5th Generation - Nights into Dreams

The action game Nights into Dreams was created by Sonic Team and released in 1996 by Sega on the Sega Saturn console. The main story of the game is based on two children who enter a dream world, where they are able to fly. The sensation of flight is achieved by the 3D graphics and a mix of 2D and 3D gameplay. 

The game has great animation and music, and the character is always in the center of the screen to keep the viewer more focused and included in the action. The environments in the game are unique since given that the story is set in a dream world it increased the possibilities for the designers to create a creative and surreal place. It used a 524MB ROM, a high color count and a 3D Control Pad as a controller.

Figure 1 - Nights into Dreams gameplay

Sega released a remake of the game for the Sony PlayStation 2 in 2008 which includes an option for playing with the original graphics of the Sega Saturn or with enhanced graphics which were made specifically for the PS2. The game also has a sequel called Nights: Journey of Dreams, which was released for the Wii console in 2007.

Bibliography:

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Nights into Dreams... [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nights_into_Dreams... [Accessed 5 May 2015]

Racketboy.com, (2006). Review: NiGHTS Into Dreams – Saturn [online] Available at: http://www.racketboy.com/retro/review-nights-into-dreams-saturn [Accessed 5 May 2015]

5th Generation - Sega Saturn

The Sega Saturn video game console was developed by Sega and released in 1994 at the price of $399, although the development of the game started in 1992 under the name Giga Drive. This 32-bit console came out after the Sega Genesis 16-bit console of 1988.

The Sega Saturn was a great success in Japan, but in the United States it was not so popular with the consumers and therefore it did not sell as many units as it was expected, especially after the Nintendo 64 was launched in 1996. The Sega Saturn sold 9.5 million units worldwide and is considered to have been a commercial failure.

Figure 1 - Sega Saturn game console

Sega added a 3D processor to the console to compete with the PlayStation, but having two processors made the Saturn a lot more challenging for game developers, so the games ended up going on the PlayStation.  But even if 3D was not one of the Saturn’s strengths, it had one of the best 2D processors in gaming ever released and it also included a 4MB ram cartridges to give the console more graphical capabilities over the PlayStation.

The console used two Hitachi SH-2 32-bit RISC processors of 28.6 MHz each, a Yamaha Saturn Custom Sound Processor YMF292 and a total internal memory of 5156 KB. It was able to display 16.77 million colors simultaneously on a screen which had a resolution up to 704x224 pixels.

The Sega Saturn was discontinued in 1998 and replaced by the Sega Dreamcast which was released in November 1998 in Japan and in 1999 in North America. Games that were being developed for the Sega Saturn, such as Sonic Adventure and Virtua Fighter, were cancelled and moved to the Sega Dreamcast, due to the Saturn’s commercial failure and hardware limitations.

Some games that could be played on the Sega Saturn where; Nights into Dreams, Virtua Fighter, Sonic R and Mortal Kombat II. 

Bibliography:

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Sega Saturn. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Saturn [Accessed 5 May 2015]

Racketboy.com, (2013). Sega Saturn: The Beginner’s Guide. [online] Available at: http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sega-saturn-101-beginners-guide [Accessed 5 May 2015]

Segaretro.org, (2015). Sega Saturn. [online] Available at: http://segaretro.org/Sega_Saturn [Accessed 5 May 2015]

4th Generation - Splatterhouse

Splatterhouse is a beat ‘em up game developed by Namco and released in 1988 on the TurboGrafx-16 video game home console. The game on the console included a parental advisory warning which read “The horrifying theme of this game may be inappropriate for young children… and cowards” due to the gory graphics it included, like melted flesh and bloated corpses.

In this 2D side-scrolling game, the player controls a character named Rick, a student who has to fight creatures to save his girlfriend. The game was inspired mainly by the western horror movies Friday the 13th and Evil Dead II. In fact, the color of the mask of the main character was changed in the United States version so that it would not look too similar to the mask of Jason Voorhees, the serial killer in Friday the 13^th.

Figure 1 - Splatterhouse gameplay

The screen orientation of the game was horizontal having a 288x224 pixel resolution and a 24-bit RGB palette. When ported on the home console the game lost some of its graphical detail and some sounds were removed due to the less powerful hardware.

The game also had some changes when it was ported on the home console from the arcade game, such as the arcade game starts with an animation of the characters to narrate the background story, where as in the video game it simply shows the exterior of the mansion before the game begins. Then there are some minor changes, such as different weapons used and some death scenes, like in stage 6.

In 2007 the TurboGrafx-16 version of the game was released on the Wii’s Virtual Console and a remake was made in 2010 to be ported on iPhones and iPads. 

Bibliography:

Imdb.com, (2015). Splatterhouse (1988). [online] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457486/ [Accessed 5 May 2015]

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Splatterhouse. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splatterhouse [Accessed 5 May 2015]

4th Generation - TurboGrafx-16

The TurboGrafx-16 Entertainment System was launched in Japan in 1987 as the PC Engine. This video game console was developed by Hudson Soft and NEC and it was the first console to be released during the 16-bit era even though it still used an 8-bit CPU. The console was originally created to compete against NES, but it ended up competing against other major gaming console, such as the Sega Mega Drive and the Neo Geo AES.

The console made use of a Hudson Soft HuC6280 8-bit CPU running at 7.16mhz and a dual 16-bit GPU (Graphics processing unit). It was able to display 482 colors onscreen, had a screen resolution of up to 565x242 pixels and was capable of producing a 6-channel PSG stereo audio. The system had an upgradable CD Add-on which provided the CD ROM with more data so that levels could be longer, animations were improved and included more sound effects.

Figure 1 - TurboGrafx-16 console

Being the first console to be released in a new generation, later competitors make use of better hardware, but the console still remained in the competition due to its design and its CD ROM, which was the first of its kind as a game medium for home consoles.

Later on, the Turbo Express was released as the PC Engine GT which was hand-held version of the TurboGrafx-16 and ran the same games as the original.

The TurboGrafx-16 was advertised as a 16-bit CPU console even though it used two 8-bit processors instead. This type of advertisement gave the console a sales advantage in the game market, and it was in fact the top-selling console in Japan for a period of time. But even though the console was a success in Japan, it did not sell very well in Europe and North America, were Sega and Nintendo were more popular amongst the consumers.

Some games that could be played on the TurboGrafx-16 were: Splatterhouse, Neutopia, Bonk’s Adventure, and Bomberman. 

Bibliography:

Wikipedia.org, (2015). TurboGrafx-16. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboGrafx-16 [Accessed 5 May 2015]

Racketboy.com, (2013). TurboGrafx-16 101: The Beginner’s Guide. [online] Available at: http://www.racketboy.com/retro/turbografx-16/tubrografix-16-tg16-101-beginners-guide [Accessed 5 May 2015)

Illustrated Academic Essay - Pixel Art

Pixel art is mostly known as a form of digital art which is done by using raster graphics software, where the images created lose quality when they are resized. A digital image is made out of millions of pixels, which are normally represented by dots or squares and are not visible in high quality images, but in pixel art all the pixels are purposely shown as if you were zooming in on a raster image. Although pixel art is more associated with digital art, some visual artists have found a way to recreate pixel-like art in real life, such as mosaics and beadwork.

Pixel art was initially used in old computers and consoles due to the small screen resolutions and low-powered hardware at the time. The characters and objects in the games were not so visually complex and they had a restricted color palette. With that said, many developers focused on having vibrant colors for the characters in the game in order to make them stand out from the background, like the Sonic the Hedgehog video game franchise, which was developed by Sega and released in 1991. The game mostly focuses to convey the speed and power of the console, and is not really associated with pixel art gaming since the graphics of the game has developed enormously since its first release. 

                                              Figure 1 - Sonic the Hedgehog

The first video game made was a tennis simulator called Pong which only made use of white square-shaped pixels on a black background (switched off pixels). The pixels on screen were used to represent the two paddles, one for each player, a line to divide the screen in the middle, to give the idea of a tennis net, and the ball. The game was a great success and it inspired a lot of games that have come after, like Space Invaders and Pac-Man, where the games were also made out entirely of pixels graphics.

                                                Figure 2 - Pong Video Game

Another iconic pixel character is Mario, originally from the Super Mario Bros. video game released in 1985 by Nintendo. The character of Mario was created with a big nose and mustache in order to hide the lack of facial detail and to avoid creating the animations for the mouth and take unnecessary memory space and also because the NES system had a screen resolution of only 256x240 pixels.

                                               Figure 3 - Super Mario Bros

The first graphics software program that enabled users to create pixel art was known as SuperPaint, released by Richard Shoup in 1972. After that, in 1977, the video game console Atari 2600 was released, and it contained 2D sprites in games such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man.

Even though pixel art began due to the restrictions of the hardware used, it is still popular nowadays and has been used to create modern games such as Citypixel and Habbo, and also games on hand-held devices such as Nintendo DS, PS Vita and cellphones, such as snake. Some designers still use pixel art today due to the sharp art one can produce and also due to the fact that since the sprites do not take up too much memory space, the animations will run smoother given the advancements in the hardware nowadays. 

These are some of the pixel art works I created using Photoshop CS6:

                                                           
                                                  Figure 4 - Pixel art sprites

In order to create these assets I opened a new document, zoomed at around 1000%, and then used the pencil tool with 1px in size. Then to save it in a large size, I copied the image created in a new project, go to image size (Alt + Ctrl + I), change the width and height to 1600 and select ‘Nearest Neighbor (preserve hard edges)’ from the drop down menu at the bottom of the window.

Some artists are so fascinated with the unique style of pixel art that they have decided that they wanted to create it also in real life, as painting or sculptures. This clearly shows that pixel art is not used because of hardware restrictions anymore, but simply because it looks good and it is an interesting art technique to use.

The main difference between pixel art in real life and digital pixel art is pretty evident; digital pixel art is displayed on screen while real life pixel art can be done by any object that basically has a circular or square shape, in order to create an image. 

After the great impact that popular games such as Pac-Man and Pong made, the idea of having pixel art in gaming has inspired pixel art all over the world, and nowadays it is not used only in gaming, but also to create pixel-like sculptures.

Even though pixel art is slowly fading away, it is still being used by some game developers, even to create 3D games, such as Minecraft. Many developers nowadays prefer to use vector shapes to create elements for their games though, since they look more realistic and smooth. But even if in gaming pixel art is not used so much often as it was once, recently there has been a trend of artists that prefer to show pixels on display instead of normal paintings. 

One of the many mediums by which artists create real life pixel art is the Rubik’s Cube. The Rubik’s Cube was invented in 1974, around the time that pixel art was becoming popular. Josh Chalom is an artist who uses the Rubik’s Cube as his canvas to create real life pixel-like art. This type of art is interesting because from a far the art just looks like a pixelated canvas, and only by seeing it up close can one realise that it is actually made out of hundreds of Rubik’s cubes. Chalom explains how detailed this process of creating pixelated art from Rubik’s cubes is, “ You have over 100,000 pixels that you have to adjust and make sure that one’s correctly next to the other.”

                                        Figure 5 - 'Falling Apart' by Josh Chalom 

John O’Hearn is another visual artist that creates pixel-like mosaics using thousands of 6mm BBs. To produce his pixel art he makes use of a computer program that he wrote which is connected to a machine that he invented to help him turn any image into a mosaic. One of Hearn’s most notable work is his Lebron James mosaic which uses 62,016 colored BBs. 

                                 Figure 6 - Lebron James mosaic by John O'Hearn

Bibliography:

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Pixel art. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_art [Accessed 18 April 2015]

Knowyourmeme.com, (2015). Pixel Art. [online] Available at: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/pixel-art [Accessed 18 April 2015]

2dwillneverdie.com, (2015). Pixel Art. [online] Available at: http://2dwillneverdie.com/intro/ [Accessed 18 April 2015]

Mashable.com, (2012). The Pixel Renaissance: Pixel Art's Place in 21st Century Expression. [online] Available at: http://mashable.com/2012/01/20/pixel-art/ [Accessed 19 April 2015]

Chipchick.com, (2010). Josh Chalom’s Falling Apart is Pixel Art on Rubik’s Cubes. [online] Available at: http://www.chipchick.com/2010/09/josh-chalom-rubik-cubes-falling-apart.html [Accessed 19 April 2015]

Nintendolife.com, (2015). Topic: The future of pixel art. [online] Available at: http://www.nintendolife.com/forums/retro/the_future_of_pixel_art [Accessed 19 April 2015]

Computing Terms

RAM: The acronym stands for Random Access Memory. It is a type of computer data storage that can be accessed randomly, which means that the data can be accessed without having to go through the preceding bytes. The data is lost when the machine is turned off since RAM is a volatile type of memory.

Raster graphics: Digital images created by using pixels, and which lose quality when resized.

MHz: Abbreviation of megahertz. It measures the speed of microprocessors, called the clock speed. It determines how many instructions the microprocessor can execute per second.

Pixel: Short for Picture Element. A pixel is a single point in a graphic image. Monitors divide the display screen into millions of pixels to create an image.

Resolution: It is the sharpness and quality of an image.  The screen resolution signifies the number of pixels on screen.

GPU: Graphics Processor Unit. Used in mobile phones, personal computers and game consoles to accelerate the creation of images to be displayed on screen.

GUI: Graphical User Interface. It is an interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons as opposed to text-based interfaces.

RISC: Reduced Instruction Set Computing is a CPU designed with a simple instruction set to provide higher performance.

CPU: Central Processing Unit is the most important part of all computing machines, since it is the place where all the calculations and instructions are executed.

ROM: Read-Only Memory. It is a type of storage on computing machines where data is stored and once it is recorded it can be accessed but it cannot be removed or edited.

Sprite: It is a 2D image, that can also be animated, that is designed to be part of a larger scene. An example of sprites are the objects in 2D video games.

GIF: Graphics Interchange Format. It is a bitmap image that supports up to 8 bits per pixel for each image and also supports animations and up to 256 colors per frame.

Vector graphics: images that are not made up of a grid of pixels and therefore can be resized to a larger scale without losing any image quality.

Byte: A unit of digital information that is made up of 8 bits (a single bit being represented by a ‘1’ or ‘0’ using the binary system). Bytes represent characters such as letters, numbers or symbols.

Bitmap: An image made up of rows and columns of pixels in the computer memory.

Hard disk: A magnetic disk that stores data on a computer.

Animation: Images slightly different from each other that are put in sequence to create motion. 

HDMI: High-Definition Multimedia Interface is a cable that transfers video and audio data from devices such as a display controller to a compatible computer monitor or digital television.

FPS: Frames per second. It is the rate at which consecutive images (frames) are generated per second.

 

Cartridge: It is a removable container such as tapes or memory chips, and it can also hold ink for printing. Cartridges can also contain whole games to be run by consoles. 

                                  

Bibliography:

Webopedia.com, (2015). RAM - random access memory. [online] Available at: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAM.html [Accessed 8 March 2015]
Webopedia.com, (2015). MHz. [online] Available at: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/MHz.html [Accessed 8 March 2015]

Webopedia.com, (2015). Pixel. [online] Available at: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/pixel.html [Accessed 8 March 2015]

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Graphics processing unit. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit [Accessed 23 May 2015]

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Graphical user interface. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface [Accessed 23 May 2015]

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Reduced instruction set computing. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_instruction_set_computing [Accessed 23 May 2015]

Techterms.com, (2012). Sprite. [online] Available at: http://techterms.com/definition/sprite [Accessed 23 May 2015]

Wikipedia.org, (2015). GIF. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF [Accessed 23 May 2015]

Techterms.com, (2015). Vector Graphic. [online] Available at: http://techterms.com/definition/vectorgraphic [Accessed 23 May 2015]

Searchstorage.techtarget.com, (2015). Byte Definition. [online] Available at: http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/byte [Accessed 23 May 2015]

Webopedia.com, (2015). bit map. [online] Available at: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/B/bit_map.html [Accessed 23 May 2015]

Wikipedia.org, (2015). HDMI. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI [Accessed 23 May 2015]

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Frame rate. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate [Accessed 23 May 2015]

Webopedia.com, (2015). cartridge. [online] Available at: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/cartridge.html [Accessed 23 May 2015]

Social Movement - Arcade gaming

The era of arcade video games lasted from the late 1970s until the 1990s. Arcade games lost popularity when game consoles started releasing games with 3D graphics, but they still remain     popular nowadays, especially in Asia. Several conventions dedicated to these classic arcade games still take place today, such as California Extreme.

In 1971 students at Stanford University created a coin-operated version of the Spacewar video game, the Galaxy Game. This is known to be the earliest example of a coin-operated video game. The first mass-manufactured game was released that same year and it was called Computer Space, created by Nolan Bushnell for the arcade game manufacturer, Nutting Associates. Atari, which was formed in 1972, essentially created the coin-operated video game industry with its game Pong, but even if the game proved to be popular, imitators kept Atari from dominating the coin-operated video game market.

The golden age of arcade video games is the time when arcade video games were the most popular and a time of technical innovation. This era started in the late 1970s and lasting to the mid-1980s. It spawned numerous cultural icons that are still recognized in today’s culture, such as Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.

Figure 1 - Pac-Man arcade games

Figure 2 - Donkey Kong arcade game

Some of the most popular games of this era had a great influence on the industry and also on the development of games. For instance, Space Invaders was considered to be the game that "revolutionized the video game industry" (Shigeru Miyamoto). This game has influenced shooter games ever since its release. Lunar Lander was the first Atari game to use vector graphics, and Centipede was one of the first games to use trackball control. Pac-Man was one of the most influential games; it had the first gaming mascot, it established maze chase genre, introduced power-ups and also opened gaming to female audiences. 

Bibliography:

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Arcade game. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_game [Accessed 8 March 2015]

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Golden age of arcade video games. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_arcade_video_games [Accessed 8 March 2015]