Uplifting as it is to lose yourself within them, video game worlds are often most enthralling when you’re aware of the tricks and contrivances that knit them together. Doom’s scrap-metal labyrinth is all the eerier when you know that it’s a Pac-Man level masquerading as “true” polygonal 3D, its columns and bulkheads projecting upward from sets of horizontal coordinates, like volcanic gas from a vent. And how about the Mode 7 landscapes of SNES role-playing games, glowing carpets spun and panned across to convey the impression of distant 3D geometry, or the bejewelled pop-up backdrops of the Sonic games? These realms would be nothing without their obvious, delightful artificiality – to wander through them is to reveal both in the illusion itself and how it has been crafted.
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