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Theatre of Pain
Feb. 27th, 2009 02:00 pmAs the graphical capability of computers was evolving in the early 90s and we were slowly getting exponentially more displayable colours to play with, there seemed to be a small movement among graphics artists who decided that a simple "GAME OVER" wasn't good enough any more, and spruced up their games by showing the player exactly how they met with their end. Dangerous Dave had little animations of your character being strangled by zombies or cut into toast-like slices by falling on to sharp fences. Uninvited was notorious for its far-too-closeups of death scenes, and a little later on, Fade to Black used the power of full motion video to bring us all the detail (or as much as they could at the start of the Playstation's lifespan) that we never wanted.
But it's strange that none of those rendered death scenes really hit me as much as the sprite-based ones.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rakarr showed me this video of the death sequences from Waxworks by the appropriately-named Horrorsoft yesterday, which is a game that takes the idea to an extreme. I only have a vague idea about the plot of the game - from the gameplay surrounding the deaths in the video, it seems to be sort of halfway between Eye of the Beholder and Myst, with the plot revolving around having to travel around time and assume the identities of other people in a slightly Quantum Leap-like fashion. I can't really make out what's going on from some of the quick gameplay clips that play out just before the character meets yet another grisly end - this would have scared me to death if I'd grown up with it.
I've only watched this video to about the halfway point for self-preservation reasons - it doesn't start you off gently or anything, but I could cope with the first because of the hero's expression, looking utterly astonished that his head's just fallen off when all that happened was that he was poked in the ribs with a sword a bit. Especially when combined with the unreal sound of the music on the older sound cards, there's something about lovingly rendered pixel-art of your character's deaths that's far more disturbing than increasingly realistic 3D models can ever convey.
But it's strange that none of those rendered death scenes really hit me as much as the sprite-based ones.
rakarr showed me this video of the death sequences from Waxworks by the appropriately-named Horrorsoft yesterday, which is a game that takes the idea to an extreme. I only have a vague idea about the plot of the game - from the gameplay surrounding the deaths in the video, it seems to be sort of halfway between Eye of the Beholder and Myst, with the plot revolving around having to travel around time and assume the identities of other people in a slightly Quantum Leap-like fashion. I can't really make out what's going on from some of the quick gameplay clips that play out just before the character meets yet another grisly end - this would have scared me to death if I'd grown up with it.I've only watched this video to about the halfway point for self-preservation reasons - it doesn't start you off gently or anything, but I could cope with the first because of the hero's expression, looking utterly astonished that his head's just fallen off when all that happened was that he was poked in the ribs with a sword a bit. Especially when combined with the unreal sound of the music on the older sound cards, there's something about lovingly rendered pixel-art of your character's deaths that's far more disturbing than increasingly realistic 3D models can ever convey.
