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

(blog.decryption.net.au)
1032 points decryption | 1 comments | 12 Jul 25 08:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.225s | 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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1. SlowTao ◴[12 Jul 25 21:42 UTC] No.44545440[source]▶
A lesser known title that I think hit that perfectly is Rez. So much so that the re-release almost 15 years later was for the most part, just higher resolution and cleaner rendering. But the overall style was not touched one bit.