Screen Crunch; A Handful Of Problems

When porting games onto a handheld, or even sometimes when designing graphics without proper communication with the programming team, a fun little thing happens where a game can literally be made too large for the screen it's going to be played on. We've all been there, we've all felt the icy sting of being hit by enemies and obstacles you can't even see;

The magic of Screen Crunch.

Now I thought this might be only be an issue affecting handhelds and retro games, but hey, it happened a whole bunch in the life cycle of the PS2 and sometimes it even happens on modern consoles.

Usually screen crunch happens when a game made for a system intended to be played on a large screen is ported to a system with a much smaller screen, and thereby "crunches" the player's field of view. Less often, graphical assets are made too large for the available on screen pixels, and thereby making less screen visible. To illustrate, here's Sonic The Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive versus Sonic The Hedgehog on the Game Boy Advance.

And here's Sigma Star Saga for the GBA, a game with sprites wayyyyy too big for the GBA's screen.

This immediately adds a layer of artificial difficulty, since the player has to now react to objects they can't even see. In some games it's worse than others, ie. turn-based RPGs aren't going to show the same difficulty spike due to screen crunch as an action platformer.

The easiest way around this is to, of course, design smaller assets, and adjust physics accordingly.

The unfortunate downside is that smaller sprites don't often sell games.

Graphical fidelity is a marketing moneyshot that the publishing industry has to rely on to push products. After all, you can't physically play a game trailer, you can only look at it, and if it doesn't look good, it won't sell. I think gamers have unfortunately adopted the mentality of appreciating graphical fidelity over visual aesthetic.

But that has changed! Look at indie metroidvania game Axiom Verge, which make excellent use of HD screen space and sizes down the sprites, while upping the mechanic prowess of it's protagonist.

Yes, that little speck of  a person is you. And the advantages of this is that you *always* know when an enemy or obstacle is incoming and you.

I think this is something to always keep in mind. And while graphical fidelity is always nice, it should never come at the expense of your game's mechanics. And while it's easier to simply aim for higher resolutions and absurd amounts of anti-alias and millions of on-screen particles and polygon counts that you need a calculator to reach, sometimes you can achieve the same level of engagement by simply using a better colour palette, more striking character designs and some thought through world-building.

Visual aesthetic is going to always trump graphical fidelity. It's basically the entire selling point of Nintendo games, they sell consoles with last generation hardware but make characters and games so iconic that they can compete with modern triple A titles. Case in point, Super Mario 3D World on the Wii-U is much less graphically intensive than The Witcher 3, but the two reached nearly the same level of critical acclaim (SM3DW reaching scores of 9 to 9.6, with the Witcher 3 reaching scores of 9.3 to 10).

That's right, PC gamers, a Wii-U game reached the same level of greatness as one of the juggernaut games on the personal computer, and did it while wearing a furry cat costume.

So when designing your own games, just remember, you don't need to be a graphical juggernaut. You don't need assets that take up that much screen space. Just make a good game and give it its own flavour and quirk. Visual Aesthetic sells just as well as graphical fidelity.

And above all, let us poor gamers see the fucking bottomless pit coming.