Game engine developers must be scratching their heads these days. They worked so hard to make sure even the lowest settings won't produce graphics like that, and then we work just as hard trying to force the graphics to look like that.
Depressing Beast Wars question
- Thread starter Anonymous X
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Game engine developers must be scratching their heads these days. They worked so hard to make sure even the lowest settings won't produce graphics like that, and then we work just as hard trying to force the graphics to look like that.
There is a fairly massive, and flush, demographic which literally grew up thinking "Wow! Polygonal lara croft! So life like!" with even a hint of irony in it because it ACTUALLY WAS the most realistic, life like graphics to date.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and making game mods to turn games ugly is within the skill level of even the most basic computer users.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and making game mods to turn games ugly is within the skill level of even the most basic computer users.
With scant few exceptions (Mega Man Legends, Metal Gear Solid, maybe a few others), the 3D video game graphics of that age (which, incidentally, is around when Beast Wars was airing) felt like a big downgrade from what we had on SNES and 2D games on the same platform to me. It wasn't until the Dreamcast where I felt like "Alright, this is good."
Honestly.. I was one of the few people back in the day that liked the DOOM sprites more than the Quake Models.
I don't lump that whole era together. I consider the PS1 a different beast. N64 characters move like marionettes, and I can't unsee it. For me the PS1 warping and jiggling... I want to say "smooths it out" but that's wrong, because PS1 graphics are exactly the opposite of smooth. But it does something that my brain likes.
There was a definite drop in fidelity when we went from sprites, which were just getting better and better quality, to primitive polygonal models. The industry had gotten very good at rendering sprites but 3D graphics were still in their infancy. The PS1/N64 generation could have stood to have more sprite based games (like Symphony of the Night) as they worked through the transition.
How do you mean? I wasn't really trying to lump anything together.
For me, there was 16-bit consoles, then 32/64 bit, and then 128 or whatever Dreamcast was, since they quit counting.
For Beast Wars, I was just pointing out it came out during the PS1 era, and around the time the N64 hit, which is an era people are getting nostalgic for. Which leads to the sort of irony that those video game visuals, which are subjectively worse, hold nostalgia for people, while I don't think the contemporary cartoons like Beast Wars have quite the same.
Just the opposite for me. I love the N64, but I always wished the PS1 would have stuck more with 2D stuff. The 3D graphics just weren't good. Games like FF8-9 could justify it by being just way too big to ever work on the N64, but it's largely games like SotN and MMX4-6 that I associate with the PS1.
At the most extreme, I actually bought a Dreamcast when it was a dead system just to play Soul Reaver. I had bought it for the PS1, but couldn't play it. The game's underwater graphics on the PS1 at the start of the game actually made me nauseous. Within minutes of starting, I had shut it off and started looking for alternate ways to play the game.
I mean, you're dividing it by chronological eras, and I feel like 3D graphics of that era are distinct branches. A lot more visually distinct than SNES vs Sega Genesis.
So I get how someone could be feeling nostalgia for one branch of that 3D era, but not all of it. Someone could like one style but be repulsed by the others, because they're just very different things.
Maybe PS1 works for me because the jagged edges remind me of sprites. It doesn't look as far removed from the sprite era as the N64's clearer polygons, but I don't want to see the polygons clearly.
Fair enough, I suppose. For me, there wasn't a marked enough difference between the two for me to really separate them, especially when there were a fair few games featured across both.
That said, I feel like Beast Wars looked better than either PS1 or N64, and yet, here we are, discussing why people don't like the primitive CGI...
That said, I feel like Beast Wars looked better than either PS1 or N64, and yet, here we are, discussing why people don't like the primitive CGI...
Oh, it seems that yesterday (22nd) was the 28th anniversary of the Beast Wars pilot airing in the States. Doesn’t that make you feel old?
(I saw both parts of the pilot in August ‘96 at the fan meeting, which was held in the old-style “cram 20 people into someone’s living room” format. I enjoyed it.)
(I saw both parts of the pilot in August ‘96 at the fan meeting, which was held in the old-style “cram 20 people into someone’s living room” format. I enjoyed it.)
Sep 16th 1996 for canada.
I was in my second year of high school.
My back hurts.
I was in my second year of high school.
My back hurts.
My back has always been crooked. So I have no idea if I feel old yet or not.
I didn't see the pilot when it first aired because I was too young at the time to even know what a "Beast Wars" was.
I only saw what I did of the show's first season because my older brother watched it. It wasn't until midway through season 2 when things got real that my young mind had finally developed enough to keep up with the show and follow its plot (as best as me and my brother could, that is, considering how erratic the new episodes first aired back then).
I only saw what I did of the show's first season because my older brother watched it. It wasn't until midway through season 2 when things got real that my young mind had finally developed enough to keep up with the show and follow its plot (as best as me and my brother could, that is, considering how erratic the new episodes first aired back then).
Okay, now I feel old.
Master tapes of ReBoot were found and they are in the process of digitizing them. ReBoot ReWind, on their social media channels, posted some comparisons from what's been digitized so far to the old DVD versions. There is a lot less aliasing and details lost in compression for lower resolution TVs of the 90s are more visually apparent on the masters. I imagine the same would hold true for Beasties/Beast Wars if Hasbro were to ever sign off on giving the show the same treatment.
That is assuming the master tapes for Beast Wars even still exist.
The Mainframe studio is still around, though it's had a few changes to the name over the years. Rather their old tapes or whatever media they have is still extant and still readable is another matter entirely.
That’s an issue that has been addressed in the Babylon 5 fandom (and Star Trek). While the actual filmed material is high quality and can be retrieved and upscaled, the digital effects were only ”scaled” to be acceptable on SD televisions of the era. In the case of Star Trek: TNG’s big 4K remaster, they still had the original film and could upscale, but the effects sequences had to be completely redone (which is VERY costly) to make them look nice at 4K resolution. Babylon 5 is in the same boat, where a 4K remaster would effectively require remaking ALL the major SFX sequences.
It’s also why we haven’t seen Paramount do big remasters for DS9 or Voyager: they don’t feel the return would justify the investment the way the Original Series or TNG would have.
Yeah, for all the advancements in CGI…I’m not sure anything makes up for actual ANIMATION skills. Everything today is so sterile, and I think it’s because a LOT of that kind of animation is coming from people of “technical” backgrounds, and maybe not “art/animation” backgrounds.
I was 12, but I didn’t see the series until 1998 when Cartoon Network did that 5 episode run at the end of the second season. But I knew of Beast Wars between the ads and the internet fandom. I didn’t actually get to see the rest of the series until Fox Kids started rerunning the series in 1999 in the build up to Beast Machines.