Mario & Wario, a Super NES game released for use with the mouse controller. One of the very best video games ever made. However, here it is for completeness: 1995's Yoshi's Island. This doesn't really count as it certainly can't be compared to those above. Yoshi's Island, in which the player controlled Yoshi, and a baby Mario was the protectee. It's not a Mario sprite so much as it's a hand-drawn Mario image manipulated by the game. Paper Mario is the first game that deserves mention, as it's really the next step in Nintendo's Mario design, replacing the pixelized sprites with what is, for all intents and purposes, an animation cel wrapped around a polygon. Quite a few people have pointed out some games they thought I missed, and I thought I'd detail them here. Finally, Wrecking Crew '98 Mario isn't pre-rendered, but seems to saddle the cute hammer-wielding Mario with some blotchy colours. The Mario from Mario + Luigi is not pre-rendered, but is a significant change from the normal Mario style. Aliasing isn't an issue, no doubt the result of countless hours of hand editing. This Mario is indistinct and over-complicated. The smooth animation is impressive, however with it comes the harshest penalty. The GameBoy Advance release of Mario vs Donkey Kong, a reprise of the excellent 1994 Donkey Kong for GameBoy, is the worst offender. Notice the dark colours around the edges, and the complicated overall appearance. The 1996 release of Super Mario RPG (admittedly produced by Square, not Nintendo) saw the first appearance of a pre-rendered, aliased Mario. This is where Nintendo started to wobble. If Nintendo keeps squandering their position as standard-bearer for this declining art form it will lead only to less joyous times for us all. Many people consider 2D animation to be superior in many respects to the 3D graphics prevalent in modern games. It's a shame that Nintendo, home to some of the world's finest 2D animators, is taking the quick way out and producing these ugly graphics. The fourth Mario on the right is unclear compared to every other, including the first one made more than twenty years ago. There are no signs Nintendo plans to change their ways. Instead of clear edges Mario's now saddled with aliased fringes, usually black, resulting in the kind of blue-screen border seen in old movies. Instead of pure colours and clearly defined edges, Mario now has a blotchy appearance - a result of reducing the number of colours in the 3D model. While it's faster than drawing each frame of animation by hand, the results are usually disappointing, and often very ugly. In addition the same 3D model can be used in a sequel, and in 3D games with few or no changes. Afterward the 3D model can be manipulated and posed in infinite variety and 2D sprites created in rapid-fire, assembly line fashion. In order to maximize the value of new artwork created for new games, characters like Mario are first drawn in 3D. In much the same way that early 3D games running on underpowered hardware produced hideous looking graphics (see: 3DO, Jaguar, SegaCD) Nintendo's use of pre-rendered sprites is running the risk of killing what charm Mario held as a lovingly hand-drawn sprite. Softer, rounder, with more personality owing in part to the graphics power of the NES and the growing experience of Nintendo's artists. Super Mario Bros 2 first introduced us to a radically different looking plumber. He was given a mustache to seperate his nose from his face, overalls so arm movements were visible, and a hat because hair was hard to draw. It's a well known story that when creating Mario - originally called simply 'jumpman' - Shigeru Miyamoto made him look the way he does because of hardware limitations of the time. '04 issue)īack in the day Nintendo was constrained by hardware. (note: parts of this article appeared in Nintendo Official Magazine UK, Sept.
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