7 Times Games Looked Bad On Purpose

when it comes to games looks aren't everything but they are undeniably a thing and for the most part the game will set out to look as good as possible within the limitations of the day where good is sometimes defined as realistic or polished or has very many pixels on special occasions though a game will go in completely the other direction deliberately downgrading its visuals or adding some spicy so-called imperfection as a stylistic choice and it's never not fascinating to see how that turns out tap your eyes on these seven times games made themselves look quote unquote bad on purpose enjoy and beware very minor spoilers for the following games [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] never thought i'd say this but thanks spider-man wow that is a lot of ice let's see what that construction worker says a wise person once wrote i don't know much about frame rate but i know what i like it was probably let's say oscar wilde spider-man uk and as a rule what we like about frame rate in video games is when it's nice and high which makes movements look smooth and makes controls feel fast and responsive [Music] therefore the ultimate graphical goal might seem to be more frames per second under any circumstances except then how to explain how unbelievably cool spider-man looks in this suit which is animated at a different lower frame rate on purpose if you can believe it this is the into the spider-verse suit as it appears in marvel's spider-man miles morales the underground must be nearby if they're hijacking that billboard but contrary to what andy might tell you at length there's more to a great spider suit than which bits are red and how big the eyes are yeah andy i said it and you can fight me locking on all right now to track them down the coolest thing about the suit is the choppy dynamic way it's animated in contrast to the smoother more conventional animation of the other suits this came about when the developers at insomniac consulted with the inter the spider-verse filmmakers to replicate not just the design of the suit but also the unique style with which mars is animated in the movie here's the film's production designer justin k thompson we were able to advise on some of the unique design elements that made the film so distinct like how we often animated the characters on twos animating on twos is a technique used in traditional animation that is not the kind in video games where an animated element is held for two frames not just one this means the frames change at a lower rate in a way that gives the artists more control over the speed and power and rhythm of the character movement transmitter around here the upshot is you get this energetic expressive animation the distinctive choppiness of which comes from having what is technically a reduced frame rate totally worth it now if you'll excuse me i have to go and prepare for my eventual fight with andy over spider-man costumes there isn't gonna be a fight because i'm obviously right the bigger the eyes the better the costume five my way will just be two massive eyes with legs this again you see what i have to deal with i fly halfway around the world and an odd note is waiting for me in my hotel room it says to come to the bridge down by the river this looks like the place thimbleweed park is believe it or not a video game from 2017. the same year horizon zero dawn was released specifically it's a throwback pixel art point-and-click adventure made by one of the minds behind the original secret of monkey island nope one of the ones that isn't tim schafer ron gilbert is his name [Music] gilbert is famous for monkey island yes but before that he created a game called maniac mansion known for its multiple playable characters its npcs that freely roamed the house and the fact that everyone was proportioned like a novelty bobble head you'd find at a truck stop [Music] a little weird ed edison would look so good on my dashboard thimbleweedpark continued this visual style but harnessed the raw power of the xbox one to add things like colors and pixels the result was something that captured the spirit and character of the original point-and-click game but didn't require an emergency trip to the optometrist after every play session let's photograph the victim and head into town to talk to the local sheriff the body is starting to pixelate at least until you get to the ending at which point the game appears to glitch and transports you to what's described as the wireframe world which looks an awful lot like the rudimentary visuals of maniac mansion the game is glitching at this point thimbleweed park has the same simplistic shapes the same limited color palette and the same blocky fonts as games from the late 80s either this is a pitch perfect tribute to the point-and-click adventures that came before or they really lost enthusiasm for the project towards the end could be both as if that wasn't enough then it abandons all of its graphics entirely and becomes an even more old-school text adventure let's end this oh no way these are the credits stand down time you met our man inside the lpd here's a payment for the last little job he did for us he is understandably cautious get to the payphone in taurington as quick as you can and await his instructions grand theft auto 3 was arguably the moment where the series really took off somehow cramming an entire richly detailed city into a ps2 game this huge achievement set the series on its path to becoming the multi-billion dollar franchise it is today you know devin the way i see it and hey i'm no intelligent businessman like you but the way i see it there's two great evils that bedevil american capitalism the type that you practice back in the days of gta 3 though the games weren't above taking direct pot shots at the competition as you'll discover in the mission two-faced tanner the first clue that this isn't exactly a normal mission is that your yakuza contact asaka describes your target as a strangely animated undercover cop our source in the police has informed us that one of our drivers is a strangely animated undercover cop this fourth wall breaking comment relates to the fact that the mission name is a direct reference to hero of the driver series and undercover cop john tanner a character who was notoriously badly animated in driver 2 on the playstation 1 released a year before this game catch up with tanner and run him off the road and you'll discover that to poke fun at driver 2 he's been given a completely mismatched running animation with his flailing arms totally odds with the sharp suit he's wearing [Applause] this all seems a bit mean was rockstar not satisfied creating one of the most beloved and technically impressive open worlds in all of gaming without also sticking the boot into a game that attempted the same noble task on the previous generation of consoles besides the animation in driver 2 can't look that bad can it oh wow yeah totally fair by driver three in 2004 its developer reflections had had time to get its own back on rockstar by including a joke character called timmy vermicelli a spoof of gta by city's tommy bessetti timmy is wearing a child's water wings because gta protagonists famously drowned if they tried to swim now who's having the last laugh eh ah yeah still rock star [Music] [Music] the official rules of engagement in the fighting tournament depicted by super smash bros have never been 100 clear we assume such rules exist yet incredibly don't prohibit consuming your opponent and pooping them out again even the viper randy orton couldn't get away with that in another embarrassing omission by the official super smashing rule book nowhere in the rules does it say that competitors have to be in possession of three spatial dimensions thus along came nintendo's mr game and watch to exploit that loophole and so we wound up with a super smash bros challenger even flatter than my phone battery after a day spent doom-scrolling world news the so-called mr game and watch if that is his real name first appeared in smash bros 4 on the wii u and is the oldest fighter on the super smash bros roster slightly pre-dating even venerable grandpa pac-man himself this sort of explains mr game and watch's total lack of third dimension or texture or bearable audio on account of mr game and watch being rendered as he originally appeared in various games on nintendo's early lcd handheld game devices except even iconically flat pac-man has the decency to turn up to his fights as a giant yellow sphere what's your excuse mr g along with being an accomplished edge guarder with a strong juggling and combo game mr gaiman watch's chief combat advantage is the off-puttingly uncanny impression of him being not a physical presence but an actual hole in the fabric of the universe itself op if you ask me kinsey relax doing my best look if you're worried about me going brain dead i figure it's part of the day you have to say something what aren't you telling me thanks matt kenzie it's not you she's worried about it's everyone else is gonna get real exciting it doesn't matter i have a feeling we're about to disagree saving cat is a terrible idea the key to running a successful crime gang is to never leave anyone behind oh and to have superpowers if possible that definitely helps guess i'm stronger it's the combination of the two that makes the saints of saints row 4 so impressive but the first one is the reason that in the mission welcome back you find yourself on a rescue mission heading into the brain of one of the saints most notable former members johnny gatt i'm gonna shoot the devil in the face johnny presumed dead since he got stabbed in saints row the third is in fact alive imprisoned by alien overlord zinyak and living in a simulation much like you were at the start of the game we're brought to you by friendly friar the only rather than a 1950s sitcom however johnny's simulation is a different kind of retro a 1990s side-scrolling beat-em-up called saints of rage in keeping with its source inspiration saints of rage is also presented like a 90s side scroller which means deliberately blocky low resolution graphics and horribly compressed digitized speech stillwater i don't remember it looking so flat and of course an intro sequence where someone is kidnapped very very slowly while your character stands around just off screen doing nothing one fight what follows is a straightforward run through four stages of side-scrolling smackdowns but we have to admire saints row four's dedication to authentically making their game look like a slightly crappy 90s beat-em-up special shout out to the music for its chiptune badassery [Music] and the fact that your character is dressed in a pixelated version of whatever you had on in the actual game itself that is assuming you did have anything on in the actual game itself this is saints row after all [Music] nowadays buying a new graphics card is all about giving your pc the ability to juggle billions of polygons apply complex pixel shaders and accurately trace the paths of individual rays of light or about trying and failing to become a bitcoin mining millionaire obviously back in the early 90s when space quest 5 was released though getting a new graphics adapter was all about upgrading from ega graphics to vga graphics thus making the thrilling leap from visuals rendered using only 16 colours to a dazzling cornucopia of 256 distinct colours pretty sure i've got more than that in my jumbo carton of crayolas but it's not a competition previous games in the space quest series had been released in ega but the graphics steadily improved to vga quality as hero roger wilko went from cleaning up garbage as a lowly space janitor to cleaning up garbage as the commander of a garbage cleaning spaceship actually a pretty impressive career trajectory considering how easy it is to get an instant game over in this series by say not adequately cleaning every last pixel of the star confederation crest on your ride on roomba [Music] okay but the toilet flushing sound was just cruel space quest 5 had a neat reference to the ega origins of the series if you had a rummage around in the fuse panel of your ship the eureka one of the fuses is listed as vga ega interlock and if you pull it out the game briefly switches to ega style graphics how did we live like this the irony is spacequest 5 did ship with a full ega mode for people still playing on older machines and its version of the joke downgraded the visuals to the even more ancient cga graphics standard when you pulled the fuse the only thing is to experience this even deeper cut you had to play a version of the game that these days looks a lot like the dying moments before a catastrophic graphics card failure at least you didn't have to bother with the stupid crest cleaning mini game because your graphics were so bad they actually rendered it totally unplayable small mercies [Music] not all rhythm action games require you to fill your living room with tiny plastic instruments and destroy your fragile relationships with your next door neighbors in fact one of the best rhythm action games ever involved just a controller and a rapping dog who emceed his way through such daily tasks as having a driving lesson for the bathroom and of course learning karate from an onion if you wanna test me i'm sure you'll find the things i'll teach y'all nevertheless that game was parappa the rapper which received a sequel in the early 2000s named parappa the rapper too [Music] the story in this one was that parappa won a 100 year supply of noodles and then all the food in town started turning into noodles and it's up to paratha to stop it by rapping and giving people haircuts and look just go with it okay [Music] one of the things you'll also have to just go with is the fact that the sixth level of the game takes the form of a virtual reality video game called food court in which parappa and his various mentors throw food at each other pong style across a digitized tennis court hey everybody watch out for those flying noodles while it might look low-tech compared to the rest of the game it's not too hard on the eyes and if you manage to keep your wrapping at an acceptable level things stay just like this [Music] [Applause] badly however and the graphics will start to deliberately get worse as a visual indicator of just how terrible your rhymes are [Music] and while this is bad it could still definitely look even worse and does if you let your wrapping slip into awful territory [Music] [Applause] two colors good thing there isn't a wrapping level below awful or we'd have to complete this level on a piece of paper mailed to us by the developer come on to your knees there you have it seven games that made themselves look bad on purpose but you know what would make you look bad if you didn't click the like button and hit subscribe and also the notification button to be notified of future videos all right it won't make you look bad but we do super appreciate it and it really helps out thank you so much for watching and if you'd like to watch something else we have another couple of videos up here for your viewing pleasure thank you bye

Channel: outsidexbox

Views: 363,443

Rating: 4.9258566 out of 5

Keywords: outsidexbox, andy farrant, jane douglas, mike channell, 7 things, list, countdown, top 10, top 5, looked bad, crappy, downgrade, graphics, bad, good, best, worst, saints row 4, saints of rage, parappa the rapper 2, space quest, ega, vga, cga, spider-man, miles morales, into the spider-verse, suit, framerate, thimbleweed park, wireframe, world, ending, tanner, grand theft auto 3, driver, mr game and watch, smash bros, food court

Id: w4IgJwPZMUY

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021