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5 Gorgeous 2D Games
kukyfrope writes "With the advancement of technology, it's rare to play a game that doesn't incorporate 3D graphics. While 3D games are great, classic 2D side-scrollers are beautiful in their own way. GameDaily takes a look at what they believe to be the top 5 most visually striking 2D games, with less text and more screenshots because words don't do these games justice."
I always found the Oddworld games to be visually stunning. Abe's Exodus beats every game on their list except Yoshi's Island, for me.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Side-scrollers are cool. I've recently been enjoying the new Super Mario Brothers on my younger sibling's new DS Lite, and it looks fantastic.
"?rp=49" like in "when I click on the link you get some money" ? :p
mod article down ;-)
NO TOUCH MONKEY!
has got to be the Worms series. Since Worms 2, the Worms series has been visually fantastic, and the gameplay is second to none. Its simply a great game, in every way.
Not to mention the fact that even years after its release lots of cool online matches can be found in minutes, since the gamer community likes it so much.
(Oh and, Worms 3D is even sexier)
LL
I'm really, really surprised that Out of This World (aka Another World) wasn't on that list.
Less than 10 comments and the site is alread slashdotted, I got through it using Coral Cache: http://www.gamedaily.com.nyud.net:8080/Specials/To p-Five-Most-Gorgeous-2D-Games/?rp=49
The List:
5. LocoRoco
4. Lumines
3. Yoshi's Island & Yoshi's Story
2. Metal Slug
1. Guilty Gear
Not much is said on each page though they do talk about classics like Gunstar Heroes, Sonic, Marvel VS. Capcom, etc.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
5. Loco Roco (PSP) 4. Lumines (PSP) 3. Yoshi's Island & Yoshi's Story (SNES & N64) 2. Metal Slug (Multi) 1. Guilty Gear (Multi)
atleast it's not as bad as Toms Hardware.
That man can take something simple and span it over 50 pages. I wonder if Tom is actually an old man, you know the kind. They forget wha they are talking about and ramble on about everything that has happened to them in their life and end with something completly different then when they started.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night had some pretty damn sweet graphics for a 2D game.
I always thought Alucard was animated with amazing fluidity. Sure, his sprite could've used more detail--like a face--but the actual animations were and still are impressive.
Is it still a shameless plug if you're not the one personally benefitting from the plug? Either way, a friend of mine has produced a gorgeous 2D game, Steam Brigade that is totally worth checking out if you like that sort of thing.
501 Not Implemented
5 games, 5 pages to load. These types of crappy banner-whore pages are sprouting up like crazy these days, and it's the most annoying thing since pop-ups. Does user experience mean nothing anymore? I'd rather have a banner between each of the games than put up with having to click through and load 5 pages
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
this article reminded me of Chu Chu Rocket, a prime example of a game that was great fun, but lacked all of the high end graphics or complexity of most modern games. Simple can be wonderful.
We are all just people.
Looking past the article's scarce content, I completely agree with its point. However, I look towards RPGs for support. Personally, I loved the old tile-based RPGs such as Final Fantasy 3, the early games of the Breath of Fire series, along with the first Dragon Warrior games. These were relatively simple games where you didn't have to worry about bad camera angles or how well you could control a character like in the bike races in FF7. I also dislike how in many games today, there will be some places where you have to stand in just the right position to make an event occur, which was obviously much easier in tile-based games.
I'm not saying that these things don't belong in RPGs, but that doesn't mean they are required either. I feel like there is still a market for simple, 2-D games. After every RPG I play, my dad asks me if he can play it because even though he loves the games, he can't play a lot of them due to his almost complete lack of hand-eye coordination (he played FF7, but I had to get him through a couple parts). Making games more realistic, and consequently more complicated, does not always make the games more fun.
Did anybody get a mirror of this? Looks like it's already feeling the Slashdot effect.
I remember actually salivating over Xenon II for the Amiga. That and a few other Amiga games such as Shadow of the Beast were and will always be the most gorgeous games I've ever played. I also remember seeing the mode 7 fx in Contra wars for the snes, the first time the plane zoomed over. Pant wettingly good at the time.
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I've always thought Popful Mail for Sega CD was really beautiful for its time. Another platformer that stands out to me as unique was Wild 9 for PSX.
"Less than 10 comments and the site is alread slashdotted"
They're running it on a 2D server.
The page is slashdotted so I can't read the article itself, but after looking at the games on the list I have to ask how they could include Lumines but not a Castlevania game? The GBA Castlevania games (and the more recent, and equally excellent looking Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for the DS) are really very polished, with smooth animation and a lot of artistic detail. Lumines was great and all, but I really think there are more deserving alternatives for good looking 2d games.
I think the visuals of Lemmings (Amiga) are beautiful, perfectly suited to the gameplay and executed flawlessly.
Even though there was a generation of 2d PSX games that came after it, with a lot more power to create even more beautiful 2d games, every time I play Final Fantasy 6 (3 in the US), I simply can't get over how gorgeous it looks. Amazing music, amazing graphics, amazing story, and tons of diversity. But mainly, Squaresoft designed such an amazing look and two completely unique worlds for this game.
Plenty of 2d games are more impressive technologically, but I have a feeling that if FF6 were ever updated with higher-resolution graphics, with the exact same source art, it would be simply incredible.
How the fuck did they not include Jets'n'Guns?
Lunar is the best 2-d RPG series ever. Sad that there will never be any more, 3d or otherwise.
A friend of mine was such a well-regarded video card expert in the TH forums that Tom's invited him to an 'expert's round table' to discuss what could be done to improve their site and readership. In that meeting not one 'expert' mentioned that they don't need 38 pages to discuss 5 computer cases.
Simply stated, if you want to let Tom's know what you think of their 50 page articles, you'd be far better off letting them know. They would likely love to hear your feedback because whether you believe it or not, they are really trying to improve their site.
Fluid physics and dynamic lighting FTW.
Screenshots.
It's a heck of a lot better than any of the ones on their list (which was mostly high contrast Orange-on-Blue junk, IMHO. This one looks like it was produced by an artist with some color sense.
--MarkusQ
I don't see the point of an article listing five nice looking 2d games. "Here are five games we think look nice! Yay!"
Whoever these guys are, I'm really not impressed that they can think up five nice looking games. On that note, here's a few I like: Gish, Commander Keen, Rayman, and the Fallout series. Hey, you didn't even have to click through five pages to read my list.
RPG titles had awesome 2D graphics back in the SNES days, like FF3. How about Chrono Trigger?, this one even had a mini racing game that was 3D like (camera movements), graphics and gameplay blended very well on those games, I hope square-enix keeps producing quality titles.
C-x C-c
What? E.T. didn't make the list?
Those games are barely animated at all. Sure the sprites are high-resolution, but most of the moves have very few frames of animation and there are tons of 3D effects used as well. It's like watching a slide show.
Games like Last Blade 1 & 2, Real Bout Fatal Fury Special 1 & 2, Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves, and Street Fighter 3 are all much more impressive because of the fluidity of the animation.
Depending on your definition of 2D, I think the Fallout serious is perhaps the best looking computer game ever. Beautiful painted backgrounds, clever setting elements, and the consistency to truly create another world. Perhaps it is the best CRPG ever actually. They don't make em like they used to...
I'm kinda surprised Abuse didn't make the list. Now, I'm one of the LAST people to put PC games over console games (and believe that PC games are greatly overhyped here), but I gotta give props to Abuse. The sprite animations were so fluid, you'd think they were polygon based, one of the few 2D games that actually managed to be frightening in it's portrayal.
But I was also surprised to see that Symphony of the Night didn't make the list, and similarly Super Metroid, another one of the few 2D games that managed to be frightening. And Super Metroid gets my vote for best all-around sound design of any game.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
You know what? Fuck you. There have been many 2-D games that are absolute graphical masterpieces compared to whatever bullshit L33t-D00dz-3D pushes out to cash in on the post-Playstation poly whores. If you have to put a qualifier in to try and pidgeonhole something, just leave the discussion. You're not adding anything.
Excellent point, but a lot of the time older games were *more* complicated to control than their modern counterparts. Convoluted menus, awkward control schemes, or just tons of mapped keys. I'll throw out a few examples.
System Shock 1 -> System Shock 2
Dune II -> Warcraft 3
Nethack -> Diablo
TES: Daggerfall -> TES: Oblivion
Wasteland -> Fallout
Text Adventures -> Graphical Adventures (w/ icons)
I'm not "hating" on older games, but you must admit that the older ones I listed are more complicated to control than the newer ones.
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Not only is this slashdotted, but Gamedaily found it necessary to put each of the 5 games (with only a paragraph of text and a couple screenshots each) on seperate pages.
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One of the best 2d games I have seen in a while was Starscape. Great visuals, great gameplay. Just a ton of 2d goodness. I'm just waiting for Moopod to finally finish up War Angles now.
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Laziness is the father.
Viewtiful Joe?
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Where are the shmups?
Darius (Arcade), Thunderforce 4 (Genesis/Megadrive), Radiant Silvergun (Arcade/Saturn)...
Monkey Island 2? Sam N Max? Day of the Tentacle? Etc. Superb animation and locations even today. I'd definitely have put those in there above Lumines.
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If you haven't already, download it right now. Don't let the archaic looking graphics turn you away. Don't make the same mistake I did, initially dismissing this wonderful game. Download ane be enthralled by this spectacular work of art.
fun and stunning graphics:
plasma pong
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Wot no Superfrog?
Seriously - the best platformer on the best home computer? Pah.
Kayamon
R-Type was one of the most visually pleasing 2D scroller space shoot'em-ups ever...
it could've replaced that stupid game with yellow balls easily...
Why has there yet to be another 2D Castlevania released on a console? The newer 3D Castlevania games are pretty neat, but aren't as good as the GBA/DS versions, which are amazing, but have yet to captivate me like Symphony of the Night. Do you see the hierarchy there? In the world of Castlevania, you don't need three dimensions to have depth.
Worms Armageddon introduced the ability to switch to higher resolutions. I always think how awesome that is -- high-res 2D! I want a next-gen game to coin 2DHD, so pussy developers have a new genre umbrella to work under. That way maybe, just maybe, we'll get some new 2D games instead of all these mutated offspring of Mario 64. Then people will catch on that 2D isn't all that bad, that we just forgot about it like animatronics, both lost in the 1990's wet-dream of "3D". 3D is the real enemy here! Nvidia and ATI will introduce Vector Processing into their video cards, and we'll be able to play high-res, fullscreen Flash games on low-end systems. And then Team 17 will pick its head up from the mound of 3D cocaine they've been snorting and say, "What have we been doing with our lives? Let's get to work on the best Worms game ever! High resolution graphics, tons of effects; the first of many! Thank you Slashdot post!"
...Awww, who am I kidding? 2D games have gone the way of voxels. Rest in peace, little buddies, I love ya.
Or Ar Tonelico? Then there's all those Tactical RPGs (Disgaea et al). How about Legend of Mana (if we're going as far back as the n64 era)? Sad that Dawn of Mana's 3D, even if it looks nice. I remember thinking how awesome the 2D games on these new consoles will be. High Res and lots of animation. Too bad it never materialized.
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For it's day, that was one of the sweetest 2D games.
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
* Rayman - while a little outdated, I found it amazing when it was published.
* Kirby Cursed Canvas - modern 2D game graphically way more advanced than anything got mentioned in the
article, besides maybe LocoRoco - which only made last place.
Legend of Kyrandia gets my vote. The visuals in that game were just stunning for its time. None of the later Kyrandia games ever came close to the first one.
It would be really, really nice if Capcom could redraw some sprites once in a while, though. Capcom vs SNK 2 has great looking SNK characters becuase Capcom had to redraw them, but their characters were just ripped from wherever in time the sprites had been drawn last. Morrigan looks teh suck in CvS2 - but only compared to the other animations. It's not really differnt than the PS1 version of DS3. Capcom Fighter's Evolution had uneven sprite quality, also. Oddly enough, I'd still rather play either of those games, or SF3:3, or MvC2. I guess I didn't get that involved in Guilty Gear's characters. I've been playing SF since SF2 came out for SNES. I had the first GuiltyGear, liked it, and traded it in when I realized I was playing SF more again.
The Ur-Quan Masters!. The Best 2D Game Ever.
Seemingly non-retro article, perhaps. The inclusion of Metal Slug may suggest otherwise but was released on current gen platforms. So where's Super Metroid? That's a beautiful game. Little things like the unique sprites for each of Samus' directions, how she breaths when just standing around. Flora and fauna also beautifully drawn and still not surpassed by GBA outings.
The old NOX RPG from Westwood Studios still has jaw-dropping 2D art to this day. The real killer is that it combines great art with amazing animation and special effects (lighting for one). I would like to see more 2D titles take this route!
Alien Hominid is a great looking 2D experience. Sure the art style will turn some people off, and the game is hard enough to cause controller breakage, but there are few games out there that do as good a job of making a comic book seem come alive.
Valkyrie Profile is just plain gorgeous, but I don't blame people for not knowing about it, with as hard as it is currently to get your hands on a copy of the PS2 version (and the low number of people that bought a PSP to actually play PSP games on it means that not too many more people are going to be seeing it).
I know I'm probably in the minority here, but the Playstation-era Mega Man X games (4-6) are frankly awesome looking, at least to me. I know Mega Man isn't most people's idea of a great game, but the detail and flash in the games is awesome as far as I'm concerned. Bright colors, lots of movement all over the screen. No, not as good or as consistent as Metal Slug, but close in my book.
Lots of obvious omissions from the list, and like many other people here I do think that Castlevania SOTN and Super Metroid are among the best of the side-scroller genre. Does Okami count? That game looks pretty, no matter how many dimensions it's in. But I do find it rather funny that 2 of the 5 are PSP games, given the lack of popularity of the platform in general-- or indeed lack of many real interesting games outside of, hmm, Lumines, LocoRoco, and GTA Liberty City Stories. Having bought a PSP over a year ago, I wish I hadn't. I doubt Loco Roco will change my mind.
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Besides being one of my favorite platformers for gameplay I think it't visual style and execution were first rate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayman has some pics.
I thought this was a beautiful game, considering it was on an SNES.
Here's another one (though not a side-scroller). Cory Strader's hand-painted artwork gets me every time.
http://www.zenofsudoku.com
(sorry for the plug, I don't have the money to have a PR drone post this for me!)
-Charlie
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Unknown Worlds Entertainment
http://www.unknownworlds.com
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