The 7 most beautifully animated 2D games

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Are games art? Who knows – at least these look the part

Beware: this video may make your heart melt.

See? That’s just some wonderful, heartwarming stuff. And look how well the Blob morphs and bounces! But in the interest of science, let’s compare A Boy and His Blob to another game that prominently features bouncing blobs, Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier.

We wonder if the animators of Super Robot Taisen: Endless Frontier came home after work and secretly wished they could have been putting their talents toward A Boy and His Blob instead. Or maybe it was the other way around?

This one passed a lot of folks by, and that’s a bummer. Wario Land: Shake it has some of the best cartoon-style graphics we’ve seen in recent years, and some lovely retro gameplay to boot.

Now, if the developers had used low-resolution pixel art for Large Fry’s sprites, then each time he grew in size, you’d see pixelation, or at least a drop in the image’s overall resolution. But that’s not the case with this vivid hand-drawn sprite. You have to admire the confidence in the artists’ linework and shading to make a boss look that good, even when he takes up almost half the screen. Want a point of reference? Compare Large Fry to Pipistrello, the bat boss from Castle Crashers:

Now, we love both Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid, but which of the above videos looks like a real cartoon, and which looks like a Flash game?


Above: Here's a hint – which one uses fecal matter as a primary means of attack?

We certainly don’t want to shit on the makers of Castle Crashers (no pun intended, really) – we just want to point out that as much as people applaud developer The Behemoth for its 2D animation, the visuals in Wario Land: Shake it! are much more impressive, at least on a technical level. And that’s saying something, because both Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers have some pretty top-notch animation, particularly in the explosions department. No one blows shit up quite like The Behemoth!


Above: KA-THOOM