Pixels are not square.

[SKELTON S. SKELETON]

Kevin G (@applesaucers) on Twitter pointed out this astutely argued article (AAA, truly), that explains why modern ideas of "pixel art" are so wrong-headed. http://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Microsoft/6_pixel.pdf22

In sum, what we're seeing is not what we're intended to see. Pixels aren't square; they're overlapping fuzzy points, that are fed into a display system. And the pixels designed for a CRT are designed for the artifacts and properties of a CRT display. For instance, the strawberries in Pac-Man

There are no white dots in this sprite...or are there? 


We're not meant to see the raw pixel data any more than we're meant to read raw code unless we're researching how a thing was programmed, or listen to the raw takes of a band's recording before they're engineered into an album. I mean, you can -- but if you do that you know what you're getting into. And for older games, I don't think many people do know.

To that end, post your favorite examples of things that look just fine or otherwise great on a CR, then then dissolve into bland puddles of color if you look at an array of the raw pixel data.

Samus Aran


Ninja Gaiden 1

The green is meant to melt away and turn into cracks, accents, shading. The orange is supposed to bloom and become a highlight. Look at the texture and details in her helmet, in the cook of her knees. Look at the awesome shading on her gun arm. Look how you can actually distinguish her shoulder, and the parts of her gun arm. And then look at the undifferentiated mosaic that the purists will call perfect and clean. Missing so much of the intended signal.
Just, the bricks. Man, look at the difference. How many colors, how much texture, are we missing out on?




Also, this illustrates how solid outlines are meant to work for NES games. In an emulator, Ryu looks like a Colorform19being shifted around on the backdrop. On an actual NES, on an actual TV, he has shading and detail. the outline serves both to differentiate his anatomy and to blend him into the backdrop -- as opposed to set him apart, as it does on your LCD monitor.


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I am including some other examples:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (arcade)



Without scanline and CRT filtering, it looks like the turtles themselves are odd, blotches of color with shading that makes parts of them look bizarre if not grotesque. The foot clan fight in a sewer over an abyss of empty purple space. The sewer walls and extra items look too new and unworn and stand out oddly. With filtering, the foot are now clearly standing in a mess of filthy sewer water. The pipes and walls behind the turtle have become appropriately worn. The turtle himself looks smooth and like a cartoon character, the shading and details blending together.



Golden Axe (arcade)


By all accounts, most of the pixelart from games of this era doesn't jive spectacularly well with the aesthetic focus of modern pixelart. They look bright, un-contrasted and fuzzy with a softness that recalls childlike enjoyment and pumping quarters into a machine eternally. The fire stands out in the first image: it is a collection of square textures of different colors that give the appearance of fire but the hardness of the graphics stand out and make it look like a mess.


But like this, contrast that previously didn't exist is there: the scales of the creature our bikini-lady is standing on become more prominent and the grooves darker. The fire is an spectacular side to behold, brilliant and textures and filling up the whole screen.