Thank Goodness We Got Our Heads Straight About 2D Games

Thank Goodness We Got Our Heads Straight About 2D Games

30 years ago, an entire art form faced an extinction-level event.

As you know, the Nintendo 64 debuted (in Japan) 30 years ago. Two things are true for people who remember the system’s launch. First, they need to think about going in for their first colonoscopy soon. Second, they were almost certainly dazzled by the vision of gaming’s future that Super Mario 64 represented: a three-dimensional future.

Super Mario 64 was not the first game to feature 3D graphics and gameplay by any stretch of the imagination, of course. But there was something compelling about seeing one of the most iconic l’il guys in video gaming leap, quite literally, into a new dimension. Mario had starred in multiple cutting-edge adventures over the years, from Donkey Kong (the first great platformer!) to Super Mario Bros. (a revolutionary new take on the platformer!) to Super Mario Land (a proper console-style platformer on a portable device!) to Super Mario World (a grand platformer adventure with incredible graphics and a vast world to unlock!). And now, here he was in a game that changed the very definition of what a platformer could even be—that changed what games can be, for that matter. It was, quite simply, a totally transformative work.

The downside of Super Mario 64 was that it also served, even unintentionally, as a sort of tipping point for the idea that 2D graphics and gameplay had grown old hat. Even as games like Rayman and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night pushed traditional graphics and play design to new heights, both the games industry and its player base (especially in the U.S. and Europe) looked at characters made of blocky triangles and said, “This is it. This is video games now.” And console-side support for classic 2D aesthetics and mechanics all but evaporated. By the time the PlayStation 2 and GameCube showed up, it had more or less become an unwritten rule of console gaming that games with two-dimensional visuals or gameplay could only exist on handhelds, unless you were talking about a compilation of old games that crammed as many as 50 games into a single, budget-priced release.

The point being: a significant percentage of gamers and game creators alike believed that 2D games, like portable games, had no inherent value compared to 3D, computer, and console games. A stroll through magazine scan archives from the late 1990s and early 2000s feels like venturing into a minefield where you might trip over an expression of sheer contempt toward bitmaps sprites at any moment.

Thankfully, that era seems to have come to an end. After a decade of suffering the withering contempt of players and critics alike in a post-Mario 64 world, 2D games began to claw their way back into public favor. Fittingly, Mario played a part in this rehabilitation, too: When New Super Mario Bros. shipped in 2006, its decidedly old-school flavor and action reminded people how nice it can be to run around having fun with just two action buttons and no need to worry about camera angles.

But there was more at work to this new way of living than just Mario. The rise of low-budget games (ranging from the one-man masterpiece Cave Story to the entire Xbox Live Indie Games lineup) represented a welcome contrast to the ballooning budgets and staff requirements that the move to high-definition graphics demanded. The growing power of portable systems helped bridge the gulf between consoles and handhelds to the point that the most popular console of the past decade, Nintendo Switch, has been a console that transforms instantly into a handheld. And let’s not forget the rise of mobile gaming, where simple 2D experiences proved a perfect fit for casual players and bite-sized play sessions.

And good thing, too! There are plenty of play experiences that work better in 2D than 3D. Crisp platform action games often feel better and more precise when everything operates around the clearly defined edges of a drawn line, be it hit boxes or just the boundaries of a set of platforms you need to traverse. Hand-drawn art has an appeal all its own, and it can embrace a huge variety of styles—looks that 3D games often attempt to emulate, but which ultimately call back to traditional illustration. And a small development team (or even a single person!) can easily create a nice-looking pixel-art game that plays well and offers impressive depth, something that becomes far more difficult in 3D thanks to the expectations of visual fidelity and detail that come hand-in-hand with three-dimensional graphics.

It’s not that either 2D or 3D games are inherently superior to the other. Rather, they’re both valid. Each format lends itself to specific experiences and types of gameplay. Each comes with its own expectations, opportunities, and limitations. It’s weird to imagine a time where one was ever considered worthless! Thank goodness we live in a more enlightened age, eh?