I think Playability is most important.. however, if you are playing something that really is visually unpleasent... it can effect the experience to the point of not wanting to play. Same goes for poor sound quality and or poor musical score.
One thing I really like, is the speed. Thats a key factor in making a very intense experience... and its most always often lacking in a lot of the new 3d based games. Arcade style driving does not, nor should not be 100% realistic. Its should be fun. And games like Sega Turbo, or Spy Hunter... has acceleration & speed levels that no cars can achieve.
The thing I do not like the most... is the effects... such as the tire smoke and rain splash. Its wretched ugly... and looks nothing like the real deal. Totally ruins the whole thing for me.
Also, the graphics are so flat. There is no realistic shading going on. A game like Outrun, trumps pretty much all other racers of the time.. and even after it... because the art was shaded very well. Its adds impact, depth, and a level of realism.
The other problem.. is that Retro Arcade games were shown on Arcade Monitors. While the scanline effect does help a little... its still too flat looking, due to there being too little variances. There are these huge blocks of solid colors.. and nothing is filling them. With a real low-res arcade CRT.. the shadowmask creates a texture effect... which helps break up those solid block areas. It makes it appear more shaded and artistic. Lines are not as rigid.. and in games like this.. where objects are scaled.. it actually creates a bit of a true shading effect... because the smaller objects will be more effected by the shadowmask lines. Thus, they will be less focused in detail.. as well as their colors will be more blended and slightly different.
Color mixing, via light bleeding over the shadowmask's.. creates an automatic shading effect. Its also often how they simulated transparency effects... using small dot patterns of black. In emulators on an lcd.. you can easily make out these patterns.. and it looks horrible.. and nothing like how its supposed to look. They also used it to make more colors and shading effects, by placing certain colors next to each other.. which would bleed together to form another color.. which was especially great, because certain hardware didnt have a lot of colors.. and or they didnt have a lot of memory to store better shaded graphics.
Ive included a few quick mockups to make some points about lighting, texture, and other stuff...
- The first pic.. shows how by adding a noise or texture style filter from photoshop.. can create a much more visually pleasing effect.
It helps make those large solid color areas much more interesting. Almost like a simulation of gravel, grass..etc. Where as before, it looks like everything is a flat piece of glass-smooth plastic. As such, when you look at a game like Outrun, the shadowmask actually makes the art look like an oil painting. A very unique expression... rather than a mere photograph.
Also, because of this screen texture effect.. it helps hide resolution issues. Such as scaling, harsh edges on sprites, jagged lines, and more.
- The next pic shows a more realistically shaded car in a dark night snowstorm. Visibility is lowered. Objects far away.. are blurred. The car color is turned down to match that dark environment. Lighting from the cars limited headlamps.. stays in a small area.. while further out.. things get darker and darker... and more and more blurry. Very fine translucent areas of snow gusts cause headlamp reflections, reducing visibility even more... (the light reflecting off the snow causes a level of brightness that makes it hard to see deeper past it.. in the dark)
In the last Pic.. I created a more visible night version, on a more clear and moonlit night. This one is to point out a great feature in Outrun.. which is the "Over-Scale" effect. When an object, such as a tree passes your car.. it gets blown up to huge proportions, and really adds a depth effect that other racers lack. Sort of like the side scrolling games, which put some large fast moving parallax scrolling layers in front of your character.
In this case.. rather than merely scale them up... by adding a slight blur to them, it simulates a real movie camera experience. Where the greatest focused area is near the car... the distant horizon is slightly blurred.. and so is anything past the car area.
Again.. this creates greater depth and a greater feeling of speed and motion.
Some other things to note...
- Objects that are very far away will be less saturated in color. (Most especially in the day) This is an environmental effect of visibility, moisture, and blur.. as well as the way light bouncing off these objects travel. As you get closer.. you see more detail.. and the colors get more Pop to them.
- In a painting.. its often that the artists paints the edges a slightly darker shade.. to pull your attention towards the center of the painting. It also creates a greater impact and depth effect. This can be done artificially, to give that same artistic effect. Even if thats not quite realistic to real life. Its just very visually pleasing... and thats the point.
- If the sun is very bright.. colors will be very intense and saturated, but also, there will be very dark and well defined shadows. If its more overcast.. colors are less bright and less saturated.. and the shading and shadows on objects is less dark. (more color shown, rather than pure black levels)
Most artists use this effect to great advantage. They make, often exaggerated, high contrast effects... on purpose. That gives the stuff more shading, more shadow.. and it will look more 3d, as well as is more pleasing to the eye. If you look at Marble Madness... thats a great example of high contrast work. Where as Marble Madness II... is not high contrast. It looks much flatter and boring. Possibly because it wasnt ever finished.. but maybe there are other reasons. Either way.. its garbage compared to the original. I feel the same way about the original Outrun look.. when compared to the more flat cartoon look of Turbo Outrun.
FYI - I believe Marble madness was pre-rendered in 3d, and then raytraced. Once the renders were finished.. they broke the captures into tile sets. Im also pretty sure Outruns sprites were captured using digitized photos. But then tweaked to the lower resolution, and hand edited to make sure it looked correct.
Yrs later, in a game like outrunners... the sprites look too much like photographs in some areas.. and then very cartoony in others. This ruins the whole graphical look. Its like wearing lime green sweatpants and a business shirt & tie. They just dont go well together visually.
More later...