Skies
New Zealand Story, NES, 1989
Skies in 8-bit New Zealand are happy, blue affairs. There are some small clouds, but nothing big enough to trouble the processor or your mood.
Super Street Fighter II, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive/SNES, 1994
We simply couldn’t leave Cammy’s stage out of our skies history. Look. It’s the, um, glorious Northern Lights.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, PSone, 1997
This is more like it. A stylized 2D moon shines on behind a film of transparent 3D clouds that rush over the landscape at a surreal rate. Very special.
OutRun 2006, PS2, 2006
But why have a flat layer of clouds when you can render the whole things in 3D? In climbing a hill in your Ferrari you yourself just feet below the cloud cover. Beautiful.
Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds, PS3, 2008
Perhaps the calmest sky we’ve ever seen, but it’s functional too. Wispy clouds, travelling on different drafts, indicate wind direction and speed. A halcyon day indeed.
Palworld dev says the studio went dark for months because "the team was getting burnt out from all the social media stuff, I was getting burnt out, our CEO was under attack in Japan"
Metaphor: ReFantazio had to dial back an early battle system inspired by a notoriously brutal 2003 JRPG, because 20 years later, players found it "irrational" and "just not fun"
