{"id":14800118,"date":"2016-05-02T18:14:10","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T18:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/?p=14800118"},"modified":"2016-05-02T18:22:33","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T18:22:33","slug":"back-in-1995","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/?p=14800118","title":{"rendered":"Back in 1995"},"content":{"rendered":"

“These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness.” — William Gibson,\u00a0Johnny\u00a0Mnemonic<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you’re an indie developer, making a pixel art game is pretty attractive. \u00a0First and foremost, it’s pretty cheap and easy to develop, at least in terms of art production. \u00a0A one-man-band dev can put together an 8-bit game without needing a lot of art skills. \u00a0As a reductive art\u00a0it allows the designer to evoke imagery that might be much harder to produce with a more complex style.<\/p>\n

But the main appeal of the pixel art game is surely nostalgia. \u00a0I had an interesting conversation with Raph Koster a few years back in which he commented that indie pixel art games seemed to mostly be about the childhoods of their authors. \u00a0That’s not a value judgement, but I think some indie devs I know would have responded to that classification poorly. \u00a0To them, they are working in a style, in a format, and are not intrinsically limited in their message. \u00a0I suspect Raph would side with\u00a0Marshall McLuhan on this one.<\/p>\n

\"1995\"

Do you remember this? I do.<\/p><\/div>\n

Back in 1995<\/a><\/em> is a different type of retro indie game. \u00a0Though it still seeks to evoke nostalgic imagery through a retro art style, it doesn’t use pixel art. \u00a0Rather, Back in 1995<\/em> goes to great lengths to recreate PS1-style graphics on your modern PC. \u00a0Low poly environments, fixed-point texture projection warping, and a full-screen CRT effect that looks like NTSC interlacing. \u00a0Back in 1995<\/em> even emulates the polygon cracking common on mid-90s consoles. \u00a0The style extends to the game play as well: the protagonist walks slowly, rotates in place even more slowly, and wields his weapons\u00a0as if in slow motion. \u00a0It’s a style that seeks to replicate full 3D games of the era, and reminded me particularly of\u00a0Silent Hill<\/a><\/em> and\u00a0Overblood<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

As a retro game,\u00a0Back in 1995<\/em> is pretty different than its pixel art counterparts. \u00a0It’s not an easy style to strike.\u00a0\u00a0When I talked to developer Takaaki Ichijo last year, we discussed the technical challenges of pulling off this look in a modern engine. \u00a0He ended up working directly with some of the folks at Unity to achieve the visuals he was going for. \u00a0And even with simple geometry, the camera cut, 3D motion, and collision detection requirements of these sorts of games are deceptively complicated. \u00a0This is not a style that one selects\u00a0in order to cut cost.<\/p>\n

Looking at reviews on Steam, it seems that\u00a0most of the complaints about\u00a0Back in 1995<\/em> are that it is short and the game play is simplistic. \u00a0And that’s true–if you’re expecting to play\u00a0something of the scope of\u00a0Resident Evil<\/em>, you’re going to be disappointed. \u00a0Back in 1995<\/em> last a few hours, and during that time it hits on many of the important patterns that were common to games of that era, but it is not particularly lengthy, challenging, or deep.<\/p>\n

\"1995-2\"

CRT scan and NTSC color interlacing in full effect.<\/p><\/div>\n

But then again, that’s not the point. \u00a0Speaking of\u00a0Marshall McLuhan, the purpose\u00a0of\u00a0Back in 1995<\/em> is to make you remember what that era was like, warts and all. \u00a0The medium is the message:\u00a0Back in 1995<\/em> simultaneously tickles that nostalgic nerve while reminding you how clunky many of those titles were. \u00a0PS1 full 3D games have not aged well, and\u00a0Back in 1995<\/em>‘s main message is that we shouldn’t always view the past with rose-tinted spectacles. The game mechanics and story are secondary to that main point: the developer loves this sort of game but he has no illusions about living in the past. \u00a0In a world of retro games that warship at the alter of a bygone era,\u00a0Back in 1995′<\/em>s perspective is refreshing.<\/p>\n

The game ends, and then it doesn’t, and then the developer shows up to talk about the work. \u00a0It’s definitely worth playing all the way through. \u00a0For $10 you could do a lot worse than this\u00a0experiment in the value of nostalgia.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness.” — William Gibson,\u00a0Johnny\u00a0Mnemonic If you’re an indie developer, making a pixel art game is pretty attractive. \u00a0First and foremost, it’s pretty cheap and easy to develop, at least in terms of art production. \u00a0A one-man-band dev can put together […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,17,22,2,3,16,23,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14800118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-releases","category-completed-games","category-european-releases","category-game-design","category-games","category-japan-releases","category-pc","category-usa-releases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14800118"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14800125,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800118\/revisions\/14800125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14800118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14800118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14800118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}