Video games are pretty awesome. Whether you’re into them or not though, there is no contesting that this 455 billion dollar industry (as of 2024) has changed the modern world and its media. However, despite this massive influence and attention on games, some aspects of video games do go unnoticed. One of those aspects is animation, a medium that can go underappreciated or even unnoticed by people, despite its grave importance to a game’s design, clarity, and polish.
For some context, video game animation refers to any sort of movement found among a game’s assets, whether they be characters, visual effects, the environment, menus, etc. It can be utilized to provide both function and visual flair to a game.
You can see from all sorts of gaming outlets and sources the lack of attention that game animation gets. This IGN review for “Hades,” an RPG (role-playing game) based on Greek mythology, has little to no mention of any animation in the game, instead providing a focus on the characters, gameplay, and setting. Another review from RPG Site talks about “Persona 3 Reload,” a 2006 RPG remade from the ground up in 2024 with new stylized visuals and animation. The slightly reworked gameplay is heavily focused on, while the aesthetics and style are only briefly commented on. In various articles from Hero Vired and Game Designing covering the most important aspects of a good video game, visual design, and art style are mentioned, but the animation, in particular, is never given any spotlight, especially in how it aids in game design.
While many different reviews and media platforms discussing video games barely mention animation compared to things like gameplay or story, Kevuru Games explains that animation is “[an] essential aspect of creating an immersive experience for players.” Effective animation allows for things like improved immersion, feedback, storytelling, visual identity, and much more.
It is important to note that I am not stating that all other aspects of games outside of animation—such as gameplay, atmosphere, or storytelling—are bad or overrated. They are extremely important in supporting a video game in their way. I am arguing that animation is equally important and that it should be seen as an integral part of game design rather than an afterthought.
To truly understand the contributions animation has to gaming, we must look at the industry’s history; specifically, to the early days of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), released in 1985, and how that system’s primitive technology from the ‘80s paved the way for creative solutions with limited and exaggerated animation.
The NES console only had 16 kilobytes of free space, which could be expanded from 8 kilobytes to 1 megabyte with a game cartridge inserted. This is extraordinarily small. One kilobyte is equivalent to about 1000 bytes (1s & 0s); a single photo captured on the camera of an iPhone 15 Pro takes up about 800-1100 KB, which is around 50-70 times larger than all of the storage on an NES by default.
In the flagship game for the NES, “Super Mario Bros.,” all of the sprites (digital 2D images able to be manipulated across a screen) for Mario are prime examples for how amazing optimization for the game was in the context of how little technical resources the developers at Nintendo had. In total, not including sprites of visual effects or recolors, there are 32 unique sprite poses for Mario across the entire game. These include one unique pose for standing still, one unique pose for jumping, four unique poses for walking, and 24 other poses to include all of Mario’s other actions, whether they be swimming, climbing, or throwing fireballs.
Thirty-two unique sprites may sound like a plentiful number, but in the grand scheme of things, this is nothing compared to the amount of unique poses a character can do in a modern video game. Take, for example, Peppino from “Pizza Tower,” a recent 2023 indie game. He has over 5,000-pixel sprites—a huge number in comparison to Mario.
Mario had only one standing pose with the aim of conserving space, so the developers specifically designed that one pose to be as recognizable as it is neutral. The same rhetoric is applied to the jump pose. As soon as the player hits the A button, Mario switches from a grounded state to leaping in the air in less than a fraction of a second, causing such an extreme change in silhouette that it lets the player know instantaneously what the character is doing.
It’s not just “Super Mario Bros.” that does this, however. Other animations in NES games like the run animation of “Mega Man,” the sword stabs in “The Legend of Zelda,” the inhale pose in “Kirby’s Adventure,” and many more, also relied on big, exaggerated motions across very few unique poses to convey what was happening on screen to the player.
Another challenge that faced developers of NES games was that the console only had a resolution of 256 wide by 240 pixels tall. For reference, most modern screen resolutions today are 1920 wide by 1080 pixels tall. Two hundred and fifty-six by 240 pixels is a tiny resolution, and it can be pretty hard to make out what’s happening in front of you at all times—another reason why exaggerated poses with big changes in movement are so important to making sure the player knows what’s going on.
Although this idea of clarity and player feedback to compliment a video game’s design through animation was especially clear in the early days of limited pixel graphics, it has carried over as a universal concept across nearly all video games since. We may have moved on from the NES, but in some games, we can still find artifacts from that era in terms of how animation is approached. In the most recent game in the 2D Mario series, “Super Mario Bros. Wonder,” the game’s animation still goes for more exaggerated poses that are held for longer periods, just like NES games did with smaller sprite counts. This style of animation is chosen despite more convenient technologies with interpolation and completely smooth movement being readily available. This modern game has almost zero technological limitations, and yet it still goes with the same method that was used by its predecessor almost 40 years ago.
In a series of interviews with the developers of the game, this sort of homage to Mario’s older pixelated games was mentioned. “The game’s animation has the role of communicating the character’s state to the player,” said the game’s art director, Masanobu Sato. “In this game, we revisited Mario’s iconic poses from the days of pixel graphics… As a result, we believe we’ve been able to create characters that leave a strong impression.”
Another example of animation complimenting game design can be found in the “Dark Souls” series from FromSoftware, which has very combat-focused gameplay. Although the games are very difficult, the animation can act as a visual aid to the player. For example, when your character swings their weapon, they have an extremely long wind-up phase before they actually start attacking what’s in front of them and an extremely long follow-through phase where they cannot do any actions. This startup and ending lag across all of the games’ weapons is integral to the combat system’s design, and through its portrayal in the animations, can be something the player can make note of. Slow attack and recovery times create a back-and-forth dynamic between the player and any enemy they face, allowing the player to carefully weave in and out of the enemy’s telegraphed attacks as they follow up with attacks of their own.
In contrast, fighting games like “Super Smash Bros.” are played with lightning-fast controls and reflexes, and as a result, need lighting-fast animations, feedback, and clarity to let the player understand what’s happening. TDirector of “Smash Bros.” Masahiro Sakurai goes into detail about his process in animating a single attack in the game in a YouTube video, showing how the attack is split up into multiple phases with much complexity, including a snappy and instant anticipation phase, a crucially prominent attacking phase, and a longer, readable follow-through phase
Other methods of animation like motion capture, a technique involving the creation of digital motion data through human actors in specialized suits, have also evolved as games took on photorealistic visuals. Larian Studio’s “Baldur’s Gate 3,” for example, is an massive game in terms of its content, interactions, and animation through its robust conversation system. Because of the nearly endless amounts of dialogue in this game that needed to be animated over, motion capture was utilized, giving the game a realistic look while being much more efficient than painstakingly animating everything by hand. In short, while it is fascinating to see how animation was approached in the early days of gaming, it is equally fascinating to witness other approaches to animation for the players’ experience outside of that time frame.
Game animation can do more than just compliment game design, however. It can also just be really cool and increase a game’s appeal exponentially. There are so many innovative, artistic games out there that are heavily complimented by their animation, and they very likely would not have the same status and praise without it.
2017’s “Cuphead” by Studio MDHR, for example, was a once-in-a-lifetime moment for animation. The process they used to create everything in the game was insane. The game did everything in its power to faithfully recreate (or at least evoke) the feeling of the 1930s, with a live big-band jazz soundtrack and character designs that look straight out of old cartoons by Walt Disney or Max Fleischer. Notably, they even hand-animated and inked every single animation in the game on paper, just like their source material did. Some of the game’s environments were even created with hand-constructed models.
Meanwhile, “Persona 5,” which was released in 2016 by Atlus, has completely different animation from “Cuphead” that serves a different purpose. This game has an unfathomably cool art style, with a high emphasis on exaggerated and jagged shapes along with its red and black color aesthetic. This style makes the game really stand out in comparison to other RPGs. Everything about this game is so stylish and in-your-face, even with something as basic as the pause menu. Seeing the game’s protagonist, Joker, moving around in dynamic poses with daring camera angles for whatever setting and option you choose never gets old. The game’s usage of the color red in its effects animation alongside its in-your-face nature contribute to the game’s larger theme of rebellion and finding your voice in a corrupt society. It’s so awesome how animation like this can enunciate and build upon the visual style, themes, and cinematography of a game.
“Hi-Fi Rush,” a 2023 game by Tango Gameworks, also has one of the coolest art styles I have ever seen. The game is focused on music-based combat, so the animation style is based on heavily stylized comics and 90’s rock, achieved through a 3D cel-shaded look. Animation in this game has really good slapstick comedy in its cutscenes, and incorporates musical elements naturally. In the gameplay, the protagonist, Chai, has adaptive animations to snap his fingers, pace his steps, and fight to the beat of the background music. I have never seen so much style and confidence in a game like this, and it has become one of my favorites to look at and hear.
A lot of aspects of games are praised, whether they relate to gameplay, setting, presentation, or music. Animation is a field which has gone a long way in positively affecting games, whether it be in design, player feedback, or just general polis, but it lacks the praise it very much deserves.
By giving more of a spotlight to this niche aspect of video games, both through direct examples from games, and from a historical perspective, I hope this allows game animation to be seen in a new light, highlighting just how essential it is to games. Game animation, a combination of two of my favorite things, shows the limitless potential in the hands of creative individuals, and gives something new and exciting for gamers to look out for, frame by frame.
