I'd like to make a brief pit stop here to discuss what I've coined as the Shenmue Passport effect. For those that never owned the game, the Dreamcast version of the game came with an extra disc. On this disc you could select a few interactive cutscenes. Essentially it would be a high poly version of a game character, who would talk about the game and mechanics; and it had superior face animation and detail.

It was all in real time as the camera rotated about the face and you could zoom in or out and change the lighting. As I said, it was all in real time and it was so detailed some of it still looks great compared to todays modern games.

But, in the actual game it never looked anywhere near as good.

Some games have a game engine and a cutscene engine - which superficially look similar; where the cutscenes are still real time - as in generated by the system directly and not FMV, but they still aren't using the same in game engine with the same restrictions and considerations as the actual game itself requires. It leads some gamers to claim that some older games or systems had superior technology based on  an essentially skewed, perspective. Shenmue Passport is a perfect example, superficially they look the same, look again and you can see that those visuals were only possible because it was one character filmed from the shoulders up in a very small room, with all the processing power of the machine dedicated to it and it alone. Cutscenes which feature a fixed camera are even more suspect as the machine doesn't have to render what it doesn't see. I was almost fooled by RE5 which does have great visuals, but if you pay attention the cutscenes are still superior. They feature such a regimented artstyle its hard to tell at times, but you do cotton on to it.

I'd also like to briefly talk about screenshots of older games - firstly I don't like it when people present PC captures of games or screens from the PC version of older games and claim how great it looks. Today if you post HD Dolphin shots of WIi games, it's perfectly clear that it was taken with Dolphin and everybody knows and acknoledges that. Way back in the Xbox era there were screens shown at resolutions the Xbox 1 just could not do. Whenever a Black fanboy posts an HD screen of the game and claim that that is what the PS2 version looked like, I facepalm. Halo 2's pre-release shots and some Ninja Gaiden screens floating about are also rendered at a resolution the Xbox 1 could not do.

On the other hand I want to point out, for the people that say the games only look good because they are HD shots, I would also say that the graphics do look like that, on a good TV, SD or otherwise, only (with) jaggies around the edges. They haven't had any effects added or photoshop manipulation or shaders or new assets, they are presented as screens from the actual game just with smoother jag free edges.

I realise that this may be a pointless blog for you to read, but I had to get it off my chest.