The Colours Are Right In Front Of You
If you make the journey to Tibet and check the history archives for Video Games and Other Slacker Sports, you’ll notice something most gamers tend to forget: The push for realistic graphics is not a new fad.
When in-game artists were restricted to eight and sixteen bits, their pixel art was often forced to take on a more cartoony tint. In fact, that’s how some popular characters acquired their entire phenotypes: Mega Man is blue because it was the widest colour palette on the Nintendo.
Common complaints about modern games would have you believe that today’s developers left their imaginations at home, but game developers have always strived for realism. If that weren’t the case, Mario wouldn’t even have his trademark mustache.
Miyamoto blessed the plumber with facial hair when he needed a low-memory means of giving Mario facial features. Were that not the case, Miyamoto would have made Mario with Pac-Man simplicity, or even settled for a dot. Hey, it’s all about how the game plays, right? Graphics are secondary.
Moans and groans from today’s gamers affirm that graphics are not as secondary as we’d like to believe. “I Miss Color”, the linked essay by smakus, addresses an issue I hear over and over again: There’s no imaginative colour in today’s games, not like there used to be in old games. Everything is presented in tired shades of piss yellow, poop brown and fuck off green.
(Fuck off green = the tired, dirty green reserved for trees that are slowly recovering two generations after a nuclear war. I want to take credit for the name, but I discovered it twelve years ago when some joker tampered with the Macs in our high school’s computer lab and changed the label colour names.)
To a certain extent, I like first-person shooters. If one grabs my attention and doesn’t make me wretchedly motion sick, I’ll stay with it and have fun. But I’ll always prefer the candy colours and cotton floss trees that are found in Super Mario games, jRPGs and what have you.
That said, am I hurting for digital blue skies and green grass? Nope. My game queue is as plump as ever. I am not lacking for games to play.
As for what’s coming in the future, what about Little Big Planet? I don’t see people snorting over how it’s for kids. What about Street Fighter IV? Ken and Chun-Li don’t wear brown and yellow gis. Blanka’s not grey.
FPS games get a bad rep for being dreary pits of monochrome. But what about Team Fortress 2? What about the beautiful retro world of Rapture in Bioshock?
Smakus actually cites Bioshock in his list of problem games, which is an instant fail in my lofty book. No, Bioshock or Metal Gear Solid 4 aren’t exactly Happy Cartoon Hour, but what business do they have being so? There’s a big difference between a game being brushed in boring shades of brown and grey and a game that conveys the environment its developers intended for it.
And if that environment happens to be post-apocalyptic? Well, that’s not new, either.
Wait, while we’re gathered, let’s name some of the colours we see here.
Brown, check. Blue, check. Green, check.
Good for you, Gordie! You get first pick at the toy station today!
(Images copyright Valve and SNK)
