![]() ![]() Yellow Brick Road has something of Virtual Hydlide’s overworld, except it’s all been smoothed down, giving the landscape an even uncannier appearance. Virtual Hydlide would hardly be worth looking at if it weren’t the mealy, shuddering world it is, where the horizon is a forever-distant, blurry mountain range and each craggy intestinal dungeon seems ready to crush your person. With it, its prequel, and Shining the Holy Ark, there’s a lusty joy to witnessing the toy-like people, creatures, and settings bobble around or simply be in their place. Even so, I was unprepared for discoveries like Clockwork Knight 2 being one of the most gorgeous videogames ever made. Going into these games, I had a few expectations based on what I’d seen of them. The subtext for compliments like this, though, is that the visuals are, at best, a stepping stone. ![]() Even when it comes to certain widely beloved titles the most you can usually drag out of people is an admittance that the “graphics were amazing for their time” - certainly true for, say, Final Fantasy VII. ![]() Practically everything about how videogames work and are presented and preserved creates the worst kind of environment for appreciating their history. The medium has always been obsessed with realism, whatever that meant in 1987 or 1997, an obsession reinforced by the continual negation of what’s old as the next generation of consoles (often backwards-incompatible) emerges. Even in their time, some of them were slammed for not looking as advanced as was expected. The thing uniting most of these games and my interest is that they would today be considered visually “transitional”, marking a period of supposed necessary evil in videogames’ technical capabilities. So far, I’ve finished Clockwork Knight and its sequel, and am in various places between Shining the Holy Ark, Shining Wisdom, Virtual Hydlide, and Yellow Brick Road. I’ve begun playing through a bunch of Sega Saturn releases that I’ve wanted to experience firsthand for years. ![]()
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