[–] ReverseEntropy ago
Probably games that were put out by Sierra back in the 80s and 90s. They set the bar pretty high compared to many other companies at the time.
[–] [deleted] ago
Nah, PC games were going for distinctive art styles before the NES existed. CGA came out in 81, and that was enough for distinctive art styles to be used. Good ol' choice between two 4 color palettes. And EGA still came out a year before the NES did, and it was a serious upgrade to CGA.
Edit: Here's a decent video showing CGA and some examples of what it can do https://youtu.be/niKblgZupOc
[–] ElementalPee 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
There've been a number of games that I thought had good or cool looking art but I never really thought too much about it from that angle as a kid. The first one where I actually thought, "wow this art style is pretty distinct" was probably Yoshi's Island on snes.
[–] Jourdy288 0 points 5 points 5 points (+5|-0) ago
One of the earliest games that comes to mind is Centipede- one of the game's developers, Dona Bailey, wanted a game that looked different, so she used more pastels than other games at the time- the resulting game still looks good down to this day!
[–] NedTaggart ago (edited ago)
Hmm thinking back, I would stay the first ones I'm aware of that had unique and distinctive styles would be things like Pac Man, Zaxxon, Tron, Missile command etc.
Space invaders was copied a lot, so I'm not really going with distinctive for that one, but the rest have decidedly unique elements that are easily recognizable today.