Thread by @Ian_Fisch

Recently a video claimed that modern pixel artists are misguided - mimicking sprites as they appear on modern screens, instead of how pixel artists from the 80s and 90s “intended” them to look on hazy CRT televisions.
Not exactly. Let’s discuss.
A thread
1/🧵

First the easy one: This example, from Super Mario RPG, wasn’t drawn by a pixel artist at all.
Rather, it was 3d rendered on a Silicon Graphics workstation and then downrezed to an SNES sprite.
Touchups were done, but the intent was to mimic the 3d render.
2/🧵

As for traditional pixel artists, there is indeed evidence that some 8 and 16bit pixel artists definitely created sprites with the fuzzy RF or composite TV signals in mind. However this was far from universal, for a few reasons.
3/🧵

For starters, the premiere platform of the era wasn't consoles nor even PC’s. It was arcades, which didn’t use fuzzy RF or composite signals, but crisp RGB signals.
While they still used the same 15kHz CRT screens we had at home, the picture was much clearer.
4/🧵

The image below compares Super Street Fighter 2 on the 3dO, via a fuzzy composite signal, vs the Super Street Fighter 2 arcade machine, via an RGB signal.
But as crisp as the arcade RGB image was, the image on the pixel artist’s work computer was even BETTER.
5/🧵

A home console, even connected via RGB, was limited by resolution (most games ran at 256x224 for both NES and SNES) and the capabilities of 15kHz TVs. At 60fps, the TV could only draw ~240 horizontal lines per refresh, hence the literal blank line between every other line.
6/🧵

Before the 90’s, this was also the case for most PC monitors, but NOT in Japan. They wanted high resolutions for kanji and hiragana characters. As of 1982, the PC-98 offered a standard 640x400 resolution and 24kHz monitors with RGB connections. So no “scanlines”.
7/🧵

The PC-98’s 640x400 resolution is approximately 4x the 256x224 image output by NES, SNES, PC-Engine, etc.
This means the same sprite would appear with double the clarity on the artist’s display, even at the same screen size.
8/🧵

So while the pixelart we saw was fuzzy, low res, & with “scanlines”, the pixel artist’s image was not. But how do we know pixel artists weren’t creating art with the fuzzy home experience as their focus? Again, some were, but there are clues that many were not.
9/🧵

For instance NES, SNES, & PC Engine games would appear stretched on a home television, due to the 256x224 resolution (8:7 aspect ratio) not matching the 4:3 television aspect ratio.
But the image would NOT appear stretched on the artist’s computer monitor.
10/🧵

So if a game's circles don't appear circular at 4:3, it’s a clue that the artist probably wasn't focused on the home television experience.
NES, SNES, and PC-Engine games (and a few Playstation games, such as Symphony of the Night) are full of such oblong circles.
11/🧵

Finally, there’s dithering, where a dot pattern mimics extra colors or translucency, like the moon in the Genesis version of MK 2. But dithering was ubiquitous, including on displays where a user could definitely see the dot pattern. It was the best worst option.
12/🧵

We see dithering on the edges of the fog of War in Warcraft 2, which was meant for a 640x480 31kHz VGA CRT monitor. The dithering dots were clearly visible. Nobody was fooled.
13/🧵

You’ll also clearly see dithered translucencies in a lot of Sega Superscaler and Model 1 arcade games, such as Power Drift and Virtua Fighter. Sega was a huge fan of dithered translucencies in the 1990s. Gamers could see them, but we didn’t care.
14/🧵

When artists had the opportunity to NOT use dithering, they didn’t. SNES could display 4x as many colors as the Genesis, so you’ll often only see dithering used in the Genesis version of a game. Note the stretched Lion King font on the SNES version😁
15/🧵

If you’ve enjoyed this bit of insight, please give me a follow and wishlist Kingmakers on Steam. Thanks so much!

Kingmakers Steam page: store.steampowered.com/app/2109770/Ki…