Why did so many first-party Famicom games have such awful graphics?

>>3780819
It's as if time was linear or something really makes you think

>>3780819
>several hacks for pic related for example, that greatly improves on the graphics

examples?

>>3780829
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2236/
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/117/

>>3780829
>>3780850
Here's two graphical hacks for Metroid, which I think has pretty awful graphics too.
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1219/
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1147/

>>3780850
>>3780853
Those hacks were made years later, when better graphics were introduced.

>>3780893
So what? They don't use any extra hardware tricks.

>>3780819
Because time is a finite resource, experience was lacking, games had to be released ASAP, and people would buy this "good enough" stuff anyway?

Tl;dr commercial realism

>>3780895
people now have much more knoledge about making graphics, and much more resources

>>3780819
Look up the history of art perspective op
Perspective wasn t invented until the middle ages
Look at art before then
It takes a lot of time and people to work everything out
It s a really interesting topic and this is a good idea for a thread op

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>>3780850
This is considered better?

>>3781018
It sure looks better than really blocky graphics the original version has.

>>3781028
Are you serious right now?

>>3781032
Honest.

>>3781018
It does look better. The only problem I see with it is the Zora not being very visible.

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>>3781018
Different? Most definitely. Better? Eh, not in my opinion anyway. It looks like someone was trying to copy ALTtP's style and falling short, which makes sense giving NES vs SNES capabilities. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, OP, and although you may consider such graphics "awful", to many of us, they were quite astonishing at the time.

>>3780895
Because you can learn the hardware better in time. The same is true now just as it was then.

Compare SMB with SMB3 for instance, same hardware but they've had longer to learn how to get the best from it. Or Super Mario Land to 6 Golden Coins, major leap in graphics

>>3781135
The hacks only change the actual graphics though, they don't need any extra hardware knowledge.

>>3781135
The Legend of Zelda isn't an early title though.

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>hey, why 1986 games, on 1986 console look so bad compared to romhacks made in the +2000s

>>3781147
It's a 1983 console.

>>3781147
Why does it matter when the fucking romhack is made? It works on the same hardware and the hacks don't utilize any hardware tricks that weren't used in the original.

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>>3781147

also

>hey, how come the first title in the series doesn't have art styles that more closely match with the sequels that came out years later

>>3781018

I'd probably like it more if it wasn't for the stupid blades of grass checkerboarding across it like some kind of fabric pattern.

>>3780850
Those look fucking terrible.
The Metroid ones look okay.

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>>3781145
>hacks
>made by third parties
>don't need any extra hardware knowledge

idk dude, they had VR back then too, idk why they didn't just make famicom VR.

>>3781340
They certainly didn't need any extra code, just replacing the graphics.

>>3781146
>>3781145
it can't be explained any further, go be total fags somewhere else.

>>3781346
Because VR was military hardware, unless you had Military contracts or permission, you were not going to release that to consumers... and even then, it would probably cost millions for the god damn system

>why does SMB3 look so much better compared to the original SMB even though they both were NES games?

>>3780895
>Highly recommend using FCEUX as the emulator of choice for this hack. Be sure to turn on the “Allow more than 8 sprites per scan-line” option(located in ConfigVideo) to reduce flicker.

Okay

>>3781404
Those used different mappers and shit, but the cited Zelda and Metroid romhacks don't have any code changed, just graphics.

>>3781413

You're full of shit, the Metroid hack you cited has a minimap that outright won't work on hardware.

>>3780819
>>3781018
The look isn't really the issue imo. The bigger problem is the grid gameplay. Link's Awakening proves that this game easily could have had way better gameplay.

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>>3781018

>>3781018
>>3781603
>>3781145

older games emulated graphics through programming (ie, "draw dots here, here, and here"). No such thing as .bmp or .pcx files existed even then - the earliest im aware of is .lbm from dpaint2.

But even if they used a graphics program, it was only to plan where they would tell the game code to draw pixels

> definitely needed hardware knowledge


> that fucking grass...

Now if they modded LOZ so you could pick up bushes rather than just burn them that would be great (*inserts "that would be great" meme)

Or at least when you burned bushes with the candle they would combust immediately and you could actually walk through the bushes you burned.

And that fucking grass, come on. Id rather it was sparse green dots on the ground similar to the desert tiles.

> there is such a thing as overdoing it

>>3781542
id say that about the dungeon maps too - I mean you could have several dungeon rooms linked together as one big room similar to the overworld map

but yet on the dungeon map it only displays that set of rooms (2x2 or even 2x3) as a single "room" in the dungeon

you'd just have to make sure the exits were on proper parts of the wall of the room and not have more than one exit per wall, but damn this would make for some interesting dungeons

>>3780819
According to Nintendo's developers, they were going for iconic looks. You look at any screenshot of a first party Nintendo game and you can instantly tell what game it is.

Castlevania came out the same year and had better graphics than both, Metroid and Zelda. Come to think of it, many Konami games on the Famicom blew anything that Nintendo made out of the water.

>>3780930
Pretty much this.

The Legend of Zelda might not be a pretty-looking game, but it looked good enough for the time it came out. Don't believe me? Please show me a better-looking NES game from 1985 or earlier.

>>3781704
Well, sure. Any good developer would want that. But--whether or not you think another art direction would be an improvement--that in itself doesn't codify why they went with the specific look LoZ ended up with. There was obviously more than just a philosphy that dictated its look.

>>3781698
I agree with you. I'd also say that in general the NES Zelda games weren't as good as they could have been. Not awful but as I pointed in the previous post they obviously could have been way better. The second game didn't even attempt to be similar to the first and I would imagine it is because Nintendo had second guesses on what direction the franchise should probably take.

That type of gameplay is fine for Pokemon since the meat of the gameplay is the turn based battles but it just doesn't translate well with action combat. Without a doubt though the series eventually did progress into something truly deserving of all that praise it gets.

So back in the day we had Atari 2600. Sure there were other consoles with better gfx but for what ever reason everyone had Atari. NES comes out with smb and Loz and wtf! Dude have you seen the Gfx on that Nintendo consoles?

NES Gfx were light years ahead. Most NES games in the beginning looked about what you see in loz. Moral of the story is one day some one will ask you why ps4 gfx looked like shit and you won't be able to comprehend such a stupid question.

personally i think the early nes games looked better than later ones and had more charm and character.

>>3783498
No one asked why the Famicom had primitive graphics, I just wanted to know why first party games tended to have primitive graphics without any technical reason.

When the NES was first released, the only real bar was "does it look better than the Atari and other early game systems?" The longer the system was out, the more competitive the graphics became as developers started pushing the envelope further. Compare early shit like Super Mario Bros and Zelda to stuff like Kirby's Adventure, Mario 3, and Bio Force Ape. There's a fucking world of difference.

>>3783729
Mega Man, final fantasy, dragon warrior, shit I can barely remember it was so long ago but basically the Nintendo produced games were on par with the other shit. And yeah as time went on gfx became more and more advanced.

I also seem to remember Nintendo preferred to work on the game mechanics 1st and then built the Gfx. No matter for the time the 1st party games where great.

hey guys, why didn't cavemen write shakespeare? I mean they had language.

>>3780819
Because a majority of the first party famicom games people remember are some of the earliest on the system, which means they hadn't yet learned how to get the most out of the hardware, nor use it to its fullest potential. It has more to do with the timeframe in which the game was released than it does the publisher. Look at most games released late in any system's life, by any developer, and they usually look much better.

You dumb, stupid, fucking underage dipshit, jesus christ.

>>3781018
I'm imagining how bad this would have looked on the early 80s 13" color TV we had