7/15/2007 - エアーマンが倒せない

A lot of people don't think of it this way, but video games are a true art form in and of themselves. It takes true artists with tremendous imagination to come up with the designs for the characters and environments in these games. A lot of games these days with "good graphics" aren't necessarily ones that have the most number of polygons. Rather, they have talented graphic artists who complement the 3-D digital world with beautifully rendered bitmaps pasted on top of the polygons. For example, God of War and Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess don't compare to games on the next-gen systems in terms of polygon count, but the rich art contained in the game makes them look as good or better than those next-gen games.

Back in the 8-bit era, the game designers had a limited number of pixels to work with. Because of this, game sprites had to be relatively simple, but have enough detail in them to be recognizable as to what they represent. One of the best examples of great 8-bit "art" was the Mega Man games. They had this kind of cartoon art-style that gave the games a whimsical yet post-modern feeling to them. The imagery of the Mega Man games is so iconic, that it is often used in mashups or in music videos like this one:



This music video incorporates some very cool aspects of Mega Man II, my favorite Mega Man game, and my favorite 8-bit game of all time. Also, look for the clever Terminator 2 reference!