Do you miss pre-rendered sprites/visuals at all?

[Huey]

For those who don't know, or weren't around when this was an option for graphics, this was when the "3D" visuals you were seeing - either sprites or backgrounds for the most part - has been rendered on more powerful hardware, and what you were actually seeing was a recording of that rendering. This was an attractive option in the 16-bit and to a lesser extent the 32-bits and beyond days, when hardware limitations forced developers to come up with innovative solutions like this, as it either freed up resources or did stuff that was straight up impossible on the native hardware.

The key is that it produced a very distinctive look, some of which was just down to the tastes and influences of the devs making the games, and some of which I think is just innate to the technique.

And although this thread is mainly focused on pre-rendered sprites, obviously non-real-time, pre-rendered backgrounds were at one point a huge force in big budget, mass market games:

... with the tech truly reaching its pinnacle with REmake, with a full dynamically animated backgrounds where a lighting model that mirrored the lighting changes in the scene dynamically interacted with the 3D character models:

Anyway, we're living in an age where it's largely an unnecessary contrivance because modern GPUs can not only render in real-time everything in the thread, but characters and environments far more vast and detailed than these. So this visual design is kind of a dying art, and while definitely some of this comes down simply to nostalgia, I really do think it's a unique graphical style that I hope isn't just gone forever at some point.

Thoughts? Favorite examples of this?

 

[Jawmuncher]

Pre-Rendered backgrounds have been getting some use in Indie Games (Particularly Horror Games).

However, I can't think of too many Pre-Rendered Sprite games these days. Curious if anyone has some examples of that.

With that said, I definitely miss the aesthetic from none indie developers.

 

[Dest]

Yeah, I do. It's something I wish some would try and lean into.

 

[Silvergun-Blue]

Sprites, no.

Backgrounds, yes.

 

[Faceless_Caesar]

CRTs hid the low resolution of these pre-rendered assets really well. If you've only ever played them on an LCD display you would wonder why anyone ever thought games like Donkey Kong Country looked good. My biggest issue with them is that the original assets weren't kept around so when these games get remade you end up losing those assets in favor of realtime graphics (Mario RPG) or AI generated nonsense (Chrono Cross).

 

[DimpleSan]

They were peak graphics. Perfect graphics. Almost as realistic as FMV. We're still trying to catch up.

 

[The Albatross]

I don't miss it, but those pre-rendered graphics blew me away in 1994. It's like FMV for me. FMV in Philips CD-I, Sega CD, Saturn, and Playstation blew me away, like "holy shit how do they do that..." And a decade later I'd be frustrated if I had to watch FMV segments in my games.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Not really.

CRTs hid the low resolution of these pre-rendered assets really well. If you've only ever played them on an LCD display you would wonder why anyone ever thought games like Donkey Kong Country looked good. My biggest issue with them is that the original assets weren't kept around so when these games get remade you end up losing those assets in favor of realtime graphics (Mario RPG) or AI generated nonsense (Chrono Cross).

Click to shrink...

Pretty much.

 

[Jakenbakin]

I never liked most games that utilized this - DKC and Mario RPG were two games I always found very ugly. Weirdly enjoyed Toy Story on the Genesis, though.

Backgrounds? Fuck yeah. Sprites? Ew no.

 

[manustany]

I do. Square and Capcom were some of best publishers for pre-rendered backgrounds

 

[LumberPanda]

Posting these screenshots without a quality CRT filter is a sin.

 

[Dark Knight]

I love that look. I've had a dream of making a game, or at least the graphics for one, with a similar look to stuff like Claymates or Clayfighter (Claymation/stop animation expressed with pre-rendered sprites). I've been fascinated by that particular aesthetic since I was a kid. It's all very doable even for amateur creators through free tools like Blender(both approximating the look of clay-like materials and posing and rendering the animation frames themselves), so it's just a matter of finding the right look and idea through concept exploration and practice with those tools.

Honestly surprised more indie games aren't doing it these days.

 

[ASilentProtagonist]

Backgrounds? YES.

 

[Deleted member 61531]

PS1 era, when they were primarily used as static backgrounds? Yes, I miss that.

Pre-rendered sprites like in Donkey Kong Country? Hell no...awful then and awful now.

 

[RedSwirl]

I just don't understand why low-to-mid-budget turn-based JRPGs can't go back to pre-rendered backgrounds. I never liked them in horror games where the fixed camera angles made real-time combat suck, but there was never really a negative for adventure games or turn-based JRPGs.

CRPGs and indie adventure games like Pillars of Eternity and Stasis did it. Why can't a Japanese studio do something similar on that kind of budget?

 

[scottbeowulf]

Sprite backgrounds like the above? Yes I love them. Pre-rendered is different tho. I don't miss that at all.

 

[JayCeeJim]

I didn't like the look back then when it was hip, and I like it even less nowadays.

 

[Neiteio]

The dream is a Donkey Kong Country 2 remake where the prerendered sprites and backgrounds have the the same pristine clarity as the box art.

 

[Pancracio17]

Not really. That stuff was prerendered because you coudnt really render it in real time. Now we can.

 

[Foot]

Backgrounds absolutely, I love a fixed camera angle in all forms. Sprites obviously not!!!

 

[Greywaren]

To be honest, I've always found it kinda ugly, so no.

 

[Sadnarav]

I wish instead of HD2D, Square would do some JRPGs with pre-rendered backgrounds with all the tec we have now from scratch, not using bad upscaling of old games

Give me a Final Fantasy 8 Remake with new character models and new pre-rendered backgrounds made from 0 you cowards

 

[Perzeval]

Yes, all the time.

 

[Enduin]

Backgrounds, yes. Characters, no.

I really miss fixed camera perspectives against pre-rendered backgrounds in games. There is a mood and style to them that just hits different. It was a limitation at the time, but full 3D is not objectively superior. Feels like we've lost something since then. Fixed camera in a series like RE or even in RPGs is a direction tool. It's a means of framing the scene, locking the player into a specific perspective, and creating a specific mood and feel for a location. You're really painting a scene with each angle and location. There's much more intention behind each than a fully 3D world where you're kind of obligated in populating everything whether you really care or not. Some games still use fixed cameras at times for effect which is nice, but it's just not the same and I miss the days of the entire game being like that.

I just don't understand why low-to-mid-budget turn-based JRPGs can't go back to pre-rendered backgrounds.

CRPGs and indie adventure games like Pillars of Eternity and Stasis did it.

Click to shrink...

Sadly it's really complex and expensive compared to just 3D. You lose a lot of flexibility because you have to render and bake in so much stuff into the backgrounds, so changing anything in the scene is a bunch of work. I know Obsidian talked a bit about how modding was basically impossible because average users just wouldn't even be able to change, let alone render their own locals due to how intensive the process was for them. There's also just not as much talent around who knows how to do it, it's all 3D all the time now, which makes it that much more prohibitive. Which is a shame as Deadfire has some of the most stunning visuals and locals in any modern cRPG.

 

[Mirage]

I'm not a big fan of the DKC look but I do like the pre-rendered background stuff

 

[brinstar]

I miss the backgrounds a lot. I miss fixed-angle camera games in general.

 

[strangelove777]

Those DKC games were some of the ugliest looking games I've ever seen even back then, so no.

 

[Dogui]

Wouldn't say no to prerendered sprites. I'm indifferent towards it, if anything.

But prerendered scenarios with fixed camera are legit reasons to make a modern game must play for me.

 

[Spacejaws]

I miss it quite a bit, and when games get remade and swap it for reatime models like Super Mario RPG it absolutely loses something for me. Have a lot of nostalgia for the style. Sprites and backgrounds.

Love the prerendered maps in Infinity Engine Games.

Then uh Neverwinter Nights came...

 

[Anth0ny]

i'd kill for a new resident evil with fixed cameras and prerendered backgrounds. I love the remakes but they don't quite scratch the itch.

 

[El_Dabrah]

I love pre-rendered backgrounds. REmake. Wowee zowee.

 

[Deleted member 61531]

I will say, as a giant hypocrite, that I did and do love the sprites in Saga Frontier.

But in a cursory effort at self-defense, I argue that fugly was a deliberate part of the game's visual identity, which explains why I tolerate pre-rendered sprites here and basically nowhere else.

I mean, look at this absolute pile. 😍 In some moments, it was practically the Cruelty Squad of its time.

 

[GameShowPresident]

Kind of, but it's more that I miss static camera angles in general.

 

[Kemiko]

I think you could do some really cool stuff with the right indie horror dev and prerendered backgrounds again. Could have some amazing lighting effects and really detailed scenes with little overhead from a player hardware perspective.

I'd love to see a new approach to a resi remake style mansion with some really over the top lighting and mood setting.

 

[Faceless_Caesar]

The dream is a Donkey Kong Country 2 remake where the prerendered sprites and backgrounds have the the same pristine clarity as the box art.

Click to shrink...

Ideally the artists and engineers working on the graphics would try to get SGI looking visuals out of modern graphics cards in real time so you can render it at any resolution and not lose detail. Kind of like Render96 for Super Mario 64.

 

[AuthenticM]

god yes.

I legit wish that more indie devs would make games that had graphics optimized for an SD resolution, and that they'd ship these games with a good CRT shader.

 

[Extra Sauce]

pre-rendered sprites, no. pre-rendred backgrounds, yes.

fully hand-drawn visuals like those seen in Sierra On-Line and Lucasarts adventure games of the 80s and 90s, oh dear God absolutely.

 

[Gelf]

I didn't tend to like pre rendered sprites even back in the day. I never liked how Donkey Kong Country looked.

Backgrounds though, I absolutely loved that look. Fixed cam Resident Evil, Final Fantasy 7-9 backgrounds still look amazing to me.

These days I don't think they'd need to be pre rendered though, it's the director controlled rather than player controlled cameras that does a lot of the work. The REmake 2 fixed camera mod confirms that for me.

 

[Sir Lucan]

Sprites, no. They look ugly to me. I much prefer regular pixel art.

I do miss the backgrounds. The fixed camera angles, perfect lighting, highly detailed environments. Final Fantasy VIII-IX and Resident Evil 2-3 on the PS1 looked amazing to me and they still do. Which is why it pisses me off Square did such a lazy job when remastering the FF games.

But I understand they are expensive to make and don't really age well, so I understand why everything is 3D now or pixel art.

 

[s_mirage]

Not particularly. I like rendered backgrounds in some cases, but rendered sprites were only ever cool for that brief moment when they seemed "futuristic".

I never liked DKC's look, and even back in the day I thought its modelling looked goofy as fuck.

 

[JaxiPup]

Don't necessarily miss the pre-rendered element of the backgrounds themselves, but the vibe and aesthetic of the backgrounds. They can absolutely be replacated in 3D, but I would love more games to attempt them.

 

[eyeball_kid]

Mostly I miss animated sprites and backgrounds in 2D fighting games. It's just an artform that is slowly going extinct, along with hand-drawn animation in movies.

 

[Damien1990]

Loved the backgrounds in the PS1 FF trilogy. Wish the remasters (FF VIII especially) would have redone/improved upon them rather than what we got.

 

[secretanchitman]

I do miss both but moreso pre-rendered backgrounds.

 

[Dinjoralo]

I was a Nintendo 64 kid and didn't really get lots of games with prerendered backgrounds. But I have never liked the look of pre-rendered CG of games from that time period, it's just fugly. Super Mario RPG is the only game that kinda makes it work.

 

[Huey]

Loved the backgrounds in the PS1 FF trilogy. Wish the remasters (FF VIII especially) would have redone/improved upon them rather than what we got.

Click to shrink...

Have you tried the AI upscaled mods for the PC version of FF VII and IX? They're really incredibly done:

With this, I really feel like i got the "remaster" I wanted, and that can live comfortably alongside the remake.

The major catch is that the AI pretty obviously gets confused at what to do with things that were intended to be fine straight lines, including any fine text. So it's not perfect, but short of fully re-rendering them - which is simply a task that is never going to happen - this is probably the best we're going to get until software that can treat those fine details with a little more nuance.

In general, it's just really nice that fans can keep these pre-rendered backgrounds modernized and alive using tech that isn't too labor or personnel intensive.

The dream is a Donkey Kong Country 2 remake where the prerendered sprites and backgrounds have the the same pristine clarity as the box art.

Click to shrink...

Agreed, would be absolutely incredible. I have to say, more often than not, i do think this art style is aided by lower resolution and pixellation though. It almost makes it look like a blend between 3D visuals and pixel art.

 

[sn00zer]

I miss how 90s CG looked. Would really love if some games could replicate the lighting and shaders of 90s CG.

 

[wafflebrain]

Crow Country does a clever job with using filters and shading to give off the pre-rendered background look while actually being realtime geometry.

There's a demo for it on Steam:


View: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1996010/Crow_Country/

 

[Mephissto]

Definitely miss pre-rendered games like PS1 FF games. Wish it was a bigger niche for games today.

 

[TheWildCard]

Miss the framing of pre-rendered backgrounds, sprite for the most part no (though DKC still looks pretty good imo).