The Far Side of Tech

I’m not sure if I can really express how much I love sprites. I attribute it mostly to growing up on the gorgeous 2D graphics on the SNES with the likes of Chrono Trigger, Super Mario World, and of course the venerable Street Fighter 2 series. Even during the 32-bit console era, sprites always offered more detail than polygonal models. Smart game designers mixed the two formats to create some of the best looking games from that generation, including Castelvania: Symphony of the Night, Valkyrie Profile, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Star Ocean 2. It wasn’t until I played Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast that I was fully convinced polygons could muster the detail of hand drawn sprites.

The Dreamcast was the perfect system for a sprite lover like me. While it pushed the boundaries of polygonal graphics, it was also perfectly suited for advanced 2D games such as Street Fighter 3, Guilty Gear, and the Marvel vs. Capcom series. Of course then the Dreamcast died a lonely death and somehow the less-capable (at least as it seemed at that time) PS2 ended up owning that generation.

It amazes me that most teenagers today grew up during the beginning of the 3D console era with the Playstation, Saturn, and Nintendo 64. I recognized even back then that the mad rush towards everything polygonal would mean certain doom for my beloved 2D sprites.

Now we’re in the high definition era, and those sprites aren’t looking as hot–until now. With the recently announced Super Street Fighter 2 and Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix versions, Capcom is doing more than increasing the length of the already unwieldy game titles, they’ve farmed out a complete revamp of the game’s sprites to the talented Udon Entertainment folks. As you can see, courtesy of this image from Racket Boy, the results are stunning:

Click for a larger image.

I cannot wait to see what an entire game filled with these massively detailed sprites will look like. Also, if Capcom is expending so much effort by making these remake sprites look good, I can’t imagine what we’re going to be seeing in Street Fighter 4.

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