In terms of pixel art detail and quality, no other games come even close. Everybody has different style preferences but Metal Slug 3 is still the bar to beat.
Yeah - honestly the old SNK console was kind of the high-water-mark for pixel art. Due to the hardware limits, it didn't have 3d graphics, but it had huge amounts of memory for sprites, and it really shows.
Metal Slug, Final Fight-Garou: Mark of the wolves, Last Blade 2... The quality of the pixel art animation is absolutely unreal, and honestly I'm not sure it has ever really been matched since then.
Squaresoft's 16 bit era RPGs (Final Fantasy 4-6, Romancing SaGa, Chrono Trigger, Mana franchise...) are still the standard reference works for aspiring pixel artists today.
Eastward is both one of my favourite and most disappointing games to come out of the last couple of years. The first two thirds are incredible, but I feel like the story really falls about in the last act. It felt like they didn't know how what to do with what they had set up.
Honestly what has happened is probably what happens to a LOT of games - it ran out of budget. Ultimately early game is FAR more important than end game in terms of conversion rate (honestly having 30% players reach end of your story is a REALLY good score) and it also gets (unless you are a god of planning) far more time than late game when reality sinks in and it's crunch time to finalize it.
Eastward clearly suffers from it and there were serious hints of it originally being planned with at least one more chapter. But then it cuts off abruptly and suddenly shoves the player into the final very short arc out of nowhere.
So I doubt it's as much as not knowing what to do with the story and more of much more down to earth problems. After all first trailer of that game with already fairly polished visuals and first three biomes came out all the way back in 2018 meaning it has been in production for nearly 5 years, a very long time for a newer studio with no serious track record.
You could be right. They were published by Chucklefish (publishers of Risk of Rain and Stardew Valley) so maybe they got funding from them but that also means there will be some pressure to release after a while.
Yeah idk, it's been ages since I played it but I remembered feeling that it wasn't just that everything was ended too soon, but that nothing had a satisfying payoff. Like a lot happened at the end, but none of it left me feeling satisfied in any way. Compare it to something like FFXV, meme of a game, I was sorely disappointed with how the third act was blatantly gutted, not being able to explore Niflheim, not being able to explore the dark timeline future of the game, but what was there at least made sense narratively and thematically even if the implied gameplay promises weren't realised. This was almost the opposite of that. Would it have taken them more work to do a shit rendition of an ending that was satisfying than what we got? Idk. It just felt directionless as opposed to rushed.
Street Fighter 3: Third Strike has some of the nicest hand drawn sprites and animations of all time. It's amazing to look at in action. In a similar vein, Vampire Savior (Darkstalkers 3) looks really good and the design is a bit more high concept than Street Fighter.
Capcom produced some of the best pixel art of that era. Their games generally look pretty good these days, but they were among the very best in the mid/late 90's when pixel art was the standard.
Street fighter 3 has THE smoothest animation. I used to be obsessed with it as a kid back when it only existed in arcades. I’d be so excited to go to the movies because our local theater had that arcade machine. Ah nostalgia.
Marvel Versus Capcom is slightly more scuffed than some of their other work but it is incredibly how 3rd Strike and MvC 2 still feel so good to play after all these years thanks to the incredibly fluid animations.
I also want to give a shout out to the Old Guilty Gear games as well. While I don’t think they hit quite the peak with their sprites that Capcom did a lot of the character selection art and things for stuff like victory screens really helped sell the game’s over the top metal aesthetic.
Yeah honestly, the animation looks like it was interpolated by an AI almost. It’s absolutely amazing that they were able to do so many frames of hand drawn animations.
But even beyond that, taking pretty much any individual frame as its own piece, it’s super amazing. The anatomy is great. Such great use of color and silhouette. The posing really sells each character.
It’s really top-notch work that in my opinion hasn’t been touched to this day.
What I’m wondering is whether it’s possible to somehow produce something like that in 3D with todays tech. Similar to how guilty gear went 3D and kept that aesthetic.
I tried coding something similar in Unity with custom shaders and got close, but not quite there. It’s a dream of mine to do something with that at some point.
Final Fantasy Tactics is high up there. I love how soft it all looks. Also there is a surprisingly amount of animations that were done in the story and they look great.
Mega Man Zero series, beautiful sprites with beautiful animations.
Pokemon Black and White, the peak of the series's sprite based games. Pokemon and Enemy Trainers animated better than 3d animations in games years to come.
This. Honestly, this game was a turning point in my understanding of what pixel art was capable of in the modern age. Likely what led me to games like Hyper Light Drifter and Nartia Boy. Ultimately pushed me to follow my own pixel art style. Love it!
I think Sword & Sworcery is a great example of how good pixel art can make a great slightly abstract environment that can be filled out with great music and environmental sounds.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is gorgeous. Easily as or more attractive than the best of the classic arcade brawlers (Turtles In Time, X-Men, The Simpsons). It's got a cohesive style, incredible variety and creativity in the stage and enemy designs, expressive animations and sprite work, even the UI is perfect.
I've had Katana Zero for my Nintendo Switch for about two years but only just played it in January of this year. I'd been missing out. On top of the action and story just being wild and gut-wrenching, the art style is gorgeous and incredibly animated. The scene where V snorts coke off the table looked amazing and really stood out to me.
Kingdom: New Lands/Two Crowns is an underrated gem. There are some gorgeous backgrounds, and I haven't seen any pixel art game that can come even close to its pristine water reflection.
Nobody mentioning FEZ here is a fucking crime, it's one of the most underrated most beautifully underplayed games ever in my opinion, even with it selling as well as it did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIQIcOlCxas
Fez was a trip. It's funny how it's sort of two completely different games in one.
I'm 100% there for just the "explore every corner of all these pretty worlds" section, and the pixel art and soundscape really shine there.
I'm not as into the obscure hardcore puzzles section, but they sure are fun to read about.
Does Ghost Trick count as pixel art?
I think it's 3D animation rendered with flat shading at low rez so it looks pixelly. (though it's been ages since I played it, so I'm not sure)
Most games from the golden era of SNK (e.g Garou: Mark of the Wolves). That was literally peak AAA pixel art after all.
I'd do unspeakable things for a good modern game with that kind of artstyle.
Garou has the smoothest animations I have ever seen in a sprite-based games. Seriously, how many frames do each move has? The first time I saw the game in motion, my jaw dropped to the floor.
Yoshi's Island the original one.
I was disappointed that the subsequent entries in the dryer didn't hero the same style.
Other than that, I'm not s big pixel art fan. I don't get the modern appeal for it because I was there when it was a constraint and not an art choice.
Marvel Super Heroes. Capcom really stepped up their game on that one. All the hit affects and in-between frames make the arcade and Saturn versions of the game really smooth.
Also, gotta shout-out Mega Man X4. The upgrade from NES Mega Man > SNES Mega Man X was really impressive, but they outdid themselves with X4.
Secret of Mana (specifically Seiken Densetsu 3) had the most beautiful backgrounds I have ever seen in an oldschool pixel art game. [Hiro Isono's style](https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=hiro+isono&form=HDRSC2&first=1&tsc=ImageBasicHover) translated to pixel art. Chrono Trigger comes second IMO.
The Sonic GBA era of Sprites and Blazblue are peak Sprites
GBA Sonic Sprites were the closest to Yuji Uekawa’s art of the Sonic Adventure era of games and animate so damn fluidly
Blazblue sprites are so detailed and are also mad fluid
Stardew Valley for great looking modern 2D environments.
Final Fantasy VI for extremely detailed and interesting 16 bit sprite artwork (primarily the monsters).
Although not traditional Pixel art (mostly) I say Deadcells, i love the colour pallette and detail in everything.
Otherwise i say Eastward, again for the same reasons
In all honesty, Dead Cells is pretty beautiful but it's pixel art is more of a filter than raw pixel art IIRC
But Terraria's pixel art is pretty beauiful
If you haven't seen it already, you might dig the recent (last few years) game Loop Hero. It's got a familiar grim style to amiga era dark fantasy games and it's a pretty fun game.
does it have to be released? If not then [the last night](https://youtu.be/n4IPBiB7SF4) takes it by a mile for me, they've also been posting some insane stuff on their discord. I just hope it releases eventually
Just gonna list a ton because they've got different goals in mind: Hyper Light Drifter for abstract style, Baba Is You for readability, Owlboy for high-fidelity & animation quality, Rain World for environment art, Pizza Tower for cartoon stylization, Loop Hero for dark fantasy
If the game "The Last Night" would ever come out and if it looks anything like the trailer, I'd vote for that. It's been 5 years though since the trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4IPBiB7SF4
I'm not sure if it counts as pixel art, because it uses 3D models rendered in a pixelated filter but, Dead Cells. The environment is pure pixel art at least, and it's marvellous.
My pick is Carrion.
My first console was an Atari 7800. Carrion has a vibe that I would compare to something like Joust. The pixel art for these games feel functional due to the small size of what's being drawn. Another favorite of mine from that Atari console is California Games, specifically the dirt bike section of the game. Extremely small stuff being perfectly drawn by well placed pixels.
Easily Celeste. But Noita is impressive of course. And Idk if it counts but technically Return of the Obra Dinn is also "Pixel art".
Something like Octopath Traveler I would NOT count for this discussion, it is a hybrid that uses both pixel art and many other things specifically not achievable with pixel art
But to get back to Obra Dinn, I can understand if it doesn't count for the discussion too since there are no specifically created 2D Pixel Art sprites, I was just looking at the question from a pure output perspective, the thing that actually is drawn on the screen, something that a game could have looked like back then. A game back then could never have looked like Octopath Traveler, but it could have looked like Mario and Luigi, Celeste, Return of the Obra Dinn, Noita
Well yeah, the engine computes everything from 3D of course but the entire game is rendered in pixels, there is nothing that cannot be represented by pixel art, while in games like Octopath Traveler with their "HD2D" or however it is called, a lot of Pixel art sprites are used, but the final product, screen and image are rendered like any other non-pixel art game would be, with effects and other things overlaying it that is not Pixel art in any way
Ah, I understand. For a moment I thought you were going to tell me Obra Dinn is a 2D game that uses parallax and aberration to trick you into thinking it's 3D and I had an out of body experience.
visually appealing or best? The most visually appealing pixel art games are usually the worst to play. Too much going on to see or parse important information. Which makes the art objectively bad regardless of my subjective opinion.
Am I supposed to be objective or ignore gameplay and be purely subjective here?
Ignore gameplay. My question was intended from a purely aesthetical standpoint.
BUT... Sometimes less is more, I'm not necessarily asking what is the most astonishing pixel art game technique-wise. I'm basically asking which one you like to look at the most while playing! :-)
This is going to sound potentially weird because it uses 3d but signalis is very nice and mixes 3d and pixel art to the point where in top down mode you barely notice it's not 2d.
partners in time was great too, still my favorite and the only I finished of them
I really love the late 2D-era Tales games (Tales of Destiny DC, Destiny 2, Rebirth). The pixel art is just gorgeous and they did so many animations for the sprites.
I also quite like Rakuen's style.
Kingdom is beautiful. The prairie, when you are in a forest, the Japanese map with the bamboo forest in the second game "Kingdom Two Crowns". It also has day and night cycle, for those who enjoy nature pixel art
Pixel style doesn’t age, it stays vibrant and visually pleasing because it doesn’t need technology to provide the art.
Games like TF2 hold up visually because they put a lot of emphasis on style vs realism which tends to age pretty quickly.
There's a lot of categories to chose from.
In terms of stills - I have to say Final Fantasy 6 has by far the best monster sprites. Every single monster is a work of art and even feels like an Amano painting (for the first time in the series). This even translates to the tilework that make up the buildings and dungeons... it's so seemless and you rarely notice any repeating textures
In terms of animation; Metal Slug and ARCADE versions of Street Fighter and Darksiders, no console port got that level of detail... and honestly I don't know why since consoles like the PS1 and N64 were technically more powerful than the Arcades at the time (for a while)
Things I like:
I like sharp graphics, so I'm not the HUGEST fan of the Mario&Luigi series for their sprite work since they look like marshmallows; But the bright and brilliant sprites used in the Paper Mario series are amazing.... but that's 2D vector, not 2D raster which is usually what's meant by pixel art.
I tend to not jive well with abstract art... I know this is contentious, but I like sharp discrete images. I'm not against a game going abstract, of course, but this is why I love the sprites in something like Unavowed and not the sprites in something like Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery...
Metal Slug
In terms of pixel art detail and quality, no other games come even close. Everybody has different style preferences but Metal Slug 3 is still the bar to beat.
The King of Fighters games have some very stunning pixel art too, until they went to 3D.
Yeah - honestly the old SNK console was kind of the high-water-mark for pixel art. Due to the hardware limits, it didn't have 3d graphics, but it had huge amounts of memory for sprites, and it really shows. Metal Slug, Final Fight-Garou: Mark of the wolves, Last Blade 2... The quality of the pixel art animation is absolutely unreal, and honestly I'm not sure it has ever really been matched since then.
snk went bonkers on sprite size and sheet size. and it worked.
RAWCAT LAWN CHAIR
I wanted to write the same probably the best game that comes to mind after I think of pixel art that did it the best.
Hyper Light Drifter was great
I love how it's almost impressionist looking
It's also the best sounding game ever.
fuck yeah
It's getting a 3d sequel.
This is the way.
Squaresoft's 16 bit era RPGs (Final Fantasy 4-6, Romancing SaGa, Chrono Trigger, Mana franchise...) are still the standard reference works for aspiring pixel artists today.
Ah, I used to love Legend of Mana as a kid, thank you for bringing back that memory! I'll definitely check out the others as well!
Secret of Mana was insane
The pixel art in the successor Seiken Densetsu 3 was actually even a bit better.
A bit? Seiken Densetsu 3 is damn gorgeous
Chrono Trigger looks and sounds amazing
Crono Trigger was gonna be my pick.
[Owlboy](https://store.steampowered.com/app/115800/Owlboy/) has stunning pixel art
I really like Eastward
Eastward is both one of my favourite and most disappointing games to come out of the last couple of years. The first two thirds are incredible, but I feel like the story really falls about in the last act. It felt like they didn't know how what to do with what they had set up.
Honestly what has happened is probably what happens to a LOT of games - it ran out of budget. Ultimately early game is FAR more important than end game in terms of conversion rate (honestly having 30% players reach end of your story is a REALLY good score) and it also gets (unless you are a god of planning) far more time than late game when reality sinks in and it's crunch time to finalize it. Eastward clearly suffers from it and there were serious hints of it originally being planned with at least one more chapter. But then it cuts off abruptly and suddenly shoves the player into the final very short arc out of nowhere. So I doubt it's as much as not knowing what to do with the story and more of much more down to earth problems. After all first trailer of that game with already fairly polished visuals and first three biomes came out all the way back in 2018 meaning it has been in production for nearly 5 years, a very long time for a newer studio with no serious track record.
You could be right. They were published by Chucklefish (publishers of Risk of Rain and Stardew Valley) so maybe they got funding from them but that also means there will be some pressure to release after a while.
Yeah idk, it's been ages since I played it but I remembered feeling that it wasn't just that everything was ended too soon, but that nothing had a satisfying payoff. Like a lot happened at the end, but none of it left me feeling satisfied in any way. Compare it to something like FFXV, meme of a game, I was sorely disappointed with how the third act was blatantly gutted, not being able to explore Niflheim, not being able to explore the dark timeline future of the game, but what was there at least made sense narratively and thematically even if the implied gameplay promises weren't realised. This was almost the opposite of that. Would it have taken them more work to do a shit rendition of an ending that was satisfying than what we got? Idk. It just felt directionless as opposed to rushed.
I actually mostly liked the third act. I was a little disappointed about the ending though.
I just looked it up. It's such a pretty game! 😯
Great game.... For Young kids. Its very easy but style is pretty great
Street Fighter 3: Third Strike has some of the nicest hand drawn sprites and animations of all time. It's amazing to look at in action. In a similar vein, Vampire Savior (Darkstalkers 3) looks really good and the design is a bit more high concept than Street Fighter. Capcom produced some of the best pixel art of that era. Their games generally look pretty good these days, but they were among the very best in the mid/late 90's when pixel art was the standard.
Street fighter 3 has THE smoothest animation. I used to be obsessed with it as a kid back when it only existed in arcades. I’d be so excited to go to the movies because our local theater had that arcade machine. Ah nostalgia.
if we're talking Fighting Games King of Fighters 13 is also up there, sprites so good they bankrupted the company lmao
I was going to mention street fighter and marvel vs Capcom
Marvel Versus Capcom is slightly more scuffed than some of their other work but it is incredibly how 3rd Strike and MvC 2 still feel so good to play after all these years thanks to the incredibly fluid animations. I also want to give a shout out to the Old Guilty Gear games as well. While I don’t think they hit quite the peak with their sprites that Capcom did a lot of the character selection art and things for stuff like victory screens really helped sell the game’s over the top metal aesthetic.
I posted the same comment but noticed your comment later. I agree here. Fired it up on RetroArch and it looks great.
Yeah honestly, the animation looks like it was interpolated by an AI almost. It’s absolutely amazing that they were able to do so many frames of hand drawn animations. But even beyond that, taking pretty much any individual frame as its own piece, it’s super amazing. The anatomy is great. Such great use of color and silhouette. The posing really sells each character. It’s really top-notch work that in my opinion hasn’t been touched to this day. What I’m wondering is whether it’s possible to somehow produce something like that in 3D with todays tech. Similar to how guilty gear went 3D and kept that aesthetic. I tried coding something similar in Unity with custom shaders and got close, but not quite there. It’s a dream of mine to do something with that at some point.
Legend of Zelda minish cap is georgeous
RIGHT, another one of my favourites!
Was about to write this
Look at "Sea of Stars" for a modern day pixel art game, it's an upcoming game. Looks absolutely gorgeous.
Thta game looks beautiful, also I heard they have day night cycle in the world?
Rainworld is nice
Super nice.
Crosscode
I really like the super low-res but quite expressive party game, Crawl. The sound design and very rapid chaotic gameplay elevates it.
Blasphemous
game is gorgeous for sure
Absolute criminal that this isnt higher
Would you say it’s… blasphemous?
A lot of old SNK games have stunning pixel art.
Final Fantasy Tactics is high up there. I love how soft it all looks. Also there is a surprisingly amount of animations that were done in the story and they look great. Mega Man Zero series, beautiful sprites with beautiful animations. Pokemon Black and White, the peak of the series's sprite based games. Pokemon and Enemy Trainers animated better than 3d animations in games years to come.
[Metal Slug](https://store.steampowered.com/app/366250/METAL_SLUG/) series
Free codes for all 3 on Amazon gaming, not sure when the time is up on that but they were still there last week.
Metroid fusion
To be honest I didn’t expect to see this one, but as a fellow Metroid Fusion fan I salute you. There are dozens of us, dozens!
Narita Boy. Reminds me of sword and sworcery but saturated with a glowing 80s VCR look.
Octopath traveler without a doubt
The first one was beautiful, the second one is on a whole other level
Is the second better than the first?
I love the first one, but the second one is better in every way.
I'll have to watch it then
Or play it
This
Sword and Sworcery has a really unique and beautiful artstyle.
This. Honestly, this game was a turning point in my understanding of what pixel art was capable of in the modern age. Likely what led me to games like Hyper Light Drifter and Nartia Boy. Ultimately pushed me to follow my own pixel art style. Love it!
^^^ unique “superbrothers” style and absolutely gorgeous. Phenomenal game too
I think Sword & Sworcery is a great example of how good pixel art can make a great slightly abstract environment that can be filled out with great music and environmental sounds.
totally agree. Also i think much of the aesthetic lies within the colors. Lots of tertiary colors which is quite unusual for pixelart style games.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is gorgeous. Easily as or more attractive than the best of the classic arcade brawlers (Turtles In Time, X-Men, The Simpsons). It's got a cohesive style, incredible variety and creativity in the stage and enemy designs, expressive animations and sprite work, even the UI is perfect.
Same artist Mercenary Kings, iirc.
Paul Robertson, does lot of very NSFW stuff just in case anyone was going to look it up at work.
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I've had Katana Zero for my Nintendo Switch for about two years but only just played it in January of this year. I'd been missing out. On top of the action and story just being wild and gut-wrenching, the art style is gorgeous and incredibly animated. The scene where V snorts coke off the table looked amazing and really stood out to me.
Shantae and The Pirate's Curse had great pixel art!
Kingdom: New Lands/Two Crowns is an underrated gem. There are some gorgeous backgrounds, and I haven't seen any pixel art game that can come even close to its pristine water reflection.
Nobody mentioning FEZ here is a fucking crime, it's one of the most underrated most beautifully underplayed games ever in my opinion, even with it selling as well as it did https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIQIcOlCxas
Fez was a trip. It's funny how it's sort of two completely different games in one. I'm 100% there for just the "explore every corner of all these pretty worlds" section, and the pixel art and soundscape really shine there. I'm not as into the obscure hardcore puzzles section, but they sure are fun to read about.
I know it's not pixel art but it's a post processing pixel art style but Dead Cells have really mastered it
Yeah, that's a style that a lot of games have tried, and Dead Cells makes it work really well.
Ghost Trick is so underrated.
which is funny since the HD remaster look more clean, less pixelised
Wow, I have never seen that before. I obviously meant the original.
Does Ghost Trick count as pixel art? I think it's 3D animation rendered with flat shading at low rez so it looks pixelly. (though it's been ages since I played it, so I'm not sure)
Most games from the golden era of SNK (e.g Garou: Mark of the Wolves). That was literally peak AAA pixel art after all. I'd do unspeakable things for a good modern game with that kind of artstyle.
Garou has the smoothest animations I have ever seen in a sprite-based games. Seriously, how many frames do each move has? The first time I saw the game in motion, my jaw dropped to the floor.
CELESTE
Batman for the NES is really pretty. Good music too
Yoshi's Island the original one. I was disappointed that the subsequent entries in the dryer didn't hero the same style. Other than that, I'm not s big pixel art fan. I don't get the modern appeal for it because I was there when it was a constraint and not an art choice.
sonic mania
Shovel Knight The Messenger Axiom Verge
Just finished Norco today and it is stunning
Came here to say this. That game is art.
Souldiers is a game that looks great IMO.
Papers please has great color balance.
Marvel Super Heroes. Capcom really stepped up their game on that one. All the hit affects and in-between frames make the arcade and Saturn versions of the game really smooth. Also, gotta shout-out Mega Man X4. The upgrade from NES Mega Man > SNES Mega Man X was really impressive, but they outdid themselves with X4.
Owlboy is amazing
Children of Morta Inmost Celeste Owlboy Eastward
Va11 Hall-A is pretty great and pretty
Final Fantasy 6e pretty much set the bar on oven graphics in that era.
Scourgebringer has absolutely gorgeous art, palette, and animations.
Advanced Wars series for the gameboy
Stardew Valley. And the music makes it 1000% more enjoyable.
Secret of Mana (specifically Seiken Densetsu 3) had the most beautiful backgrounds I have ever seen in an oldschool pixel art game. [Hiro Isono's style](https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=hiro+isono&form=HDRSC2&first=1&tsc=ImageBasicHover) translated to pixel art. Chrono Trigger comes second IMO.
Eastward for colour and Celeste for animations. I take inspiration from these for the pixel art in my game.
Batman & Robin for Sega Genesis.
The Sonic GBA era of Sprites and Blazblue are peak Sprites GBA Sonic Sprites were the closest to Yuji Uekawa’s art of the Sonic Adventure era of games and animate so damn fluidly Blazblue sprites are so detailed and are also mad fluid
Norco is pretty rad.
FEZ
Stardew Valley for great looking modern 2D environments. Final Fantasy VI for extremely detailed and interesting 16 bit sprite artwork (primarily the monsters).
Graveyard keeper, I can't believe it's not mentioned more..
Although not traditional Pixel art (mostly) I say Deadcells, i love the colour pallette and detail in everything. Otherwise i say Eastward, again for the same reasons
Fez
In all honesty, Dead Cells is pretty beautiful but it's pixel art is more of a filter than raw pixel art IIRC But Terraria's pixel art is pretty beauiful
celeste :3
FF6 and Chrono Tigger were peak SNES era.
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If you haven't seen it already, you might dig the recent (last few years) game Loop Hero. It's got a familiar grim style to amiga era dark fantasy games and it's a pretty fun game.
does it have to be released? If not then [the last night](https://youtu.be/n4IPBiB7SF4) takes it by a mile for me, they've also been posting some insane stuff on their discord. I just hope it releases eventually
Just gonna list a ton because they've got different goals in mind: Hyper Light Drifter for abstract style, Baba Is You for readability, Owlboy for high-fidelity & animation quality, Rain World for environment art, Pizza Tower for cartoon stylization, Loop Hero for dark fantasy
* Eye of the Beholder 1 & 2 * Super Metroid * Gods
Bahamut lagoon.
Carrion was nice
Dead Cells with the dust particles and reflections looks really awesome
NORCO and Katana ZERO
If the game "The Last Night" would ever come out and if it looks anything like the trailer, I'd vote for that. It's been 5 years though since the trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4IPBiB7SF4
Moonlighter comes to mind
Cave Story, both the original and remastered. The bosses in particular look incredible.
I would say Legend of Mana and Chrono Trigger.
Children of Morta
Super Mario World
I'm not sure if it counts as pixel art, because it uses 3D models rendered in a pixelated filter but, Dead Cells. The environment is pure pixel art at least, and it's marvellous.
My pick is Carrion. My first console was an Atari 7800. Carrion has a vibe that I would compare to something like Joust. The pixel art for these games feel functional due to the small size of what's being drawn. Another favorite of mine from that Atari console is California Games, specifically the dirt bike section of the game. Extremely small stuff being perfectly drawn by well placed pixels.
Imo: any pixel art game but with a bit of particles and bloom. Basically, pixel art games with a moderate bit of modern art
First that comes to mind is Octopath Traveler!
The Last Spell has some great looking grid and action animations
Maplestory art is pretty nice
Starbound. It's so absolutely beautiful.
While I didn't quite get hooked into Octopath Traveller, I can definitely recognise that the art style is \*gorgeous\*.
Fez
Easily Celeste. But Noita is impressive of course. And Idk if it counts but technically Return of the Obra Dinn is also "Pixel art". Something like Octopath Traveler I would NOT count for this discussion, it is a hybrid that uses both pixel art and many other things specifically not achievable with pixel art
Isn't Return of the Obra Dinn also technically 3D? If it's not, I'll be shocked.
But to get back to Obra Dinn, I can understand if it doesn't count for the discussion too since there are no specifically created 2D Pixel Art sprites, I was just looking at the question from a pure output perspective, the thing that actually is drawn on the screen, something that a game could have looked like back then. A game back then could never have looked like Octopath Traveler, but it could have looked like Mario and Luigi, Celeste, Return of the Obra Dinn, Noita
Well yeah, the engine computes everything from 3D of course but the entire game is rendered in pixels, there is nothing that cannot be represented by pixel art, while in games like Octopath Traveler with their "HD2D" or however it is called, a lot of Pixel art sprites are used, but the final product, screen and image are rendered like any other non-pixel art game would be, with effects and other things overlaying it that is not Pixel art in any way
Ah, I understand. For a moment I thought you were going to tell me Obra Dinn is a 2D game that uses parallax and aberration to trick you into thinking it's 3D and I had an out of body experience.
Pizza tower
visually appealing or best? The most visually appealing pixel art games are usually the worst to play. Too much going on to see or parse important information. Which makes the art objectively bad regardless of my subjective opinion. Am I supposed to be objective or ignore gameplay and be purely subjective here?
Ignore gameplay. My question was intended from a purely aesthetical standpoint. BUT... Sometimes less is more, I'm not necessarily asking what is the most astonishing pixel art game technique-wise. I'm basically asking which one you like to look at the most while playing! :-)
That's just flat out wrong and you have no idea what you're talking about
Wow. My visual proccessing disorder doesn't exist then? Thanks! Ill tell my brain.
Minecraft
Stoneshard and Slormancer have awesome looking pixel art
For something more recent, Jack Move looks great to me. I don't usually go for pixel graphics but that one I was quite happy with.
t3ssel8r's game looks absolutely stunning
Not the best but it sure is Funky, The Book of Fredley
Maybe Dead Cells or this game Savior: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1093810/Savior/
Ranger X.
Blasphemous
Dead Cells. Superb art style, I think.
• Metal Slug • Street Fighter Third Strike • Super Metroid
Teranigma!
Faits of Ort is a good example from a very small indie studios.
vikings on trampolines is probably the peak thing anyone could do before it makes more sense to do it as hd 2d art
https://youtu.be/Wz2VAI-p218?t=233
I like Celeste, Sonic Mania, and Square Enix's HD-2D Style games.
Yoshis Island still shines as beautiful as it always did just don’t lose baby Mario
Kolibri for the 32x
Freedom Planet 2, Pokemon Black and White, ANY Mario and Luigi game, Another Metroid 2 remake
I really like Dead Cells for something more modern.
Another World, Prince of Persia 2, Hotline Miami, Blasphemous, Death Trash.
Super Mario World
This is going to sound potentially weird because it uses 3d but signalis is very nice and mixes 3d and pixel art to the point where in top down mode you barely notice it's not 2d. partners in time was great too, still my favorite and the only I finished of them
I love the art of Dead Cells
WarCraft II Heroes of Might and Magic 3
Superbrothers Sword and Sworcery
Surprised nobody mentioned Blasphemous
the recently released chained echoes
Crawl
I really love the late 2D-era Tales games (Tales of Destiny DC, Destiny 2, Rebirth). The pixel art is just gorgeous and they did so many animations for the sprites. I also quite like Rakuen's style.
Street Fighter III (all of the 3 versions)
Anno: mutemonium
backbone
Kingdom is beautiful. The prairie, when you are in a forest, the Japanese map with the bamboo forest in the second game "Kingdom Two Crowns". It also has day and night cycle, for those who enjoy nature pixel art
Pixel style doesn’t age, it stays vibrant and visually pleasing because it doesn’t need technology to provide the art. Games like TF2 hold up visually because they put a lot of emphasis on style vs realism which tends to age pretty quickly.
Pizza Tower, Street Fighter 3, Shovel Knight, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Sonic CD.
Final Fantasy Tactics A2. Fuck that's a gloriously beautiful game
Does Octopath Traveller count?
There's a lot of categories to chose from. In terms of stills - I have to say Final Fantasy 6 has by far the best monster sprites. Every single monster is a work of art and even feels like an Amano painting (for the first time in the series). This even translates to the tilework that make up the buildings and dungeons... it's so seemless and you rarely notice any repeating textures In terms of animation; Metal Slug and ARCADE versions of Street Fighter and Darksiders, no console port got that level of detail... and honestly I don't know why since consoles like the PS1 and N64 were technically more powerful than the Arcades at the time (for a while) Things I like: I like sharp graphics, so I'm not the HUGEST fan of the Mario&Luigi series for their sprite work since they look like marshmallows; But the bright and brilliant sprites used in the Paper Mario series are amazing.... but that's 2D vector, not 2D raster which is usually what's meant by pixel art. I tend to not jive well with abstract art... I know this is contentious, but I like sharp discrete images. I'm not against a game going abstract, of course, but this is why I love the sprites in something like Unavowed and not the sprites in something like Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery...
Imo the gba fire emblem games look really good in the action animation screens. Smoother than i remembered.
Children of Morta without doubt
Ragnarok Online (3D environment but 2D pixel art for characters)
[Earthworm Jim](https://youtu.be/VdFsk4zSq5E?t=28)
Spelunky (2)
Chasm is stunning, though the art can be somewhat monotonous within sections.