The greatest computer game graphics ever?
I was just reading an interesting piece on the greatest years in video game history. They start with 1980, talking about Pac-Man, Space Invaders and others. You look at the basic graphics and smile with a warm nostalgic feeling, you realise the graphics are no match for a game that came out that same year, one that they also mention.
It is in fact a game who’s graphics have never been surpassed since. In fact, modern games don’t even come close. It wasn’t alone though. A whole series of games from that era had graphics to die for. 100% life-like, 3 dimensional.
And why are we still waiting for that game and its peers’ graphics to be surpassed?
Let’s have a look at the opening scene, and see if you know why.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
The game of course is Zork, and the graphics are produced by the user’s imagination. And what sensational graphics they are. Cascading waterfalls, wild rapids, dark forests, dungeons, caves, dingy kitchens. Even just those few words will have painted pictures in your mind surpassing for realism, any graphics in any game.
Top that!
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I never played Zork, but I had Return To Zork. My wife, I, and some friends would play it for hours. Another one I like was the text version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Unfortunately I was bad at both of them. What I didn’t like were the middle of the road games that tried to play like a text game while giving you pictures to look at.
Heheh. Yeah those were pretty bad. They did sorta kill the imagination a bit. “You’re standing in front of a pixelated castle. A blue and white pixelated moat is between you and the castle. Green blocky things - probably alligators - are in the moat.”