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[IbizaPocholo]

During the 16-bit generation the general production process of video games had been well established. Pixel art tools, often custom developed, were an important part of the tool-set. But a new revolution was ready to take the video game industry by storm. Transforming video game graphics from Pixels to Polygons.


//Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:57 Virtua Reality
03:00 CGI inspired pixel art
05:36 3D Software
09:13 CD-Rom & Digital Video trend
11:26 Pre-rendered graphics
15:56 Defkits
18:47 Nextgen
25:02 Ending

 

[ChazAshley]

One of my favorite youtube channels. I actually don't watch uploads immediately, but save them to watch later especially when I'm having a bad day. I love these videos.

 

[SantaC]

My favorite channel

 

[winjer]

That was truly a magical era of graphics.
It might seem crude and dated today, but at the time, even a handful of flat shaded polygons were enough to make people go wild.
Still remember when I got Virtua Racing for my Mega Drive and invited a friend over to play. We were blown away by the sheer amount of polygons, while running at a silky smooth 15 fps.

 

[existensmaximum]

The 3D revolution came way too early IMO for consoles. Just when the 2D was getting good and high-res, it was replaced by absolutely horrible 3D stuff mostly. It still makes me sad to think about, but at least there was some cool 2D stuff on PC.

 

[Sintoid]

Still remember my first days with Alias Wavefront (now Autodesk Alias) and those heavyweight Indigo Workstations... that was an awesome era in CGI

 

[ReBurn]

That was truly a magical era of graphics.
It might seem crude and dated today, but at the time, even a handful of flat shaded polygons were enough to make people go wild.
Still remember when I got Virtua Racing for my Mega Drive and invited a friend over to play. We were blown away by the sheer amount of polygons, while running at a silky smooth 15 fps.

I remember playing Hard Drivin' on it and being excited for polygons and disappointed by 15 FPS and by how poorly the port played. It was one of my favorite arcade games when it released. At least they tried.

 

[winjer]

I remember playing Hard Drivin' on it and being excited for polygons and disappointed by 15 FPS and by how poorly the port played. It was one of my favorite arcade games when it released. At least they tried.

Hard Driving on the Mega Drive is closer to 5 fps. But considering that game wasn't using any special chip to accelerate polygons, it was a bit impressive.

 

[T-0800]

The 3D revolution came way too early IMO for consoles. Just when the 2D was getting good and high-res, it was replaced by absolutely horrible 3D stuff mostly. It still makes me sad to think about, but at least there was some cool 2D stuff on PC.

I agree. Take the Saturn. While it had Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter 2 and a few others that were fantastic looking 3D games I'm saddened that Sega didn't make 2D sequels to Sonic, Streets of Rage and pretty much everything else from the 16 bit era. Those games would have aged really well too.

 

[Three]

That was truly a magical era of graphics.
It might seem crude and dated today, but at the time, even a handful of flat shaded polygons were enough to make people go wild.
Still remember when I got Virtua Racing for my Mega Drive and invited a friend over to play. We were blown away by the sheer amount of polygons, while running at a silky smooth 15 fps.

I remember me and my brother playing Goldeneye and telling him "wow this is photo realistic" and him agreeing that it can't get more real than this

 

[EverydayBeast]

You could see with star fox 64 it represents gameplay first than graphics that’s classic Nintendo

 

[existensmaximum]

I agree. Take the Saturn. While it had Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter 2 and a few others that were fantastic looking 3D games I'm saddened that Sega didn't make 2D sequels to Sonic, Streets of Rage and pretty much everything else from the 16 bit era. Those games would have aged really well too.

Exactly this IMO even the 16-bit games have aged far better graphically than the 32-bit games and N64.

 

[PanzerCute]

Great video, as always from this guy.

 

[Boaty McBoatface]

How he doesn't have 1 mil views per video is a mystery, awesome videos.

 

[ReyBrujo]

Talking about 16-bit 3D and leaving outside Argonauts is kind of baffling

 

[Trogdor1123]

That was truly a magical era of graphics.
It might seem crude and dated today, but at the time, even a handful of flat shaded polygons were enough to make people go wild.
Still remember when I got Virtua Racing for my Mega Drive and invited a friend over to play. We were blown away by the sheer amount of polygons, while running at a silky smooth 15 fps.

It’s true. I remember first seeing battle arena toshinden and being amazed, even more so because virtua fighter was so far behind it.

 

[winjer]

I remember me and my brother playing Goldeneye and telling him "wow this is photo realistic" and him agreeing that it can't get more real than this

Me and a friend had a similar talk when we first saw Metal Gear Solid for the PS1.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

That was truly a magical era of graphics.
It might seem crude and dated today, but at the time, even a handful of flat shaded polygons were enough to make people go wild.
Still remember when I got Virtua Racing for my Mega Drive and invited a friend over to play. We were blown away by the sheer amount of polygons, while running at a silky smooth 15 fps.

Seeing them uprezzed and with a proper CRT shader can still be magical. Sure, the framerate is rough, but the graphics did have their charm. People playing 5th gen games unfiltered and screaming “zomg what is this shit?!?!?!” have no idea.

 

[Drell]

The 3D revolution came way too early IMO for consoles. Just when the 2D was getting good and high-res, it was replaced by absolutely horrible 3D stuff mostly. It still makes me sad to think about, but at least there was some cool 2D stuff on PC.

PS1, Saturn, N64 and even earlier attempts at 3D console like the Jaguar and the 3DO may be crude, but I wonder if we waited the PS2 gen to go full 3D for the first time, if it would have been as pretty as what we got since devs learnt so much on that early 3D gen.

But yes, Graphically I agree: warped textures and unstable polygons on PS1 along with muddy textures at 15-20 fps on N64 are hard to look at these days.

 

[BlackTron]

3D needed to start somewhere and its early footings were always going to be crude, but it's a real shame its baby steps steamrolled over what would have been an insane gen of 2D games. The talents built up over the years combined with technology would have resulted in a treasure trove of SOTN grade classics.

I'm not entirely sour with what happened though because some of the early 3D games were legitimately great and changing the timeline in any way means they may not have happened.

 

[Von Hugh]

The progress was quite insane in the 90s now that you think about it. You barely got to use the pre-rendered graphics on the 16-bit consoles for a few years, and suddenly the true 3D capable machines came around, and all your processes and pipelines changed again.

All this while investing millions into these Silicon Graphics machines. And trying to recruit the few people to use these machines. The tech and skills must have gotten obsolete at light speed.

 

[StereoVsn]

Oh yeah, that was a good watch, caught it over the weekend.

 

[alphachino]

Ahoy is also really great.