@vornamenachname906 Console games between the 1980s and 2000s are what distorts everyone to have a low expectation of graphics. Arcade games in the 80s and 90s and PC games in the late-90s to mid-2000s were graphically far better than their console counterparts. When the PS1 came out in the mid-1990s, it gained popularity in the US and globally, but in Japan the Sega Saturn became more popular and had far more games. The Saturn focused on 2D games but with better graphics than previous generations, rather than 3D games which it was weak at.
@@vornamenachname906 in 800x600 and 15 inch monitor ? 25 fps. It looked great in 2000.-1. I do not count the 'remaster' - replacing character and enemy models was uncalled for.
1998 is literal the best year in video games. OoT, MGS, half life, RE2, tekken 3, list goes on. Check the wiki page, just god tier games released that year. Its the year where devs showed they got used to 3d games and specifically OoT, which is rated as the best game ever made, perfected camera controls. So influential you can see its influence in games to this day.
Those are still in the wild west era of innovation and weird stuff. For better or for worse there was a lot of new stuff around every corner and you are right, I couldn't get enough of it. It will remain my favorite era as well. Not to mention my favorite handhelds were still kicking during that era.
@@Stinkyremyseeing as I was born that year playing games that old just feels so weird and unenjoyable. Its so hard to explain but for me playing older games even ones I played as a kid just suck to me now. I just leave them in my rose colored memory.
I have to agree. Gaming peaked with the PS2 in my opinion. This is for several reasons and this might be long lol 1: Hardware limitations This forced developers to work within the confines of the hardware and really had to innovate and think outside the box in order to make a good game. Whereas today's gaming has near photorealistic graphics and with hardrive capacities they also have enormous data to work with. This has stifled innovation and made game development easy. Albeit more expensive, but it's also encouraged developers to be lazy and not push the limits and try new things. 2: Massive development Game studios have become huge since the era of the PS2 and entire production teams are involved with their creation. Often costing tens of millions and for some triple A titles upwards of a billion dollars (GTA specifically) to create. Gone are the days where a small studio can make a splash in the industry with a game that can compete with those big budget titles. Not to say that indie titles don't exist or manage to put out gems here and there but it's nothing like the days of the early 90s into the early 2000s where studios would take risks on new IP's or strange and quirky games. 3: Lack of diversity Games are not as diverse as they once were. Which is odd considering all the resources available in today's gaming world but like I mentioned above, Game studios are not willing to take risks and try new things or sail into untested waters. Often times it's just safer to release the next FSP game with loot boxes than it is to try something new. 4: monetization This is a big one and probably one of the main reasons many games are lacklustre these days. Gone are the days where you bought a full game and the Devs packed as much content as they could into it. Today, Game studios strive to include as much micro transactions as possible and breaking up their game and content into those micro transactions. I'll use wrestling games as an example here. Back in the day when you bought WWF No Mercy or Smackdown Here Comes the Pain you got the full game. Today, 2K will sell you a game missing half the roster and make you spend even more money to get them after paying $60-$100. So when it's all said and done you end up paying almost double the cost of the initial buy in. 5: Games are broken With the ease of internet access often times game studios will rush games out to the public without care that what they are releasing is a buggy mess. The "we'll fix it in post" is a thing game studios all too often these days do. Basically turning their player base into game testers. It's made worse when those bugs and glitches are never resolved properly. Back when games didn't have internet access and it was plug and play game studios had to make sure that every bug they could find was resolved before releasing it. Things did get over looked from time to time but not nearly as bad as it is today.
I was a teenager in the late 90's and just getting into PC gaming. That was honestly my favorite era because everything felt so magical and groundbreaking.
The creativity and expert programming skills of the 80s, when computer games was becoming a BIG thing, merged with the vastly improved hardware coming out in the 90s and early 00s, to generate many of the genredefining or even genrecreating games.
@sleepless2685 creativity is better. Limitations always result in design ideas that you would never think of id you had limitless resources. Watch the making of any classic movie or game and some of the best parts are the result of creatively navigating limitations.
I just love how it looks and the atmosphere these types of graphics create. No ammount of advanced 3D graphics on isometric games or attempts at emulating it did it for me.
@@GameTalesHQ I’m not 100% sure, i know it came out in 2002. The graphics are similar to Age of Empires 2 but have a very unique aesthetic to them. You should definitely check it out sometime, i couldn’t say enough good things about it 👍🏼
The big advantage and why this type of graphic is so nice is that everything you see, every sprite was carefully made, balanced with color/contrast/hue. In real real 3d since there you dont know from which angle will they looking the action, its much more hard.
The main issue with the technique is lighting. For much of the period where this was in use, that wasn't an issue as people didn't expect fancy colored lighting effects. But, when you had games like Diablo where there was a light source at the player, it could look kind of janky. There were also some challenges handling transparency if you wanted to walk behind things. That being said, one of the other cool things about the technology was that if they kept the files, they could always rerender them for higher resolutions, which wasn't really an option for other types of graphics.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade yeah, back then there was no graphic card to handle proper lightning anyway, so real 3d didnt had that big of an advantage in lighting neither. Yes it could have directional shadow. But it had to be very low poly. Even early 3d games like Warcraft3 or BFME, or Age of Mythology didnt really do much with lighting, maybe some shadow here and there. I think directional lightning and even some Pseudo Global Illumination is possible with normal maps and Shader wizardry. But the Industry mostly went the other way. The other big advantage of 3d is that if you change something its not a big deal. When you have to re render a bunch of sprites is a little more timeconsuming. Adaptive animations also almost impossible.
composition. The appeal of paintings and still images, the meditative space. The comfort knowing you cant choose a better angle. It creates a stillness and focus of mind.
Something I always loved about the prerendered isometrics style, especially for RPGs, is that it felt like you were playing a tabletop game on the most AMAZING terrain ever. The late 90's prerendered stuff absolutely DID age better than older polygon stuff, it's not even close.
just a few levels but every one of them looked so different each time you played it. One of my favourites too, I'm surprise that it wasn't that popular, or at least i didn't know anybody who played it
@@bodycounter9386 Steam version doesn't work with nowadays computers, unless you get the patch yourself, otherwise get the GoG version which has the patch applied by default and it's only £0.59
@@wololo10Some of them, yes. But games like Starcraft, Heroes 3, Diablo 2, Baldur’s Gate 2/Icewind Dale, Pharaoh/Caesar/Emperor are just as deep, playable (without some quality of life stuff) and relevant as their modern successors. Edit: Forgot AOE 2, on Steam the player count almost rivals AOE4
List recommended by GameTalesHQ at the end of the video: Desperados: Wanted dead or alive (2001) Commandos: Behind enemy lines (1998) Commandos: Men of courage (2001) Beach life (2002) Stronghold (2001) Stronghold: Crusader (2002) The sims (2000) Sim city 4 (2003) The settlers 4 (2001) Anno 1602 (1998) Robin Hood: The legend of Sherwood (2002) Gangsters: Organized crime (1998) Diablo 2 (2000) Sudden strike (2001) America: No peace beyond the line (2001) Age of empires (1997) Age of empires: Age of kings (1999) American conquest: Fight back (2003) Rollercoaster tycoon 2 (2002) Zoo tycoon (2001) Sanitarium (1998) Baldur's gate 2 (2000) Planetscape: Torment (1999) Fallout 2 (1998)
Out of those games (as far as I know) the following have some sort of remaster that make them even prettier and/or update them to be played on newer systems/resolutions: Stronghold - Definitive Edition Settlers IV - Gold Edition/History Edition Diablo 2 - Ressurected Age of Empires I - Definitive Edition (II has Definitive Edition too) Baldur's Gate 2 - Enhanced Edition (Baldur's Gate 1 has EE too) Planescape: Torment - Enhanced Edition Sudden Strike - no official remaster, but mods to make it HD exist Fallout 2 (and 1) - no official remaster, but plenty of mods to make it prettier Also, there's another Black Isle game series missing from the list, which is Icewind Dale (considered by many to be as good/legendary as Baldur's Gate and Fallout), which also has an Enhanced Edition. IWD 2 does not have an official Enhanced Edition, but does have a fan-made Enhanced Edition (game was pretty much remade from 0 by modders), which is pretty close to what an Enhanced Edition for Infinity Engine games (BG, IWD, Planescape) usually is.
Sanitarium was and is the game to play, still. It will always be relevant. There is something about a game that is as concise as a book about a horror novel.
I agree with this being an underrated artstyle; it offers a certain clarity and style, and has a sort of diorama-like quality to it that you don't get with other types of graphical methods. I'm actually developing an RTS that uses this method, as well as some modern techniques that weren't possible with that era of late 90s/early 00s isometric, like using normal and specularity sprites to allow for fully 3D lighting and shadow-casting on otherwise completely 2D sprites.
Respect, not a game dev myself, but I studied comp sci in college and projections, orthography, etc, etc was the bane of my existence. I also hear pathfinding is tricky for isometric games 🫡
Its the diorama effect indeed, every map is art in itself basically, most notable was Commandos 2. You could do away with a grid pattern and do more natural stuff. Slowly the rts/building genre is catching up but its a long ways to go. Manor lords made me feel very nostalgic when i tested the 3rdperson mode and walked through low branches onto a narrower footpath that led to some woodchoppers hut. And everything was in smooth realistic transition with curves an no grid.
@@xergiok2322 Really... I played Heroes 4 way before I discovered the internet so I don't really know the common opinions, but my family and I liked it most.
@levoGAMES I also love Heroes 4! It's actually not so uncommon an opinion. I watch a heroes 4 youtuber, noverlord. Though he hasnt uploaded in a while.
Part of the reason I really love Factorio - this art style just looks great. Starcraft 1 has these graphics and has a very gritty realistic style, Starcraft 2 in 3d looks a bit goofy and cartoony in comparison
Yes, it is waste of computer power to use 3d on games like factoria as using pictures give the same and better graphics and there is no need for 3d... I also like the graphics in Factorio...
Factorio still does it for the same reason the old games do it, allowing the game to run properly (when you have a giant continent spanning mega factory)
I fell in love with PC gaming as a kid in the mid-late 90s, so these pre-rendered graphics give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. I wish they could have a rebirth like the 90s retro FPS are experiencing.
check out Project Zomboid. a zombie survival rogue-like sandbox that uses iso perspective. its like sims 1 if it was a zombie apocalypse. there's a metric crap tonne of mods, just for pre render tile packs to expand upon the build your own home/base aspect of the game has a huge player base right now. and its very addicting.
they have had a rebirth. theres been tons of great games in this style the last 10 years. both pillars of eternity games. both divinity games. tyranny. disco elysium. wasteland 3. both pathfinder games. and of course, baldurs gate 3. you can move the camera in bg3 but clearly the intended way is isometric.
There is something to be said about the comeback. Though I'm not an expert on the style, I do notice that the remastered Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition, the new prerendered building collapse animations have some very fancy animation not possible before, with its animating of every brick and every piece of lumber roof object individually. It's using modern technology to achieve having the look of the old style, but in a new jacket. Also, more than 256 colors. 256 colors gave you the same limitation as pixel art though with more flexibility. Not every pixel matters as in pixel art, but at least every color matters. 16 colors in 16 shades. Things have to be painted in a specific color and shade with intent, as the next color in the palette is way different. Nowadays, you have access to over 16 million colors. But even so, you can still paint with the same intent as before; though with a smoother gradient between shades. And then there are the technical improvements. Previously, in Age of Empires buildings were rendered at a certain pixel count. If you had a higher resolution screen, your game view was more zoomed out as every pixel was smaller. Nowadays, every building can be rendered separately from exact pixel counts, and the game can be zoomed in at the same level independent of the screen resolution. It also added a zoom function to zoom in or out during the game using the scroll wheel. Lastly of course, wide screen.
Commandos 2 was a tour de force, for me - the graphical jump from the first game to the second, the dynamic use of lighting and the smooth animations are still stuck in my brain to this day. So glad you've shone a light on these games!
I played that game hard, but damn it was hard. I stealthed every mission (save scumming) but i could not stealth either the last or the 1 before last mission. I played it on PS2 too lol
I loved how expressed your point in just about 5 minutes even after briefly going through the history of the technology and why it was necessary. Often, other RUclipsrs will go into a long, convoluted monologue about the history of something before getting to the actual point, when they could've expressed their opinion in a couple of minutes. Love the editing and list of your favourite games without wasting too much time. Solid video!
While not really isometric, we cannot forget about games like Heroes of Might and Magic. The third game in the series looks like a living painting, it looks breathtakingly gorgeous to this day.
My favourite game, I can never get tired of playing it. I loved it as a kid and I love it as a 32 year old guy. The feeling it gives you is unmatched - the campaigns, characters and stories are timeless, but even the small things like visiting a mill or picking up an item are described in such detail, you just get pulled into the world
Grim Fandango remains my favorite game of all time and its partially because of the prerendered graphics, maybe because the prerendered screens create such mystery and make you imagine what could be around the corner.
Grim Fandango is interesting because it's right at the intersection of 3D models atop prerendered fixed-field backgrounds. That was a style that didn't last very long at all and had very few exemplars on PC. A lot of games on the original Playstation employed it because at the time everyone was trying to find uses for the massive storage capacity of a CD. Final Fantasy games through the original Playstation era (7-9) used it extensively, as well as some tank-control horror games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil. The Nintendo 64 never had large enough storage to make that format work, and so its games leaned entirely on 3D models. By the time the Dreamcast and PS2 rolled around they had the power to render convincing backgrounds. I feel the 3D-on-prerender aesthetic has aged better than very early 3D like Tomb Raider, yet not quite as well as the games described in the video. Partially this is because the low-poly 3D models, textures, and animations themselves haven't aged well. But for these games specifically I think it's because the rendered backgrounds only really work on a full screen, and are comparatively low-res on modern displays. But isolinear strategy/RPG games like Planescape Torment have large scrolling backgrounds and sprites that look smaller but beautifully crisp at 1080p 1:1 scale, and still very good with bilinear upscaling at 4K.
I don't think I need to explain how much I love LucasArts games... but the 3D scenes in Grim Fandango were actually what turned me _off_ it. I finished the game, but it kept annoying me the whole way through. I keep promising myself to revisit it. Maybe I'll play the remastered edition - I hear it's much easier on the eyes.
Icewind Dale II has breathtakingly beautiful pre-rendered graphics The starting location of Targos, its dock piers, ships, lighthouses, the houses, tents, airships and the palisade wall combined with the music from Inon Zur makes for an immersive adventure
Yeah, funnily enough I do think the devs managed to create much better and lovelier looking nature vistas in IWD2 then in BG2(both infinity engine games/same studios), except for the underdark section of the game. Those looked good in both games. On the other hand, I absolutely love the man-made and magic-made structures in BG2. The temple district and the Temple interior of Lathander alone looks so great.
someone else who appreciated Icewind Dale II, i could cry. but not as hard as i cried when i read it can’t be played anymore because the original version was either lost or destroyed. an outstanding game left to memory
One of the reasons these old 2D games tend to look so good even today, is because in the process of production of 2D sprites or backgrounds, devs would start on a powerful "graphics station" (so called back in the day, just a reaaaly powerful PC with specialized 3D software) and make very detailed 3D models, compute detailed shadows for everything, would set up light sources actually lighting surroundings realistically, add some approximate reflections on things like armor etc. and then- just bake them as 2D pictures which display on your slow end-user's pc or console with all those "effects" baked in them without actually having the target hardware computing them, and these were (some still are) VERY demanding effects to run real time, not practical at the time at all. If your character was walking, you'd see a 2D series of "snapshots" of a 3D model in different poses, lit up, self-shadowed and... displayed as a series of sprites-pictures. Remember in the early days of 3D you didn't really have stuff like real shadows except maybe for a round blob directly beneath a character, no things like real 3D grass, no shadows being cast by trees etc. First trees in 3D were basically 2D sprites, and there was a running joke that they were always "facing you with their 3D side". Certainly you DIDN'T get detailed 3D trees with leaves casting shadows on grass beneath... But when making a 2D game- such things are not a problem, just... they wont be 3D. So you had very basic 3D, versus very detailed 2D. Yet if you "were there" at the time, even that simple 3D was still mindblowing! But it took 3D a long time to be able to compete with detailed 2D backgrounds prerendered on powerful PCs.
Yes, to this day I think the cities I created in Sim City 4 beat everything in any modern 3D city builder in terms of aesthetics and realism. When we realize that real time rendering isn't always the best, perhaps we'll enter a post-modern era in PC gaming.
Nice rundown but the 2d and 3d are now and always have been marketing terms. Everything graphics is 4d matrix operations regardless of what projection system you use and everything on a computer is rendered in 2d because your monitor is a flat square. You actually live in 4d, if you lived in 3d you wouldn't have depth perception. It's the greatest crime display and video game marketing departments ever committed was convincing everyone they live in 3d when they know damn well a computer needs x,y,z, AND W to calculate and project any object.
FF7 vs FF7 Remake encapsulates the difference perfectly. The background images look gorgeous in the original, and capture the steampunk atmosphere in a way that the Remake doesn't come close to reproducing. It's like watching a movie, with highly intentional camera angles, compared to viewing a scene with a free camera. If you want a sandboxing experience, free camera can be more suitable for the purpose, but if you want to convey a specific type of atmosphere, fixed angles are more optimal in my opinion.
I started the anno series in around 2020 with Anno 1404. I knew it was an old game but was amazed by the detail. Beautiful game. I think it must've been one of the last big studio isometric games. So yeah these games really do stand visually more than a decade later.
As someone born in the 90s this was super nostalgic to see. Crazy to realize these games are over 20 years old and still look so good! Sad to see there are not many games with a similar style these days. I would say something like BG3's graphics style would be like an evolution of this era's style. By using the same angle but with 3D models and animations. You really outdid yourself with this one! Great video and keep up the good work 👏🏻
No 3D-game from that era can match the level of detail and aesthetics of these pre-rendered games. And you're right! The spirit of these games lives on in games like: BG3, XCOM, League of Legends etc. Thanks for the comment :)
Sure PS1 and N64 games looked very blocky, but the jerky animations pre-rendered 2D characters had also looked bad and was esp unimmersive when mixed with polygon backgrounds (Mario Kart 64, Bungies Myth fex). AVGN has himself recorded as a kid in his Genesis vs SNES video talking about the "smooth" animation, and thats why i think most were more impressed by the blocky polygon graphics back then at least when like PS2 came around.
Gorky 17 (1999) was one of those early games with 3d characters over pre-rendered isometric backgrounds. I remember thinking how this approach could potentially be great for RPGs since it could combine all the beautiful background detail with characters being able to change their appearance depending on what exactly they wear and what weapons they wield.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade I don't know about that. Might be true for console gaming but PC monitors had a much crisper picture even back in the 90s. You could crank the resolution all the way up to 1024x768 and the on-screen text would still be prefectly legible even with tiny font sizes. That's why pixel graphics on PC always looked as crisp and blocky as they do on modern monitors unlike those console games where the picture would get smoothed by the blurry CRT TV. You could actually tell if a game was a console port by its huge font size. A typical PC game, on the contrary, would become completely unreadable if you tried to use a TV as a monitor. I can tell, I tried that.
My favorite one is Sanitarium, which I was gifted a demo cd-room in 99, and held to it for about 10 years before getting my first PC to run. I instantly fell absolutely in love with the thing and eventually got the full game. Deep storytelling and full of bizarre elements designed in great art.
Oh my goddd when this video began and you started the clip montage, I was thinking "man so this is why Anno 1602 always looked so good to me." AND THEN YOU SHOWED IT! I love you
Very cool video. But i REALLY appreciate that you were respectful on my time. Too many youtubers nowadays feel it is their sacred duty to turn every video idea into a 28 minute essay nowadays. I don't have the time, lads ... no one does anymore. Cheers from france
Quelle tristesse et quelle arrogance. Plus personne n'a le temps, alors rushons encore et toujours plus. Transformons toutes les vidéos en reels, et tous les reels en tiktoks. Pour qui les gens se prennent ils ? Des ministres ? Jsuis prêt à parier que tout ces gens qui n'ont pas le temps passent 1h sur insta, et 1h sur tiktok à mater de la daube. Faut arrêter de se voiler la face
This video was *just* the right length for the message you wanted to convey. Thank you for not trying to extend it for view time, being concise to to the point is a much better viewing experience.
This look was what made those PS1 Final Fantasy games so iconic too. FF7 and 9 had such beautiful atmospheric designs that really felt like another world.
@@Dubious_Dubs Yes, FF8 was my first ever game that had detailed pre-rendered backgrounds, and these environments were a huge jump from anything that came before for me, so it left a strong impression. Balamb Garden, Deling City, Esthar, ruins/tomb, Fisherman's Horizon, and Ultimecia Castle amazed me, and this is just a shortlist of what comes to mind 20+ years later. FFX, despite being mostly 3D rendered (with low textures even in the remaster), actually had some pre-rendered backgrounds too, and those places seemed to have the most intricate detail (inside of some shops, the airship, the dreaming fayth area, etc). The interactivity within pre-rendered FMVs on PS2 was also better than the jumping around that seemed to happen in the PS1 games. (FF8 Irvine lining up his sniper shot at the end of disc 1 conveyed his nervousness, I guess...)
@@fearedjames I completely disagree, love the story of 8, the magic system was fucking ass though, "hey use your best magic to power your GFs but in doing so every use will make you weaker until you draw some more", I hardly ever used Magic in it just because I hated the draw mechanic, But the story, the music, the characters, loved it!
@@fearedjames FF8 was the worst before FF13. But I still very much enjoyed FF8. For the record, I started with the OG final fantasy back on Nintendo. I am an FF6, Tactics, and FF7 purist though. Thats the trinity in my eyes. The rest are all great but they do have some flaws.
Ah I remember Baldurs Gate 2 and Planescape. The handcrafted environments are drenched in so much ambiance and has so much character. When it takes long to manually develop them, there is a lot of thought that needs to go into how the scenery feels and functions. Another one is commandos. Every location is different and unique.
One thing I could not help but notice playing Cossacks and Blitzkrieg, is how everything not only looks lively and colorful, but also how easy it is to see what happens on screen. Most modern RTS's use ton of HUD elements to highlight units and objects, because color-wise they're either brown-on-brown "realistic" mess or have more flashy colors and lights than a rave party.
Nice to see somebody else also mentioned Cossacks. I remember them saying that they aren't hopping on this 3D trend and sticking to sprites. And that for the big ships they go to 128 sprites per ship, so you can see it from many different angles (very unlike Warcraft 2 had, every 45 degrees, aka only 8 sprites) I guess I have to check Blitzkrieg now, lol
So much this... the design aspect has gone down the crapper imo-often favoring realism over mechanically engaging design and gameplay. Everything's too busy, and while the defenders will say it's closer to reality, it's not, because the the input information/senses are so much more limited than real life.
@@johnbigelson7471 Yeah, the busyness of modern textures and models is annoying most of the time. Is as if the people working on that cannot simply have something smooth and more empty, which makes it more recognizable, fearing that the management will think they lazy-ed out or something. Warcraft 3 and reforged are perfect examples of that. And I fear that the industry hasn't learned this lesson yet.
I've been playing Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge since it came to steam a few week back with CnC Net updates that make it possible to play on bigger resolutions and got remembered how much I like that game's art style - way better than newer 3D entries in the C&C / Red Alert franchise. This kinds of art style truly is ageless.
This video really hit the spot. Thanks for making this and conjuring up sweet memories of this era in gaming, when I was between ages 11-14. The games you’ve mentioned are a real treasure. Only just discovered your channel and looking forward to watching more of you.
Heh, I've always said that the reason Age of Empires II outlasted all the following chapters is because of the 2D nature of the game that made it age incredibly well.
This answers why I could only run StarCraft 2 in my high end PC, while I could run the original Brood War even in my dad's oldest laptop. The graphical difference between these two games is insane, and it tells me how clever game developer was back in the day. Their work is not only limited by creativity, but also actual computer hardware limitations. The ways they have to gone through to twist their minds to serve us 3D graphics in its earliest times and in limited hardware capability will forever have my respect. They're the foundation of the modern gaming industry.
I have such fond memories playing an RPG back in the day called Sacred. Goddamn those pre-rendered towns were so pretty, I would kinda role play in my head which town I wanted to be my home.
I totally agree! This is the most beautiful artstyle. I thought I was the only one with this, but to me this graphic equals nostalgia. It feels so good to see this.
Man, I wish your video would be longer, appreciate what you did here. It's like going back to the 2000s and enjoying video games for no reason but fun.
That montage was incredible , earned yourself a subscriber right there. I’m glad to hear someone else give Sim City 4 the flowers it deserves, such a beautiful game so clearly made with attention to details, stronghold games as well is a great example😊
Dude... Commando 2 is the game ive been trying to search for so long. I played it once back then and forgot the title and have been thinking searching and finding out the title for so long. None of my friends tried it and thought i was imagining that game. Finally found it. OMG. Thank you.
Glad you found it, one of the best games ever made in my opinion! Word of warning though! The remaster on steam is quite buggy and has missing sounds, so if you can get the original to work with a patch that might be the better approach. (Can''t guarantee it works on modern machine's though)
I think it's probably much harder to do than it may appear. With 3D, it's relatively easy to notice flaws because it's trying to emulate environments the way we perceive them in real life, but 2D forces our brains to accept more abstraction, so even the uncanny can be aesthetically pleasing. Kind of like a painting really.
- In spite of limitations creativity rose to the top and we enjoyed timeless gems that will never fade. - With endless freedom we are suffering due to lack of creativity and imagination, and finding gems in sea of mud is become harder and harder.
Just a quick correction on Supergiant Games, Hades (I didn't watch the dev vids for the other three), doesn't use hand drawn sprites but pre-rendered characters, they just use a toon shader instead of a realistic one. They documented their process in Inside Hades - 3D Modeling & Rigging on their youtube channel.
I would consider this video a very gentle and effective nudge into making me going back to explore isometric game again. Thanks! and you earned another sub.
Sorry, but that game is fugly. Charming with personality, but fugly. I personally think that Age of Wonders Shadow Magic looks way better, but I might be biased here as I've played that game a lot more.
When they switched to 3D and it looked worse, it's such a shock. Stronghold and Age of Empire were other examples in which the switch was simply not worth it. I understand the pain in the butt working with pre-rendered, and the amount of stress and effort it puts on the art team but damn, almost everyone did their best work during that golden era for some reason. Maxis, Firaxis and heck, even Blizzard. While it's true WarCraft 3 3D was one of the rare case in which the 3D switch was done well, compare to original StarCraft it's nowhere as striking and beautiful. Not to mention the long list of CRPGs. There's something to be said about working within a set limit and able to produce the best of works. I suspect that's why FromSoft had jumped from one success to another, they work on their tech very little at a time and work within that limit rather than chasing boundaries.
I would say this goes for music as well. 8 bit music from Pokemon, Mario, etc were some of the greatest compositions I have ever heard. Music writers were, I think, MORE creative with the limited numbers of channels and type of sounds they had.
Interesting! I don't necessarily agree. Although some of the older music has become iconic, I prefer it when a full orchestra can do a soundtrack. But i can see why you prefer 8 bit, music is mega subjective after all!
I was a kid who would get extremely excited if my parents would let me play Age of Empires II for an hour or so. Now I have over 100 games in my steam library and a 4080 pc but I barely even feel anything when I play them
I think that was my first real taste of this art style, sadly I didn't like the game much and left off playing it, but the visuals combined with the RPG elements really drew me in.
@@nullifye7816 Oh I feel you, it's not an easy game to stay with. I think after 80 hours or so there came something up in RL so I had to drop it for a couple of weeks... That was 2 years ago... It is quite hard to get into again
Great topic! Just subbed! I love the 2000s it's our tech rennaisance after all nowadays their flame of inspiration is gone but it lives on through games like these thank you for your list of games I remember some of those from bk in the day keep em videos coming!
I used to get so immersed in Desperados as a kid. The beautiful art style with that realistic look, combined with the music and voice acting got me so addicted to it. Doc McCoy was my favourite in the gang, his knock-out gas was so OP.
"Yip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", "Not a problem", "This should end in tears", "A new game a new chance", all those voice lines are burned into my mind as well. Still up there as one of my favorite games period.
@@GameTalesHQ That game was gooood, Beat it multiple times over the years. setting up a snake on top of the ladder while shooting enemys climbing up was OP as well :)
Prerendered background was the reason I fell in love with the original Resident Evil trilogy. So much storytelling in one background - it felt much more movie like!
Oh wow, never thought I will see The Settlers IV ever mentioned again. Nox made by Westwood Studios before they got bought by EA was also a beautiful pre-rendered game.
Thank you for this video. Very entertaining, and I added a few names to the list of old games I want to play. I rarely play games that were released after 2005 or so.
Resolution is one the main reasons. A 4k sprite will roughly be 4 times the size of a 720p sprite. As computer screen resolution has increased the amount of detail required in the sprites also increases which takes more time.
Fallout 2 is my all-time favorite game and it looks stunning, but a close second is Baldur's Gate 2, and i say for sure that the isometric/diorama style of that game is simply timeless. It will never age. It is immortal and timeless.
Timeless is the keyword! Much like with stylized 3d graphics. Games that chase the newest tech just to look "realistic", usually end up looking dated within a couple years, and fall into the pit of uncanny valley.
I really love this kind of rendering and style. IsoRPGs will always have a place in my heart. Brings a tear to my eye, good times with Arcanum, Baldur's Gate, etc.
Technology ages, but good art style and direction doesn't. Whilst not isometric, an honourable mention to things like the Resident Evil Remake that mixed pre-rendered backgrounds with 3D assets. 2 decades later and it still looks amazing.
Amazing!!! It seems like someone took the nostalgic desires of appreciating a good aesthetic of isometric games with pre-rendered graphics, from the bottom of my chest of memories from the 1990s and until the mid-2000s of the last millennium. This graphic style of game is truly timeless! And this is not restricted to isometric RPGs and RTS, but to titles like the classics Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Donkey Kong Country and so many other classic titles. I loved the list of suggestions at the end of the video, some of which I was completely unaware of.
Oh yes, it's definitely not limited to isometric games. Lot's of beautiful games outside that viewpoint. Glad you enjoyed the video and I hope you've found some new potential favorites :)
The original Fallout has caught my attention recently. I love the retro feel to it and everything that was possible to do at the time. Most modern games just seem to be lacking
If you don’t mind losing out on some 2024 quality of life features, dealing with a few archaic systems and the initial learning curve, Fallout 1 & 2 are definitely some of the best RPG’s you’ll ever play. I recommend you read some tips on character creation, it will save a lot of frustration
@@peterk2735 I have all the games downloaded but it's been so long since I've tried having a go at them. The games I grew up with in the early 2000s and 2010s were all quite streamlined and simple mostly. The older I get the less such games appeal to me, and the games from before my generation look to have what I'm looking for. Imagination and feel is important, and because these games have more in common with real tabletop they embody those things better
@@peterk2735 Came back to say that I just finished the 1st one last night. Was excellent. I searched around online for more fallout and came across Resurrection 1.5, which is a mod for 2 set between it and 1. I love the feel that it's an animated tabletop. We certainly need more of these lol
Prerendered environments are still a totally legit technique today, as long as you have a fixed or orthographic camera. Then you don't have to race to render the scene in 16 ms and instead can take as long as you want, which is why these games have such beautiful backgrounds.
Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 9 are the best examples of pre rendered graphics for me. The visual style really comes into its own when you visit the many distinct towns which when you add the score gives every new area a unique feel.
Please make a similar video about the fixed camera games, which they use a mixture of 3d graphics and pre-rendered backgrounds. I am a huge fan of this art design, and many games used that just looked incredible for that time, especially titles like Parasite Eve 2, dino crysis , and Resident Evil 3
Maybe in the future, I sadly didn't grow up with a console and only played the REmake later in life. There are a couple of good video's on the topic already if you search for: Pre rendered backgrounds!
Probably less with the max pop limit of 200 per player though :D In fact less as many units would use more than 1 pop limit, unlike for Warcraft 2 where you'd be really entitled to up to 200 units per player with a proper farmland supply.:)
@@nihilex5838 Well, with zerg you can technically have more than 200 units, as zerlings, scourges and overlords use less than 1 food each. In practice it's extremely unlikely.
@@donaldpetersen2382 The village development is great, but I admittedly never played far into the campaign because it could become a military grind and then you would more or less just rebuild the same village again in the next mission. Want to give it another try, but will likely just regret it.
You were correct regarding the genres that use these graphics. I knew what to expect from a game that had that look. Many hours of gameplay, story, lore. Or, many hours of management.
Dino crisis 2, abe oddysey heart of darkness were also pretty good loking games I remember from my childhood on the console side using pre rendered backgrounds
It was the 90’s. I’m from Romania and i was 15 years old then. I will never forget the day i started playing Diablo for the first time on my amd pc. The animations, the graphics, the incredible atmosphere created by the sound engineers and that orgasmic music. A feeling i will cherish until the day i die.
It's really refreshing to find someone on internet being nostalgic without needing to diminish how things are done nowadays! One of the isometric games I appreciate the most from the 90s is Little Big Adventure, I'm glad it's getting a remake coming later this year!
Those of us who grew up with no internet and a trial version of Age of Empires from the windows 98 cd. Man, I still love isometric games so much, recently i got into remaking the building sprites in blender and honestly had so much fun.
And what about when you’d spent 4 hours downloading a 2 mb custom map, only for your mom to pick up the phone, drop the connection and you’d have to start all over 😭😆
The thing that make me reaaally appreciate the beauty of those older pre rendered graphics game is : my brain instantly process to understand everything that is shown on screen. While in modern games, even if the graphics are impressively good, my brain doesn't process instantly to understand everything on the screen, I have to stop for a minute and analyse everything in details to really '' see '' everything because the image and graphics are too cluttered by many many things.. while in older games there is just what it's needed where it's needed, it's not over encumbered. To me it is the big difference between them. I realized that when I was playing BG3. It's like, yes the game is beautiful but I was having so much more trouble to have a global vision of everything that is shown on screen compared to BG 1/2 because of how much stuff there is at the same time on the screen. It's not necessarily a problem tho, it's just, sometimes for some scenes, an inconvenience.
❤
Thank you for all the countless hours of entertainment
Stronghold Crusader was my childhood. Thank you
omg it's firefly
thank you for making my childhood:) I can't afford your new titles but your classic ones have definitely shaped my childhood!
The Stronghold series was one of the few things me and my brothers bonded over in our not so bright childhood, thank you for bringing them to life!
People, who write the name of the game on screen while gameplay is shown, are Saints!
♥️
This! Now I gotta get myself that Robin Hood game!
@@leevihalme4615 if you run it without the stuttering, it was an awesome game back in the day, same for desperados.
@@leevihalme4615 I used to play it a lot, really fun game, worth the time.
i agree
Isometric RPGs are gorgeous.
They look like moving book illustration, like concept art brought to life.
Also - They age like a fine wine!
True but I was really shocked when I recently saw the real graphics of Diablo 2. In my memory it looked like Diablo 2 remastered, at least !
"They look like moving book illustration"
that's a real nice concept
@vornamenachname906 Console games between the 1980s and 2000s are what distorts everyone to have a low expectation of graphics.
Arcade games in the 80s and 90s and PC games in the late-90s to mid-2000s were graphically far better than their console counterparts.
When the PS1 came out in the mid-1990s, it gained popularity in the US and globally, but in Japan the Sega Saturn became more popular and had far more games. The Saturn focused on 2D games but with better graphics than previous generations, rather than 3D games which it was weak at.
Totally agree! Isometric looks way better than early 3D-Games (NWN, Morrowind etc.)
@@vornamenachname906 in 800x600 and 15 inch monitor ? 25 fps. It looked great in 2000.-1. I do not count the 'remaster' - replacing character and enemy models was uncalled for.
Late 90s and early 2000s will forever be my favorite era of gaming
1998 is literal the best year in video games.
OoT, MGS, half life, RE2, tekken 3, list goes on. Check the wiki page, just god tier games released that year.
Its the year where devs showed they got used to 3d games and specifically OoT, which is rated as the best game ever made, perfected camera controls. So influential you can see its influence in games to this day.
@@StinkyremyAlso Unreal and Thief The Dark Project.
Those are still in the wild west era of innovation and weird stuff. For better or for worse there was a lot of new stuff around every corner and you are right, I couldn't get enough of it. It will remain my favorite era as well. Not to mention my favorite handhelds were still kicking during that era.
@@Stinkyremyseeing as I was born that year playing games that old just feels so weird and unenjoyable. Its so hard to explain but for me playing older games even ones I played as a kid just suck to me now. I just leave them in my rose colored memory.
I have to agree. Gaming peaked with the PS2 in my opinion. This is for several reasons and this might be long lol
1: Hardware limitations
This forced developers to work within the confines of the hardware and really had to innovate and think outside the box in order to make a good game. Whereas today's gaming has near photorealistic graphics and with hardrive capacities they also have enormous data to work with. This has stifled innovation and made game development easy. Albeit more expensive, but it's also encouraged developers to be lazy and not push the limits and try new things.
2: Massive development
Game studios have become huge since the era of the PS2 and entire production teams are involved with their creation. Often costing tens of millions and for some triple A titles upwards of a billion dollars (GTA specifically) to create. Gone are the days where a small studio can make a splash in the industry with a game that can compete with those big budget titles. Not to say that indie titles don't exist or manage to put out gems here and there but it's nothing like the days of the early 90s into the early 2000s where studios would take risks on new IP's or strange and quirky games.
3: Lack of diversity
Games are not as diverse as they once were. Which is odd considering all the resources available in today's gaming world but like I mentioned above, Game studios are not willing to take risks and try new things or sail into untested waters. Often times it's just safer to release the next FSP game with loot boxes than it is to try something new.
4: monetization
This is a big one and probably one of the main reasons many games are lacklustre these days. Gone are the days where you bought a full game and the Devs packed as much content as they could into it. Today, Game studios strive to include as much micro transactions as possible and breaking up their game and content into those micro transactions. I'll use wrestling games as an example here. Back in the day when you bought WWF No Mercy or Smackdown Here Comes the Pain you got the full game. Today, 2K will sell you a game missing half the roster and make you spend even more money to get them after paying $60-$100. So when it's all said and done you end up paying almost double the cost of the initial buy in.
5: Games are broken
With the ease of internet access often times game studios will rush games out to the public without care that what they are releasing is a buggy mess. The "we'll fix it in post" is a thing game studios all too often these days do. Basically turning their player base into game testers. It's made worse when those bugs and glitches are never resolved properly. Back when games didn't have internet access and it was plug and play game studios had to make sure that every bug they could find was resolved before releasing it. Things did get over looked from time to time but not nearly as bad as it is today.
I was a teenager in the late 90's and just getting into PC gaming. That was honestly my favorite era because everything felt so magical and groundbreaking.
The creativity and expert programming skills of the 80s, when computer games was becoming a BIG thing, merged with the vastly improved hardware coming out in the 90s and early 00s, to generate many of the genredefining or even genrecreating games.
Hardware limitations made video games better.
Music too
Not better but creative
Unironically, it did in most cases
There are always hardware limitations, always will be.
@sleepless2685 creativity is better. Limitations always result in design ideas that you would never think of id you had limitless resources. Watch the making of any classic movie or game and some of the best parts are the result of creatively navigating limitations.
I just love how it looks and the atmosphere these types of graphics create. No ammount of advanced 3D graphics on isometric games or attempts at emulating it did it for me.
There's something special about them right? Glad we're on the same page 👊😎
@@GameTalesHQ Age of Mythology is another game with similar graphics and great atmosphere 👌🏼🏛🏝
@@Helios_17_ I haven't played it sadly, heard good things about it though! It was fully 3D right?
@@GameTalesHQ I’m not 100% sure, i know it came out in 2002. The graphics are similar to Age of Empires 2 but have a very unique aesthetic to them. You should definitely check it out sometime, i couldn’t say enough good things about it 👍🏼
i wondered how tarkov will look like with this
The big advantage and why this type of graphic is so nice is that everything you see, every sprite was carefully made, balanced with color/contrast/hue. In real real 3d since there you dont know from which angle will they looking the action, its much more hard.
True! That's where that level of cohesion comes from.
The main issue with the technique is lighting. For much of the period where this was in use, that wasn't an issue as people didn't expect fancy colored lighting effects. But, when you had games like Diablo where there was a light source at the player, it could look kind of janky. There were also some challenges handling transparency if you wanted to walk behind things.
That being said, one of the other cool things about the technology was that if they kept the files, they could always rerender them for higher resolutions, which wasn't really an option for other types of graphics.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade yeah, back then there was no graphic card to handle proper lightning anyway, so real 3d didnt had that big of an advantage in lighting neither. Yes it could have directional shadow. But it had to be very low poly. Even early 3d games like Warcraft3 or BFME, or Age of Mythology didnt really do much with lighting, maybe some shadow here and there.
I think directional lightning and even some Pseudo Global Illumination is possible with normal maps and Shader wizardry. But the Industry mostly went the other way.
The other big advantage of 3d is that if you change something its not a big deal. When you have to re render a bunch of sprites is a little more timeconsuming. Adaptive animations also almost impossible.
composition. The appeal of paintings and still images, the meditative space. The comfort knowing you cant choose a better angle. It creates a stillness and focus of mind.
@@mf-h3659 A beautiful way of expressing it. You can also pet your pet while staring at a scene.
Topic aside, you seem like a humble, well educated, down to earth guy. Don't lose that, man, you belong to a rare kind. Thanks for the content
That's such a nice thing to say, thank you
That opening montage was sick!
Thanks man! Had a lot of fun working on it. It was actually quite a bit longer at first but i decided to cut it down to get to the point 😆
SC3000 ... Or 4, maybe (?) music?
I heard that somewhere..
@@sirsancti5504 'Sim City 4 OST - Epicenter' is what you are looking for.
Nostalgia just hit me.
like a time machine
Something I always loved about the prerendered isometrics style, especially for RPGs, is that it felt like you were playing a tabletop game on the most AMAZING terrain ever. The late 90's prerendered stuff absolutely DID age better than older polygon stuff, it's not even close.
I think 3d gaming tech is best employed on this kind of perspective. Game medium to lower intensity would let us appreciate the beauty of the graphics
Well done pre-rendering does wonders. Even stuff like mirrors edge with all pre-rendered light holds up much better than many from its time.
Nice to see Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood on the list. One of my childhood favorites, for sure.
just a few levels but every one of them looked so different each time you played it. One of my favourites too, I'm surprise that it wasn't that popular, or at least i didn't know anybody who played it
It was a really fun game, and one of those that has aged the best visually, even when compared to other pre-rendered games.
Memory unlocked! I completely forgot about that game. It was awesome!
I have never heard about this game before. I will check it out though.
@@bodycounter9386 Steam version doesn't work with nowadays computers, unless you get the patch yourself, otherwise get the GoG version which has the patch applied by default and it's only £0.59
One amazing thing about Robin Hood: The Legends of Sherwood is that the scenery was largely not rendered, but hand-made.
There is something magical about these older games.
A 100%!
nostalgia
@@wololo10Some of them, yes. But games like Starcraft, Heroes 3, Diablo 2, Baldur’s Gate 2/Icewind Dale, Pharaoh/Caesar/Emperor are just as deep, playable (without some quality of life stuff) and relevant as their modern successors.
Edit: Forgot AOE 2, on Steam the player count almost rivals AOE4
it's not magic but hard labor
some of this games are objectively better than modern games.
List recommended by GameTalesHQ at the end of the video:
Desperados: Wanted dead or alive (2001)
Commandos: Behind enemy lines (1998)
Commandos: Men of courage (2001)
Beach life (2002)
Stronghold (2001)
Stronghold: Crusader (2002)
The sims (2000)
Sim city 4 (2003)
The settlers 4 (2001)
Anno 1602 (1998)
Robin Hood: The legend of Sherwood (2002)
Gangsters: Organized crime (1998)
Diablo 2 (2000)
Sudden strike (2001)
America: No peace beyond the line (2001)
Age of empires (1997)
Age of empires: Age of kings (1999)
American conquest: Fight back (2003)
Rollercoaster tycoon 2 (2002)
Zoo tycoon (2001)
Sanitarium (1998)
Baldur's gate 2 (2000)
Planetscape: Torment (1999)
Fallout 2 (1998)
Legend.
Out of those games (as far as I know) the following have some sort of remaster that make them even prettier and/or update them to be played on newer systems/resolutions:
Stronghold - Definitive Edition
Settlers IV - Gold Edition/History Edition
Diablo 2 - Ressurected
Age of Empires I - Definitive Edition (II has Definitive Edition too)
Baldur's Gate 2 - Enhanced Edition (Baldur's Gate 1 has EE too)
Planescape: Torment - Enhanced Edition
Sudden Strike - no official remaster, but mods to make it HD exist
Fallout 2 (and 1) - no official remaster, but plenty of mods to make it prettier
Also, there's another Black Isle game series missing from the list, which is Icewind Dale (considered by many to be as good/legendary as Baldur's Gate and Fallout), which also has an Enhanced Edition. IWD 2 does not have an official Enhanced Edition, but does have a fan-made Enhanced Edition (game was pretty much remade from 0 by modders), which is pretty close to what an Enhanced Edition for Infinity Engine games (BG, IWD, Planescape) usually is.
Where's the Heroes III
I just cant get The first Stronghold to work on modern pc's.
Only stronghold crusader.
Sanitarium was and is the game to play, still. It will always be relevant. There is something about a game that is as concise as a book about a horror novel.
I agree with this being an underrated artstyle; it offers a certain clarity and style, and has a sort of diorama-like quality to it that you don't get with other types of graphical methods. I'm actually developing an RTS that uses this method, as well as some modern techniques that weren't possible with that era of late 90s/early 00s isometric, like using normal and specularity sprites to allow for fully 3D lighting and shadow-casting on otherwise completely 2D sprites.
Your game has an awesome aesthetic! Good luck with it 😁
Respect, not a game dev myself, but I studied comp sci in college and projections, orthography, etc, etc was the bane of my existence. I also hear pathfinding is tricky for isometric games 🫡
I can't wait for your game to come out!
Hey nice to see you here! I'm eager to try a demo or early access version of DORF
Its the diorama effect indeed, every map is art in itself basically, most notable was Commandos 2. You could do away with a grid pattern and do more natural stuff. Slowly the rts/building genre is catching up but its a long ways to go. Manor lords made me feel very nostalgic when i tested the 3rdperson mode and walked through low branches onto a narrower footpath that led to some woodchoppers hut. And everything was in smooth realistic transition with curves an no grid.
Surprised you didn’t mention the Command & Conquer games. I’ve always loved these isometric environments that look like artwork.
Same. Tiberian Sun was a master class in atmosphere. So memorable.
Heroes of might and magick 3 got one of the most magical map ever
It feels so alive despite being mostly static.
Heroes 4 was the true height of series in my opinion.
Spend countless hours in the map editor crafting experiences for me and my siblings to enjoy.
YES this was the perfect example. That game was beautiful
@@xergiok2322 Really... I played Heroes 4 way before I discovered the internet so I don't really know the common opinions, but my family and I liked it most.
@levoGAMES I also love Heroes 4! It's actually not so uncommon an opinion. I watch a heroes 4 youtuber, noverlord. Though he hasnt uploaded in a while.
Part of the reason I really love Factorio - this art style just looks great.
Starcraft 1 has these graphics and has a very gritty realistic style, Starcraft 2 in 3d looks a bit goofy and cartoony in comparison
Yes, it is waste of computer power to use 3d on games like factoria as using pictures give the same and better graphics and there is no need for 3d... I also like the graphics in Factorio...
Factorio is gorgeous.
same with c&c games
C&C actually used real world physics due to voxel rendering for a brief time.
Factorio still does it for the same reason the old games do it, allowing the game to run properly (when you have a giant continent spanning mega factory)
I fell in love with PC gaming as a kid in the mid-late 90s, so these pre-rendered graphics give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. I wish they could have a rebirth like the 90s retro FPS are experiencing.
check out Project Zomboid. a zombie survival rogue-like sandbox that uses iso perspective. its like sims 1 if it was a zombie apocalypse. there's a metric crap tonne of mods, just for pre render tile packs to expand upon the build your own home/base aspect of the game has a huge player base right now. and its very addicting.
they have had a rebirth. theres been tons of great games in this style the last 10 years. both pillars of eternity games. both divinity games. tyranny. disco elysium. wasteland 3. both pathfinder games. and of course, baldurs gate 3. you can move the camera in bg3 but clearly the intended way is isometric.
There is something to be said about the comeback. Though I'm not an expert on the style, I do notice that the remastered Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition, the new prerendered building collapse animations have some very fancy animation not possible before, with its animating of every brick and every piece of lumber roof object individually. It's using modern technology to achieve having the look of the old style, but in a new jacket.
Also, more than 256 colors. 256 colors gave you the same limitation as pixel art though with more flexibility. Not every pixel matters as in pixel art, but at least every color matters. 16 colors in 16 shades. Things have to be painted in a specific color and shade with intent, as the next color in the palette is way different. Nowadays, you have access to over 16 million colors. But even so, you can still paint with the same intent as before; though with a smoother gradient between shades.
And then there are the technical improvements. Previously, in Age of Empires buildings were rendered at a certain pixel count. If you had a higher resolution screen, your game view was more zoomed out as every pixel was smaller. Nowadays, every building can be rendered separately from exact pixel counts, and the game can be zoomed in at the same level independent of the screen resolution. It also added a zoom function to zoom in or out during the game using the scroll wheel.
Lastly of course, wide screen.
Commandos 2 was a tour de force, for me - the graphical jump from the first game to the second, the dynamic use of lighting and the smooth animations are still stuck in my brain to this day. So glad you've shone a light on these games!
Love commandos!! Spent so many hours getting absolutely destroyed lol.
I played that game hard, but damn it was hard. I stealthed every mission (save scumming) but i could not stealth either the last or the 1 before last mission.
I played it on PS2 too lol
The voice of a german soldier saying "Nein! Nein!" reverberates thru my soul to this day lol
C2 is my all time favourite 😍
The instantaneously reacting guards ruined the whole game for me. There was no "investigating" mode.
I loved how expressed your point in just about 5 minutes even after briefly going through the history of the technology and why it was necessary. Often, other RUclipsrs will go into a long, convoluted monologue about the history of something before getting to the actual point, when they could've expressed their opinion in a couple of minutes. Love the editing and list of your favourite games without wasting too much time. Solid video!
Thank you!
Agreed 100x. I was astonished when it ended after the list, having made the point as thoroughly as anyone could need... you are a class act.
I remember seeing that immense Buddha sculpture in Commandos 2. At the time I was a kid and I thought graphics would never get any better.
In a sense, they never did
While not really isometric, we cannot forget about games like Heroes of Might and Magic. The third game in the series looks like a living painting, it looks breathtakingly gorgeous to this day.
My favourite game, I can never get tired of playing it. I loved it as a kid and I love it as a 32 year old guy. The feeling it gives you is unmatched - the campaigns, characters and stories are timeless, but even the small things like visiting a mill or picking up an item are described in such detail, you just get pulled into the world
Grim Fandango remains my favorite game of all time and its partially because of the prerendered graphics, maybe because the prerendered screens create such mystery and make you imagine what could be around the corner.
I Ctrl+F'd grim fandango as soon as i opened the video
Grim Fandango is interesting because it's right at the intersection of 3D models atop prerendered fixed-field backgrounds. That was a style that didn't last very long at all and had very few exemplars on PC. A lot of games on the original Playstation employed it because at the time everyone was trying to find uses for the massive storage capacity of a CD. Final Fantasy games through the original Playstation era (7-9) used it extensively, as well as some tank-control horror games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil. The Nintendo 64 never had large enough storage to make that format work, and so its games leaned entirely on 3D models. By the time the Dreamcast and PS2 rolled around they had the power to render convincing backgrounds.
I feel the 3D-on-prerender aesthetic has aged better than very early 3D like Tomb Raider, yet not quite as well as the games described in the video. Partially this is because the low-poly 3D models, textures, and animations themselves haven't aged well. But for these games specifically I think it's because the rendered backgrounds only really work on a full screen, and are comparatively low-res on modern displays. But isolinear strategy/RPG games like Planescape Torment have large scrolling backgrounds and sprites that look smaller but beautifully crisp at 1080p 1:1 scale, and still very good with bilinear upscaling at 4K.
@@jeffhiner This was very informative, thanks.
I don't think I need to explain how much I love LucasArts games... but the 3D scenes in Grim Fandango were actually what turned me _off_ it. I finished the game, but it kept annoying me the whole way through.
I keep promising myself to revisit it. Maybe I'll play the remastered edition - I hear it's much easier on the eyes.
Tropico 1 (2001) is also a beautiful example of pre rendered graphics video game ❤ good memories
I came here to mention Tropico 1.
My brother played Tropico 4 and Tropico 5 for hours and hours a few years ago. They seemed quite cool.
These sorts of graphics genuinely never look bad.
Icewind Dale II has breathtakingly beautiful pre-rendered graphics
The starting location of Targos, its dock piers, ships, lighthouses, the houses, tents, airships and the palisade wall combined with the music from Inon Zur makes for an immersive adventure
Yeah, funnily enough I do think the devs managed to create much better and lovelier looking nature vistas in IWD2 then in BG2(both infinity engine games/same studios), except for the underdark section of the game. Those looked good in both games. On the other hand, I absolutely love the man-made and magic-made structures in BG2. The temple district and the Temple interior of Lathander alone looks so great.
someone else who appreciated Icewind Dale II, i could cry. but not as hard as i cried when i read it can’t be played anymore because the original version was either lost or destroyed. an outstanding game left to memory
One of the reasons these old 2D games tend to look so good even today, is because in the process of production of 2D sprites or backgrounds, devs would start on a powerful "graphics station" (so called back in the day, just a reaaaly powerful PC with specialized 3D software) and make very detailed 3D models, compute detailed shadows for everything, would set up light sources actually lighting surroundings realistically, add some approximate reflections on things like armor etc. and then- just bake them as 2D pictures which display on your slow end-user's pc or console with all those "effects" baked in them without actually having the target hardware computing them, and these were (some still are) VERY demanding effects to run real time, not practical at the time at all. If your character was walking, you'd see a 2D series of "snapshots" of a 3D model in different poses, lit up, self-shadowed and... displayed as a series of sprites-pictures.
Remember in the early days of 3D you didn't really have stuff like real shadows except maybe for a round blob directly beneath a character, no things like real 3D grass, no shadows being cast by trees etc. First trees in 3D were basically 2D sprites, and there was a running joke that they were always "facing you with their 3D side". Certainly you DIDN'T get detailed 3D trees with leaves casting shadows on grass beneath... But when making a 2D game- such things are not a problem, just... they wont be 3D. So you had very basic 3D, versus very detailed 2D. Yet if you "were there" at the time, even that simple 3D was still mindblowing! But it took 3D a long time to be able to compete with detailed 2D backgrounds prerendered on powerful PCs.
For sure! I feel like it took until ~2006 for 3d graphics to catch up somewhat. Even longer for rts games with many units on screen!
Yes, to this day I think the cities I created in Sim City 4 beat everything in any modern 3D city builder in terms of aesthetics and realism. When we realize that real time rendering isn't always the best, perhaps we'll enter a post-modern era in PC gaming.
I remember not understanding the 3d hype. The first 3d RTS games clearly looked worse than their earlier, 2d versions.
So... it's should be called post-rendered graphics instead.😅
Nice rundown but the 2d and 3d are now and always have been marketing terms. Everything graphics is 4d matrix operations regardless of what projection system you use and everything on a computer is rendered in 2d because your monitor is a flat square.
You actually live in 4d, if you lived in 3d you wouldn't have depth perception. It's the greatest crime display and video game marketing departments ever committed was convincing everyone they live in 3d when they know damn well a computer needs x,y,z, AND W to calculate and project any object.
Pre-rendered graphics made games look like you was living in that world and made the games look modern as if they were made in 2015 back in 1996-2005.
I had nomidea what that was all about so this was interesting. These grahpics seemed to punch above their weight class.
FF7 vs FF7 Remake encapsulates the difference perfectly. The background images look gorgeous in the original, and capture the steampunk atmosphere in a way that the Remake doesn't come close to reproducing. It's like watching a movie, with highly intentional camera angles, compared to viewing a scene with a free camera. If you want a sandboxing experience, free camera can be more suitable for the purpose, but if you want to convey a specific type of atmosphere, fixed angles are more optimal in my opinion.
In 2005 the Xbox 360 was out lol
I started the anno series in around 2020 with Anno 1404. I knew it was an old game but was amazed by the detail. Beautiful game. I think it must've been one of the last big studio isometric games. So yeah these games really do stand visually more than a decade later.
As someone born in the 90s this was super nostalgic to see. Crazy to realize these games are over 20 years old and still look so good! Sad to see there are not many games with a similar style these days. I would say something like BG3's graphics style would be like an evolution of this era's style. By using the same angle but with 3D models and animations.
You really outdid yourself with this one! Great video and keep up the good work 👏🏻
No 3D-game from that era can match the level of detail and aesthetics of these pre-rendered games. And you're right! The spirit of these games lives on in games like: BG3, XCOM, League of Legends etc. Thanks for the comment :)
Sure PS1 and N64 games looked very blocky, but the jerky animations pre-rendered 2D characters had also looked bad and was esp unimmersive when mixed with polygon backgrounds (Mario Kart 64, Bungies Myth fex). AVGN has himself recorded as a kid in his Genesis vs SNES video talking about the "smooth" animation, and thats why i think most were more impressed by the blocky polygon graphics back then at least when like PS2 came around.
Gorky 17 (1999) was one of those early games with 3d characters over pre-rendered isometric backgrounds. I remember thinking how this approach could potentially be great for RPGs since it could combine all the beautiful background detail with characters being able to change their appearance depending on what exactly they wear and what weapons they wield.
To a large extent yes, although the switch to LCD screens makes them look a lot worse than they should.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade I don't know about that. Might be true for console gaming but PC monitors had a much crisper picture even back in the 90s. You could crank the resolution all the way up to 1024x768 and the on-screen text would still be prefectly legible even with tiny font sizes. That's why pixel graphics on PC always looked as crisp and blocky as they do on modern monitors unlike those console games where the picture would get smoothed by the blurry CRT TV.
You could actually tell if a game was a console port by its huge font size. A typical PC game, on the contrary, would become completely unreadable if you tried to use a TV as a monitor. I can tell, I tried that.
My favorite one is Sanitarium, which I was gifted a demo cd-room in 99, and held to it for about 10 years before getting my first PC to run. I instantly fell absolutely in love with the thing and eventually got the full game. Deep storytelling and full of bizarre elements designed in great art.
Oh my goddd when this video began and you started the clip montage, I was thinking "man so this is why Anno 1602 always looked so good to me." AND THEN YOU SHOWED IT! I love you
AHH the Sim City 4 OST.
This was a great video, you should make an entire series on these beautiful games!
I'll definitely cover many of them on the channel in the future!
SC4 and SC3000... the best soundtracks ever recorded.
That OST still gives me goosebumps every time...
@@tonyzed6831up there along with Skyrim
Very cool video. But i REALLY appreciate that you were respectful on my time. Too many youtubers nowadays feel it is their sacred duty to turn every video idea into a 28 minute essay nowadays. I don't have the time, lads ... no one does anymore.
Cheers from france
Glad you enjoyed, greetings from the Netherlands
i was sad to see how short it was... i enjoy the longer videos... IF they are well done... this one was... easily could be 4x the length
@@narmale brainwashed
Quelle tristesse et quelle arrogance. Plus personne n'a le temps, alors rushons encore et toujours plus. Transformons toutes les vidéos en reels, et tous les reels en tiktoks. Pour qui les gens se prennent ils ? Des ministres ? Jsuis prêt à parier que tout ces gens qui n'ont pas le temps passent 1h sur insta, et 1h sur tiktok à mater de la daube. Faut arrêter de se voiler la face
@@choupi4719 rentre chez toi, choupi. On s'en branle. Va regarder des vidéos d'une heure.
This video was *just* the right length for the message you wanted to convey. Thank you for not trying to extend it for view time, being concise to to the point is a much better viewing experience.
Thank you! I hate padding as much as the next guy :)
This look was what made those PS1 Final Fantasy games so iconic too. FF7 and 9 had such beautiful atmospheric designs that really felt like another world.
Heeeey;
FF8 was very pretty as well ☺
@@Dubious_Dubs
Yes, FF8 was my first ever game that had detailed pre-rendered backgrounds, and these environments were a huge jump from anything that came before for me, so it left a strong impression.
Balamb Garden, Deling City, Esthar, ruins/tomb, Fisherman's Horizon, and Ultimecia Castle amazed me, and this is just a shortlist of what comes to mind 20+ years later.
FFX, despite being mostly 3D rendered (with low textures even in the remaster), actually had some pre-rendered backgrounds too, and those places seemed to have the most intricate detail (inside of some shops, the airship, the dreaming fayth area, etc). The interactivity within pre-rendered FMVs on PS2 was also better than the jumping around that seemed to happen in the PS1 games. (FF8 Irvine lining up his sniper shot at the end of disc 1 conveyed his nervousness, I guess...)
@@Dubious_Dubs Final Fantasy 8 is easily the worst game in the series but fuck is it a visual masterpiece for when it came out.
@@fearedjames I completely disagree, love the story of 8, the magic system was fucking ass though, "hey use your best magic to power your GFs but in doing so every use will make you weaker until you draw some more", I hardly ever used Magic in it just because I hated the draw mechanic, But the story, the music, the characters, loved it!
@@fearedjames FF8 was the worst before FF13. But I still very much enjoyed FF8. For the record, I started with the OG final fantasy back on Nintendo. I am an FF6, Tactics, and FF7 purist though. Thats the trinity in my eyes. The rest are all great but they do have some flaws.
I wanted to leave but I stayed for the montage.
Resident evil 1 remake has the most gorgeous renders. There’s something so nicely done about those in RE1 I find beautiful to look at.
Ah I remember Baldurs Gate 2 and Planescape. The handcrafted environments are drenched in so much ambiance and has so much character. When it takes long to manually develop them, there is a lot of thought that needs to go into how the scenery feels and functions.
Another one is commandos. Every location is different and unique.
Short video but very informative and entertaining to watch. So much nostalgia watching those old games. Thank you
One thing I could not help but notice playing Cossacks and Blitzkrieg, is how everything not only looks lively and colorful, but also how easy it is to see what happens on screen. Most modern RTS's use ton of HUD elements to highlight units and objects, because color-wise they're either brown-on-brown "realistic" mess or have more flashy colors and lights than a rave party.
Nice to see somebody else also mentioned Cossacks. I remember them saying that they aren't hopping on this 3D trend and sticking to sprites. And that for the big ships they go to 128 sprites per ship, so you can see it from many different angles (very unlike Warcraft 2 had, every 45 degrees, aka only 8 sprites)
I guess I have to check Blitzkrieg now, lol
So much this... the design aspect has gone down the crapper imo-often favoring realism over mechanically engaging design and gameplay. Everything's too busy, and while the defenders will say it's closer to reality, it's not, because the the input information/senses are so much more limited than real life.
@@johnbigelson7471 Yeah, the busyness of modern textures and models is annoying most of the time. Is as if the people working on that cannot simply have something smooth and more empty, which makes it more recognizable, fearing that the management will think they lazy-ed out or something.
Warcraft 3 and reforged are perfect examples of that. And I fear that the industry hasn't learned this lesson yet.
I've been playing Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge since it came to steam a few week back with CnC Net updates that make it possible to play on bigger resolutions and got remembered how much I like that game's art style - way better than newer 3D entries in the C&C / Red Alert franchise. This kinds of art style truly is ageless.
Scrolled way too far to see CnC mentioned!
@@michaels7168for real
RA2 only used sprites for infantry. The rest are voxels. Much more sophisticated than earlier 2D games.
The live action cut scenes were so funny too.
That looks great and I also love the way pre-rendered backgrounds look in old JRPGs.
This video really hit the spot. Thanks for making this and conjuring up sweet memories of this era in gaming, when I was between ages 11-14. The games you’ve mentioned are a real treasure.
Only just discovered your channel and looking forward to watching more of you.
I'm glad you enjoyed and thanks!
youve really opened my eyes to the beauty of this art style. Great vid!
Commandos was so awesome!
Subbed! This channel seems to be criminally underrated so far. 🤯 The algorithm will pick you up soon enough!
Thank you! Commandos will always have a special place in my heart. And welcome aboard the channel :)
I can’t believe commandos came out in 1998, it still holds up
@@GameTalesHQ Just realised that Hooligans: Storm over Europe didn't make the cut 🤣
@@iainwalker5150 Amazing stuff huh! Did you play the remastered versions as well?
@@dreejz lmao! Never heard of it before but it looks super interesting. I'll definitely look into it haha
Thanks for bringing back very fond childhood memories! I actually forgot some of those games already. Very many thanks!
Glad I could help you remember :)
Heh, I've always said that the reason Age of Empires II outlasted all the following chapters is because of the 2D nature of the game that made it age incredibly well.
Came here to say this!
All they need to do is make another one that looks similar!
This answers why I could only run StarCraft 2 in my high end PC, while I could run the original Brood War even in my dad's oldest laptop. The graphical difference between these two games is insane, and it tells me how clever game developer was back in the day. Their work is not only limited by creativity, but also actual computer hardware limitations. The ways they have to gone through to twist their minds to serve us 3D graphics in its earliest times and in limited hardware capability will forever have my respect. They're the foundation of the modern gaming industry.
I have such fond memories playing an RPG back in the day called Sacred. Goddamn those pre-rendered towns were so pretty, I would kinda role play in my head which town I wanted to be my home.
I totally agree! This is the most beautiful artstyle.
I thought I was the only one with this, but to me this graphic equals nostalgia. It feels so good to see this.
Glad it resonated with you! I always thought the same thing; that I was alone in this opinion. But it seems many people agree :)
Old pre rendered backgrounds are still unrivaled to this day.
Man, I wish your video would be longer, appreciate what you did here. It's like going back to the 2000s and enjoying video games for no reason but fun.
super beautiful and concise video man. I love how amazing this video is and that it isn't 20 minutes long for no reason. Great work
Yeah, this video hit the right spot. It was a short and sweet video, and that opening montage was FIRE!!!
Thank you
thank for the compiled list at the end and the nostalgia trip ! love to see more videos regarding the topic.
Glad you enjoyed!
That montage was incredible , earned yourself a subscriber right there. I’m glad to hear someone else give Sim City 4 the flowers it deserves, such a beautiful game so clearly made with attention to details, stronghold games as well is a great example😊
Thank you! Had a lot of fun putting it together.
Dude... Commando 2 is the game ive been trying to search for so long. I played it once back then and forgot the title and have been thinking searching and finding out the title for so long. None of my friends tried it and thought i was imagining that game. Finally found it. OMG. Thank you.
Glad you found it, one of the best games ever made in my opinion! Word of warning though! The remaster on steam is quite buggy and has missing sounds, so if you can get the original to work with a patch that might be the better approach. (Can''t guarantee it works on modern machine's though)
im really surprised not too many games try to replicate the pre-rendered look in real time
I think it's probably much harder to do than it may appear. With 3D, it's relatively easy to notice flaws because it's trying to emulate environments the way we perceive them in real life, but 2D forces our brains to accept more abstraction, so even the uncanny can be aesthetically pleasing. Kind of like a painting really.
- In spite of limitations creativity rose to the top and we enjoyed timeless gems that will never fade.
- With endless freedom we are suffering due to lack of creativity and imagination, and finding gems in sea of mud is become harder and harder.
That SimCity 4 OST music in the beginning GOES HARD!! Jesus, the nostalgia is real!
Just a quick correction on Supergiant Games, Hades (I didn't watch the dev vids for the other three), doesn't use hand drawn sprites but pre-rendered characters, they just use a toon shader instead of a realistic one. They documented their process in Inside Hades - 3D Modeling & Rigging on their youtube channel.
Ah, thanks for the correction!
Totally unrelated to the comment, but I can’t f-ing wait for the sequel!!!!
Pre-rendered games have stood the test of time so well, many of them still look incredible. Thanks for the video!
I would consider this video a very gentle and effective nudge into making me going back to explore isometric game again.
Thanks! and you earned another sub.
Glad you enjoyed the video :)
Great video as usual. Desperados and Commandos bring back sweet memories. Thank you also for the list!
No problem and thanks for watching! Those two games are definitely my favorite on the list!
Little Big Adventure had pre rendered backgrounds and 3d characters on top. One of my most favourite games ever. It looked fantastic.
yeah its love for life!
Playing the demo of little bit adventure is one of my favourite childhood memories! It gave me that feeling of being so clever
I loved these games. Pretty sure there are "remakes" of them now.
That is what I have been wondering - where is Twinsen on the list?
And that is why Heroes of Might and Magic III is still the most beautiful game on earth. Period.
Sorry, but that game is fugly. Charming with personality, but fugly. I personally think that Age of Wonders Shadow Magic looks way better, but I might be biased here as I've played that game a lot more.
HoMM II and III have beautiful artstyles in my opinion. Impossible not to be mesmerized by the art on those games. Music is top notch too.
@@Matheusss89 there are orchestra concerts of homm3 music in Poland. (The game is really popular here).
Ah Heroes of Might and Magic - the only setting where Monday is the best day of the week 😀
When they switched to 3D and it looked worse, it's such a shock. Stronghold and Age of Empire were other examples in which the switch was simply not worth it. I understand the pain in the butt working with pre-rendered, and the amount of stress and effort it puts on the art team but damn, almost everyone did their best work during that golden era for some reason. Maxis, Firaxis and heck, even Blizzard. While it's true WarCraft 3 3D was one of the rare case in which the 3D switch was done well, compare to original StarCraft it's nowhere as striking and beautiful. Not to mention the long list of CRPGs. There's something to be said about working within a set limit and able to produce the best of works. I suspect that's why FromSoft had jumped from one success to another, they work on their tech very little at a time and work within that limit rather than chasing boundaries.
I would say this goes for music as well. 8 bit music from Pokemon, Mario, etc were some of the greatest compositions I have ever heard. Music writers were, I think, MORE creative with the limited numbers of channels and type of sounds they had.
Interesting! I don't necessarily agree. Although some of the older music has become iconic, I prefer it when a full orchestra can do a soundtrack. But i can see why you prefer 8 bit, music is mega subjective after all!
You can't have listened to many video game soundtracks at all. This is a crazy take
I was a kid who would get extremely excited if my parents would let me play Age of Empires II for an hour or so. Now I have over 100 games in my steam library and a 4080 pc but I barely even feel anything when I play them
How do we fix it bro???
Pillars of Eternity gave me exactly the same feelings as these retro graphics. Great game
I think that was my first real taste of this art style, sadly I didn't like the game much and left off playing it, but the visuals combined with the RPG elements really drew me in.
@@nullifye7816 Oh I feel you, it's not an easy game to stay with. I think after 80 hours or so there came something up in RL so I had to drop it for a couple of weeks... That was 2 years ago... It is quite hard to get into again
These games always makes me feel like i'm 10 again, playing with my action figures (or military mini figures) on an epic diorama, i love it.
Great topic! Just subbed! I love the 2000s it's our tech rennaisance after all nowadays their flame of inspiration is gone but it lives on through games like these thank you for your list of games I remember some of those from bk in the day keep em videos coming!
I used to get so immersed in Desperados as a kid. The beautiful art style with that realistic look, combined with the music and voice acting got me so addicted to it.
Doc McCoy was my favourite in the gang, his knock-out gas was so OP.
"Yip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", "Not a problem", "This should end in tears", "A new game a new chance", all those voice lines are burned into my mind as well. Still up there as one of my favorite games period.
@@GameTalesHQ That game was gooood, Beat it multiple times over the years. setting up a snake on top of the ladder while shooting enemys climbing up was OP as well :)
Prerendered background was the reason I fell in love with the original Resident Evil trilogy. So much storytelling in one background - it felt much more movie like!
Oh wow, never thought I will see The Settlers IV ever mentioned again. Nox made by Westwood Studios before they got bought by EA was also a beautiful pre-rendered game.
Thank you for this video. Very entertaining, and I added a few names to the list of old games I want to play. I rarely play games that were released after 2005 or so.
Resolution is one the main reasons. A 4k sprite will roughly be 4 times the size of a 720p sprite. As computer screen resolution has increased the amount of detail required in the sprites also increases which takes more time.
Yep, that's the biggest downside.
Fallout 2 is my all-time favorite game and it looks stunning, but a close second is Baldur's Gate 2, and i say for sure that the isometric/diorama style of that game is simply timeless. It will never age. It is immortal and timeless.
Timeless is the keyword! Much like with stylized 3d graphics. Games that chase the newest tech just to look "realistic", usually end up looking dated within a couple years, and fall into the pit of uncanny valley.
I really love this kind of rendering and style. IsoRPGs will always have a place in my heart. Brings a tear to my eye, good times with Arcanum, Baldur's Gate, etc.
This is why I always loved the first Stronghold (1 & Crusader) over all its proper 3D sequels. The pre-rendered sprites were gorgeous and immersive.
Same here! They never re-captured the magic of those first two games.
Your comment reminded me that Crusader (not Stronghold, the No Remorse/Regret games) should also be mentioned here.
0 AD is a nice modern one. Free and open source.
Technology ages, but good art style and direction doesn't. Whilst not isometric, an honourable mention to things like the Resident Evil Remake that mixed pre-rendered backgrounds with 3D assets. 2 decades later and it still looks amazing.
Amazing!!! It seems like someone took the nostalgic desires of appreciating a good aesthetic of isometric games with pre-rendered graphics, from the bottom of my chest of memories from the 1990s and until the mid-2000s of the last millennium.
This graphic style of game is truly timeless! And this is not restricted to isometric RPGs and RTS, but to titles like the classics Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Donkey Kong Country and so many other classic titles. I loved the list of suggestions at the end of the video, some of which I was completely unaware of.
Oh yes, it's definitely not limited to isometric games. Lot's of beautiful games outside that viewpoint.
Glad you enjoyed the video and I hope you've found some new potential favorites :)
this is so high quality for someone with only ~2K subs, hope you blow up man
The original Fallout has caught my attention recently. I love the retro feel to it and everything that was possible to do at the time. Most modern games just seem to be lacking
If you don’t mind losing out on some 2024 quality of life features, dealing with a few archaic systems and the initial learning curve, Fallout 1 & 2 are definitely some of the best RPG’s you’ll ever play. I recommend you read some tips on character creation, it will save a lot of frustration
@@peterk2735 I have all the games downloaded but it's been so long since I've tried having a go at them. The games I grew up with in the early 2000s and 2010s were all quite streamlined and simple mostly.
The older I get the less such games appeal to me, and the games from before my generation look to have what I'm looking for. Imagination and feel is important, and because these games have more in common with real tabletop they embody those things better
@@peterk2735 Came back to say that I just finished the 1st one last night. Was excellent.
I searched around online for more fallout and came across Resurrection 1.5, which is a mod for 2 set between it and 1. I love the feel that it's an animated tabletop. We certainly need more of these lol
Prerendered environments are still a totally legit technique today, as long as you have a fixed or orthographic camera. Then you don't have to race to render the scene in 16 ms and instead can take as long as you want, which is why these games have such beautiful backgrounds.
Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 9 are the best examples of pre rendered graphics for me. The visual style really comes into its own when you visit the many distinct towns which when you add the score gives every new area a unique feel.
Please make a similar video about the fixed camera games, which they use a mixture of 3d graphics and pre-rendered backgrounds. I am a huge fan of this art design, and many games used that just looked incredible for that time, especially titles like Parasite Eve 2, dino crysis , and Resident Evil 3
Maybe in the future, I sadly didn't grow up with a console and only played the REmake later in life. There are a couple of good video's on the topic already if you search for: Pre rendered backgrounds!
this really helped with starcraft 1 as well when there were a billion units on the screen
Probably less with the max pop limit of 200 per player though :D In fact less as many units would use more than 1 pop limit, unlike for Warcraft 2 where you'd be really entitled to up to 200 units per player with a proper farmland supply.:)
@@nihilex5838 Well, with zerg you can technically have more than 200 units, as zerlings, scourges and overlords use less than 1 food each. In practice it's extremely unlikely.
@@Winnetou17 indeed, also true.
Knights and Merchants made me fall in love with this art style.
I completely forgot about that one, but it's true: I never could get into any of the older Settlers games as somehow K&M just looks better.
K&M was a real gem
Meh. It was a terrible game as it was implemented
@@JS-wp4gs I mean even Warcraft couldn't compare. You had two options for path based city building and K&M was better
@@donaldpetersen2382 The village development is great, but I admittedly never played far into the campaign because it could become a military grind and then you would more or less just rebuild the same village again in the next mission. Want to give it another try, but will likely just regret it.
You were correct regarding the genres that use these graphics. I knew what to expect from a game that had that look. Many hours of gameplay, story, lore. Or, many hours of management.
Dino crisis 2, abe oddysey heart of darkness were also pretty good loking games I remember from my childhood on the console side using pre rendered backgrounds
heavy dutch accent alert status: RED
Schuldig! 🙋🏼♂️
It was the 90’s. I’m from Romania and i was 15 years old then. I will never forget the day i started playing Diablo for the first time on my amd pc. The animations, the graphics, the incredible atmosphere created by the sound engineers and that orgasmic music. A feeling i will cherish until the day i die.
It's really refreshing to find someone on internet being nostalgic without needing to diminish how things are done nowadays!
One of the isometric games I appreciate the most from the 90s is Little Big Adventure, I'm glad it's getting a remake coming later this year!
4:43 the list of game titles
I want to recommend more games that i enjoyed... Sacred Gold (2004) and the Shadowrun trilogy (2013-2015)
Those of us who grew up with no internet and a trial version of Age of Empires from the windows 98 cd. Man, I still love isometric games so much, recently i got into remaking the building sprites in blender and honestly had so much fun.
And what about when you’d spent 4 hours downloading a 2 mb custom map, only for your mom to pick up the phone, drop the connection and you’d have to start all
over 😭😆
@@peterk2735 I had my first taste of dialup in 2005.. that tone still haunts my dreams sometimes! :D
The thing that make me reaaally appreciate the beauty of those older pre rendered graphics game is : my brain instantly process to understand everything that is shown on screen. While in modern games, even if the graphics are impressively good, my brain doesn't process instantly to understand everything on the screen, I have to stop for a minute and analyse everything in details to really '' see '' everything because the image and graphics are too cluttered by many many things.. while in older games there is just what it's needed where it's needed, it's not over encumbered. To me it is the big difference between them.
I realized that when I was playing BG3. It's like, yes the game is beautiful but I was having so much more trouble to have a global vision of everything that is shown on screen compared to BG 1/2 because of how much stuff there is at the same time on the screen. It's not necessarily a problem tho, it's just, sometimes for some scenes, an inconvenience.