I agree, when I first saw the splash image, I assumed that was the one being replaced! Because it doesn't look like pixel art, it looks like a high quality image was pixelated. By replicating reality so closely, you really easily see all the drawbacks of pixel art. Namely low resolution, and limited colors. Because it's not taking advantage of the medium of pixel art, but instead shoehorning realism into it.
They complain about the shape of someone's arms in Street Fighter? Who cares about realism, these characters can shoot fireballs from their hands. Look at Link in Link’s Awakening! His head must weigh 3x more than his body. If you find a screenshot with his sword, it's even weirder. The sword is simultaneously smaller than his head, and yet larger than the entire rest of his body. And have you ever seen a tree or wall that looks like that? But it looks freaking fantastic at that resolution.
I don't care if the author's art was entirely hand-made, it looks like a high quality image was pixelated by a computer. The art in King of Fighters' may have been done entirely by hand, but if the end results looks indistinguishable from a 3d render at low resolution with terrible aliasing, who cares what means was used to get the crappy look? The author restating things about "embracing the medium", but I don't believe they did.
> The art in King of Fighters' may have been done entirely by hand, but if the end results looks indistinguishable from a 3d render at low resolution
The irony is the particular King of Fighters they reference had character models/animations that were originally produced as 3D renders [1] and then used as the basis for the artists to draw over/fine tune in order to save time during production (since the previous games took so long to finish the animations). So in the context of the article it's an interesting though overlooked detail that could have been a decent bridge into the point about transitioning to 3D.
> They complain about the shape of someone's arms in Street Fighter? Who cares about realism, these characters can shoot fireballs from their hands
Animations and design are still important even when what's being representing isn't based in reality. It's the same reason CG was for a long time critiqued, and continues to be, for instances where there are 'floaty' characters or the animation/physics seem 'off'. 2D can often take more artistic liberties and isn't so stringently expected to be 'realistic' compared to CG. And while that comparison in the article was a bit out of place, considering the real difference is animator talent and visual style, it showed how mature the 2D animation scene was at the time, and it has to be said the animations of Street Fighter III Third Strike are among the best 2D animations in any commercial game.
>They complain about the shape of someone's arms in Street Fighter? Who cares about realism, these characters can shoot fireballs from their hands.
Well, the whole point is to make them shoot fireballs out of their hands in a convincing fashion. So having the non-fantastic elements of the animation be convincing is especially important.
They complain about the shape of someone's arms in Street Fighter? Who cares about realism, these characters can shoot fireballs from their hands. Look at Link in Link’s Awakening! His head must weigh 3x more than his body. If you find a screenshot with his sword, it's even weirder. The sword is simultaneously smaller than his head, and yet larger than the entire rest of his body. And have you ever seen a tree or wall that looks like that? But it looks freaking fantastic at that resolution.
I don't care if the author's art was entirely hand-made, it looks like a high quality image was pixelated by a computer. The art in King of Fighters' may have been done entirely by hand, but if the end results looks indistinguishable from a 3d render at low resolution with terrible aliasing, who cares what means was used to get the crappy look? The author restating things about "embracing the medium", but I don't believe they did.