2D and 3D Games Comparison

Unit 78- Digital Graphics for Computer Games

Comparing Graphics of 2D & 3D Games

2D games are more common within the older era of game design, games such as Pong, Tetris and Pacman. 3D games are a lot more common, like Forza Motorsport, Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty.

The games I am going to compare are both made by the same person/company, they are so similar yet so different. Mario, a popular Italian plumber, and his friends have had many adventures over the last twenty-nine years. Many if these adventures in 2D, as well as more recent versions in 3D.

2D: There are seven different Super Mario games that were produced in 2D. These are:

·         Super Mario Bros. (1985)

·         Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (1986)

·         Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988)

·         Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988)

·         Super Mario Land (1989)

·         Super Mario World (1990)

·         Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (1992) http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Mario_games_by_genre

That being said, I am going to focus mainly on Super Mario Land. In 1989 Super Mario Land was released for Nintendo Gameboy, a handheld console, in the United States. It was released shortly after in Europe at the beginning of 1990. https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Super_Mario_Land.html

The artistic style is very basic, unrealistic and cartoony. The game was created in black and white, on the right you can see the game had a simple white background. The platforms are in a dark grey, to black. Mario is the little grey figure jumping across the screen.

Super Mario Land is animated and from Japan, however the artistic style of this game is not anime. As for photorealism it also isn’t the case in Super Mario Land. Abstractly, you could argue the colours in any Super Mario may mean the same as the abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky.

The graphics with Super Mario Land, for the era it was produced, are very high quality. I’m unsure whether the picture on the left is original concept art for Super Mario, however it does give you a rough idea of what concept art would’ve been created. As the game itself is of a basic design the background graphics are also basic standard. However you can still see the detail gone into each platform, as well as things that do not make any difference within the game; such as clouds. There aren’t many textures within the game, but again you can see the different styles and textures of the individual platforms.

Pixels are what Mario was originally made of, a pixel is a single point within an image. You can tell by Mario’s blocky appearance that he is pixel animated. To the right is a pixelated Mario, with a grid over him to emphasize where each pixel is.

Pixels are less common within newer games, however pixel Mario is an iconic figure in the gaming world.

The digital graphic type is Raster images, also known as a bitmap. Similar to pixels, if a raster image is blew up in size it becomes blurry, helping you to see the blocky pattern that makes up the pattern.

The file extension for Super Mario Land is .GBS. This means Game Boy Music Header. http://ocremix.org/chip/547

Compression means to make smaller, compressing a file to make it easier to store, faster to load or take up less space. Super Mario Lands file size is 7KB.

Image Capture may not be a vital part within any Mario game. As it is a cartoonish style the only image capture that may take place would be if a drawing was scanned into a computer and then processed.

Optimizing is making the most of your resources, in Super Mario you can see that they have optimized the ability to make the game run smoothly and efficiently as well as creating a fun game to play. This could also mean checking the file extension, and size of the file.

Storage of image assets basically means where you are to store it. Super Mario Land was stored onto a Game Boy cartridge, and was produced over one million times.

3D- As well as the 2D games there are multiple 3D games within the Mario Franchise too. These are:

·         Super Mario 64 (1996)

·         Super Mario Sunshine (2002)

·         Super Mario Galaxy (2007)

·         Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010)

·         Super Mario 3D Land (2011)

http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Mario_games_by_genre

The three dimensional Mario Game I am going to focus on is, Super Mario Galaxy 2. It was first released in Northern America on May 23rd 2010, four days later it was released in its native country, Japan. It wasn't until the middle of June the same year before it was on sale in Europe. Australia got it at the end of June, whereas it wasn't available in Korea until January 2011.

http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/Super_Mario_Galaxy_2

 

Artistically the 3D Mario is still unrealistic and cartooned. It is very similar to the 2D game, however it is much more modern.

The style is now more cartoonish, but it is now in colour. The colour within the game brings Mario and all of his friends, and enemies, to life. It makes the game stand out more than the black and white two dimensional game.

Going back to Wassily Kandinsky, his theory about the colours representing moods is more relevant within this game.

Again I am unsure as to whether the concept art on the left is official Nintendo designs.

However it shows you rough idea of how the game would have started to be developed. As for background graphics in this game, you can see in the background on the picture above that the clouds are more detailed and the scenery makes the game look more professional and smooth.

You can see all of the different textures within the clouds, the Mario Planet and the trail of stardust following Mario and Yoshi.

I believe that Mario from Super Mario Galaxy 2 is still also made from pixels. However they are much more developed than twenty one year’s previous. The pixels within the newer Mario may be much smaller than before making the appearance of Mario and Yoshi, on the right, more cartoony than pixel Mario.

However, other than being pixelated and bitmapped it’s also very possible that the newer, three-dimensional, version is a vector image. A vector image is not made up of pixels, it is made of paths which have curves and angles in between the start and end point.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 has an .MSBT file extension.

http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/msbt 

The file size for Super Mario Galaxy 2 is 1.21 KB. In terms of storage, similar to Super Mario Land, Super Mario Galaxy 2 has been produced many millions of times. Instead of going onto Game Boy cartridge it is instead on a game disc, similar to a DVD.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 was compressed to fit onto a 1.21 KB file, so it may have been bigger when first produced.

Overall the games I have compared have many similarities, but they also possess many unique qualities that the other does not.