If fog closed in on you now in some slick Unreal Engine powered AAA title, you'd naturally assume it was intentional - part of the atmosphere and perhaps designed to increase the difficulty of a section. However, rewind to 1997 - to a time when Acclaim was a games industry publishing giant - and you'll find yourself wrapped in ever-present mist. The mist of graphical sh*ttyness. A hallmark of early N64 titles, "fog" - as best typified by uninspired, muddy-textured launch title Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (above) - was the colloquial term for a technical limitation of the day that saw some games suffer from an incredibly short draw distance. The upshot of which being that you often couldn't see too far ahead of where you were going. It's hard to remember with any clarity now (much like Turok's more recent sequels), but gamers really did wander around game worlds endlessly getting lost, unable to see the next enemy until he was in your, by now, horribly tearful face, with Christmas well and truly ruined. The release of a RAM expansion pack for the console in 1998 improved matters for Turok 2: Seeds of Evil - and even more so for the outstanding Star Wars: Rogue Squadron - but the fog wouldn't be banished entirely for several console generations.
A regular film and video games contributor for What Culture, Robert also writes reviews and features for The Daily Telegraph, GamesIndustry.biz and The Big Picture Magazine as well as his own Beames on Film blog. He also has essays and reviews in a number of upcoming books by Intellect.
