blockier pixels of Star Cruiser. 49 00:04:17,028 --> 00:04:22,119 Vector graphics are cleaner, but less versatile: while raster images can't reproduce smooth 50 00:04:23,019 --> 00:04:28,034 lines, their ability to render more complex scenes and filled shapes helped to secure 51 00:04:28,034 --> 00:04:32,048 the pixel's dominance. 52 00:04:32,048 --> 00:04:38,069 Early arcade games normally had fixed playfields: a game's arena was sized to fit the screen. 53 00:04:38,069 --> 00:04:43,120 Scrolling the display to slowly reveal a level required more grunt: it demands the ability 54 00:04:44,002 --> 00:04:47,057 to shift around large chunks of memory. 55 00:04:47,075 --> 00:04:51,129 Early driving titles like Speed Race were the first to introduce scrolling, although 56 00:04:52,029 --> 00:04:59,029 the hardware limitations did force some concessions: mirrored tracksides and a rather spartan roadway. 57 00:04:59,083 --> 00:05:05,131 Defender in 1980 was an evolution of the space shooter, and set the scene for future side-scrolling 58 00:05:06,031 --> 00:05:10,122 shoot-em-ups: despite its simple graphics, it offered freedom of movement across a planet's 59 00:05:11,022 --> 00:05:15,027 surface - along with a host of aliens to shoot. 60 00:05:15,027 --> 00:05:20,034 Similarly, the top-down view seen in Xevious is often cited as the origin of the vertically 61 00:05:20,097 --> 00:05:24,165 scrolling shoot-em-up: with the player's ship at the bottom of the screen shooting upwards 62 00:05:25,065 --> 00:05:29,069 as the scenery slowly unravels below. 63 00:05:30,005 --> 00:05:36,010 SEGA's Zaxxon was the first isometric game, complete with isometric scrolling: simulating 64 00:05:36,055 --> 00:05:40,122 3 dimensions with a 2:1 dimetric projection. 65 00:05:41,022 --> 00:05:45,048 This technique was employed by many later games - particularly strategy games of the 66 00:05:45,048 --> 00:05:50,131 early 90s - with a psuedo-3D appearance that still fits the pixel grid. 67 00:05:51,031 --> 00:05:57,036 Similarly, the use of sprite scaling - resizing images on the fly - is sometimes seen in games 68 00:05:57,081 --> 00:06:02,090 attempting to lend their otherwise flat graphics a sense of depth. 69 00:06:02,009 --> 00:06:06,075 Early Nintendo shooter Radar Scope shrank sprites in the distance to give the impression 70 00:06:07,056 --> 00:06:13,099 that you were gazing across a plane of space: the goal to repel any invaders. 71 00:06:13,099 --> 00:06:18,174 More impressive was the scenery in 1981's Turbo: although painted in garish colours, 72 00:06:19,074 --> 00:06:23,109 and with quite some distortion - the effect is nonetheless outstanding when compared to 73 00:06:24,009 --> 00:06:27,084 other games from a similar time. 74 00:06:27,084 --> 00:06:32,090 The advent of 16-bit arcade hardware brought about more colours, and the ability to shift 75 00:06:32,009 --> 00:06:39,009 more pixels than ever before: and SEGA's 'Super Scaler' tech in the mid-1980s blew everything 76 00:06:42,066 --> 00:06:42,161 else out of the water. 77 00:06:43,061 --> 00:06:45,143 Truly, a new era was beginning. 78 00:06:46,043 --> 00:06:51,045 Hang-On combined smooth sprite scaling with blistering frame rates - and alongside its 79 00:06:51,063 --> 00:06:57,070 impressive lean-to-steer motorbike cabinet, it certainly made an impact at the arcades. 80 00:06:58,033 --> 00:07:02,125 Running on the same hardware was Space Harrier: an into-the-screen rail shooter that would 81 00:07:03,025 --> 00:07:08,041 set a benchmark in sound and graphics: as well as establishing the basis for the Top-Gun 82 00:07:08,041 --> 00:07:11,087 inspired After Burner. 83 00:07:11,087 --> 00:07:16,148 Perhaps the most incredible graphics of the early 1980s were those seen in Dragon's Lair: 84 00:07:17,048 --> 00:07:22,139 leveraging the huge storage potential of laserdisc technology, it was a bona-fide interactive 85 00:07:23,039 --> 00:07:24,043 movie. 86 00:07:24,079 --> 00:07:29,168 Too bad it wasn't much fun to play. 87 00:07:30,068 --> 00:07:34,165 The middle of the 1980s saw the end of the arcade's golden era, and the rise of the home 88 00:07:35,065 --> 00:07:38,100 consoles instead. 89 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:43,008 Arcades would still rule the roost as far as graphical power was concerned, but the 90 00:07:43,008 --> 00:07:47,095 ground they broke earlier meant that cost-reduced home consoles could deliver both colourful 91 00:07:47,095 --> 00:07:53,122 graphics and smooth scrolling. 92 00:07:54,022 --> 00:07:58,118 Join me in part two for the next stage of video game graphic development: a time when 93 00:07:59,018 --> 00:08:04,052 two-dimensional games reigned supreme; and sprites were in their prime. 94 00:08:04,052 --> 00:08:06,086 Until then, farewell.