A trait I have somehow been able to hold onto over the years — and which I have no intent of letting go of — is the ability to be impressed by things which, today, are not actually "impressive" as such, but which would have been impressive back when they were current. To give just one example, my mind is still blown by the parallax scrolling in the backdrop of Sonic the Hedgehog's Green Hill Zone.

To give another example — and the one that prompted me to write this today — I am currently playing Quintet's Illusion of Time (aka Illusion of Gaia to North Americans) and I have been thoroughly impressed by its visual design overall, but one of my favourite things is the fact that its parallax backdrops, when it uses them (it's a top-down game) accurately reflect the things that you're supposed to be "above". To put it another way, when you're high above something, the things you can see down below are accurate to what you would see if you were actually down there.

Looking back over my Soul Blazer video, I'm pretty sure Soul Blazer did this in a few places as well, but Illusion of Time seems to do it fairly consistently. And I'm impressed! They didn't have to go to that much effort, but they did!

The reason this impresses me is that a lot of games like this would have used a fairly generic parallax backdrop, and no-one would have minded too much. The illusion of depth would be there — which is what parallax is used for — and the fact that it wasn't "accurate" wouldn't have mattered, because it has no real impact on the actual gameplay.

For example, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past uses a very simple tiled parallax backdrop to show that there is something beneath you rather than it being a bottomless pit. You can use this information to recognise which pits it is safe to jump down — to get to otherwise inaccessible areas, for example — and which it is not. While an accurate reflection of the floor beneath's map might be helpful in this situation, Zelda has enough other features to allow you to calculate the place where you will end up without having to be able to see down the hole. And, indeed, with the limited area you can see through Zelda's holes (pardon me), it's probably more practical to just look at the map and recognise "this is a hole I can jump down" rather than try to figure out exactly where you'll land from the tiny bit of parallax background you can see through said hole.

In Illusion of Time, however, these parallax backgrounds are purely there to look cool. In one sequence where you're exploring a mine, for example, you initially see ropeways with hanging platforms "in front of" the screen, suggesting they're above where you currently are. Later in the stage, you get up to the level of the ropeways and ride one across a large gap. Since, so far as the game is concerned, you are in a different "room" while you're doing this, there probably didn't "need" to be a parallax background at all, but not only did Quintet include one, it was a full, accurate map of the floor beneath.

That, to me, is impressive! It is not impressive by today's standards, because today you would just build your entire level in 3D and be able to see through holes and chasms to the floor beneath naturally. I am impressed with this in Illusion of Gaia, however, because I know that it wouldn't have been that simple to do. Well, it might have been relatively simple — all it really needs to be is an image of the floor below's map used as the parallax background — but it's a level of effort I recognise as being outside of the norm for the time, and thus I appreciate it.

This is where having an understanding and an appreciation of a wide range of things within your hobby is helpful. Someone who had only ever played modern games would think nothing of this little feature. But having grown up with all these different "generations" of gaming hardware, developing a vague (if non-technical) understanding of their capabilities (and lack thereof) along the way, I can recognise when something is an impressive achievement for its original time of release.

I hope I never let go of this trait. It adds so much depth of enjoyment to my appreciation of older games — and I encourage you to try and develop it, too.

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