Video Games With the Most Memorable Pre-Rendered Backgrounds

While the obvious lack of any Infinity Engine or Fallout titles paints a pretty good picture of what the author was playing during the late 90s, I thought I’d still send you over to Kotaku for this “Video Games With The Most Memorable Pre-Rendered Backgrounds” piece because it contains screenshot profiles for Metropolis’ Odium, Square Enix’s Chrono Cross, and Obsidian Entertainment’s Project Eternity. Here’s the lead-up:

Pre-rendered graphics weren’t only used in complex cinematic cutscenes back in the day when a game’s own 3D engine couldn’t do the job. Developers also used them as in-game backgrounds to bypass graphical limitations. And some of the games had really well-made, atmospheric pre-rendered backgrounds.

Squaresoft and Capcom preferred these a lot in their PS1 games in the late 90s, but it wasn’t just them. With minor differences some games had a combat screen in full 3D, for instance other developers also took advantage of this method.

And it had a good run, until video game engines started to become much more powerful and were able to handle camera angle changes and real-time rendering.