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MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today

(blog.decryption.net.au)
1033 points decryption | 3 comments | 12 Jul 25 08:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.652s | source
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seabombs ◴[12 Jul 25 10:57 UTC] No.44541090[source]▶
There's a term I read about a long time ago, I think it was "aesthetic completeness" or something like that. It was used in the context of video games whose art direction was fully realized in the game, i.e. increases in graphics hardware or capabilities wouldn't add anything to the game in an artistic sense. The original Homeworld games were held up as examples.

Anyway, this reminded me of that. Making these pictures in anything but the tools of the time wouldn't just change them, they'd be totally different artworks. The medium is part of the artwork itself.

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lukan ◴[12 Jul 25 11:13 UTC] No.44541180[source]▶
Hm, are you sure that there is not some nostalgia at play here?

To me they look horribly pixelated and at least some would improve aesthetically a lot for me with a higher resolution.

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anthk ◴[12 Jul 25 14:25 UTC] No.44542308[source]▶
You have no idea on how charming these games look.
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lukan ◴[12 Jul 25 14:45 UTC] No.44542433[source]▶
Or I do, because I played them?

But that was my not well received point about nostalgia ..

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1. Keyframe ◴[12 Jul 25 20:14 UTC] No.44544777[source]▶
I get your point. Truth is on both ends though. There truly are games which peaked in their visual style and even with modern power at their disposal nothing could be added that would make them look better. The medium they used, some of them, they used it to its maximum potential. I'd take pixel art's swan song game of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Modern rendition of it with let's say more detailed graphics, even vector one, would just make it look worse. It's perfect the way it is and I'd argue if you were to do it today and you chose the same art style, it'd come out the same with only smaller differences (like overall high resolution but still "subdivided" into smaller ones, effectively still being lower resolution).
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2. lukan ◴[12 Jul 25 21:54 UTC] No.44545518[source]▶
I get the aesthetics of pixel art games. And I would likely not enjoy modern remakes of them. My point above was just, that I do admire those arts as great of their time - but looking at them today like in the picture above, I simply don't like the pixel style as an art style on its own.
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3. Keyframe ◴[12 Jul 25 23:31 UTC] No.44546131[source]▶
There's one, soon to be released, which is highly anticipated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkMFYMG3QLw