Cube

February 8, 2014 4:55 AM

Cube: A Video About Video Game Graphics
posted by flatluigi (19 comments total)

Not a patch on the original.

Well put together. 1:57 got an amused snort.
posted by solarion at 5:12 AM on February 8, 2014 [7 favorites]

Cute, but it needs an ascii art cube:

 +------+       
 |`.    |`.     
 |  `+--+---+   
 |   |  |   |   
 +---+--+   |   
  `. |   `. |   
    `+------+   

posted by sammyo at 5:16 AM on February 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

THE FUN CANNOT BE HALTED.
posted by Scoo at 5:56 AM on February 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

I liked the Silent Hill referencing meat-cube.
posted by sonic meat machine at 6:51 AM on February 8, 2014

A pair of comments from the author:

For those interested in knowing why I chose these particular games to represent in the video: Some of the games were chosen for their technological differences (advancements?), such as Battlezone with it's green lines representing vector graphics and Silent Hill with it's not-entirely-stable polygons and muddy textures representing graphics on the PSX. Other games were chosen simply because they had a unique look, such as The Unfinished Swan and Super Hexagon.

Also they are indeed not in chronological order. I ran into a lot of obstacles when attempting to arrange everything in chronological order. I also really wanted Braid at the end so there would be a good excuse to do the rewind. Others are out of order simply because I forgot about their existence until I got way beyond where they would have occured chronologically. "Oh, wait, where's my CGA graphics cube? Dammit!" :P

There are so many games that could have been included - My project notes list 27 games that didn't make the cut - but if I had spent any more time on this video I would have gone mad. Perhaps I'll get around to those sometime in the future.

--

I do have a list of the references:

Pong, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Adventure, Battlezone, The Hobbit, Super Mario Bros., Q*Bert, Zork, Space Harrier, Tetris, Jet Set Radio, Quake 1, Silent Hill, Rez, Virtual Boy, Crayon Physics Deluxe, And Yet It Moves, Limbo, Fez, Unreal Tournament, Phantasmagoria, CGA DOS games (Paratrooper, for instance) , AAA Game (Crysis / Mass Effect / Battlefield 4), Minecraft, Unfinished Swan, Mirror's Edge, Super Hexagon, Thomas Was Alone, Amnesia, Braid.

Also Half-Life 2, Portal, Mega Man and the classic Konami "wipe" logo used as transitions.

That said, even though these are the games I was thinking of when making each segment, I like hearing about what other people get out of the segments. For instance, The Hobbit one could be any other game that did that line-by-line filling in of color. The Battlezone one could be any other green colored vector-based game.

posted by flatluigi at 7:13 AM on February 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

No gamecube?

Kinda cool. I didn't get a lot of them, sadly.

I didn't see any Endorfun cubes, either!
posted by symbioid at 7:14 AM on February 8, 2014

The perpetual endless title/logo screen aspect reminds me of tane (prev).
posted by byanyothername at 7:38 AM on February 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

What's the "obvious reference"? Unreal tournament?

Would've been great if it referenced the original "cube" there. As it is, it's merely awesome.
posted by fungible at 7:51 AM on February 8, 2014

I remember playing Space Harrier on my Sega Master System and thinking video game graphics couldn't get much better than this...
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:56 AM on February 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

They had me at Pong, and kept me at Q*Bert.

Also: Q*Bert/Cube Bert = mind blown.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:09 AM on February 8, 2014

That Tempest end-of-level sound never leaves you does it?
posted by humboldt32 at 8:43 AM on February 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

Hey, that was beautiful. The Cube theme is clever and I like all his homages to game art styles. The one that really got me excited was seeing Limbo.

For some reason I'm reminded of the classic Old Man Murray article Crate Review System (crates start on page 2). Start to Crate is a modern take on it. But these are just screenshots of cube-like objects, nothing as creative as the video posted here.
posted by Nelson at 8:44 AM on February 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Start to crate is more of a standard and thus that page is a handbook. The link in this post is an art piece.
posted by Our Ship Of The Imagination! at 12:11 PM on February 8, 2014

Four characters of the FEZ code are in there, at about 1:34.

This remains my favorite video about game graphics, entitled "Cube." Prepare yourself!
posted by JHarris at 12:24 PM on February 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

Awesome, that was really well done. Clever transitions between things like that are really satisfying for some reason.

Four characters of the FEZ code are in there

Heh, and of course they spell out CUBE.
posted by lucidium at 12:56 PM on February 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Figured they did. Didn't want to dig out my notes to decipher them.
posted by JHarris at 1:18 PM on February 8, 2014

Amazing the work people will do for free. I enjoyed seeing references to games from childhood like Mario, Q*bert, Pong, and Asteroids. Bravo!
posted by ChrisLTD at 4:10 PM on February 8, 2014

What's the "obvious reference"? Unreal tournament?

It reminded me of Second Reality, but since it's not in the creator's list, I guess I'm mistaken.
posted by aubilenon at 7:35 PM on February 8, 2014

I remember playing Space Harrier on my Sega Master System and thinking video game graphics couldn't get much better than this...

Little known fact: 98% of current consoles and computers are modded Sega Master Systems. The core Windows 8 kernel for instance is built out from a backdoor into the stack that would allow developers to make Alex Kidd nude during debug.
posted by passerby at 7:38 PM on February 8, 2014