final fantasy was released in japan in NUMBER_TOKEN and appeared in north america two and a half years later and to really understand the animation in this relatively primitive game we're going to need to understand some basics about the NUMBER_TOKEN-bit hardware it was built to run on let's talk about the graphical capabilities and limitations of the nintendo entertainment system to start the image that an nes could render and output to your tv was NUMBER_TOKEN pixels wide and NUMBER_TOKEN pixels tall for reference this video's resolution is NUMBER_TOKENxNUMBER_TOKEN pixels so the nes rendered an image this big it's very cute i know and when rendering that adorable little image the nes offered a palette of NUMBER_TOKEN-ish usable colors but there were some pretty rigid limitations on how many of those colors could be used at once for pixel art the nes gave you two layers to work with a background layer and a sprite layer the background layer could use a total of NUMBER_TOKEN colors at one time and it was composed of a bunch of tiles all aligned in a grid which could be scrolled in any direction you like the sprite layer worked differently though sprite tiles could move freely around the screen independently of each other making them perfect for representing characters enemies projectiles and obstacles these sprite tiles were generally NUMBER_TOKENxNUMBER_TOKEN pixels in size but you could build larger characters by using multiple tiles so for example small mario here is assembled using four tiles making him NUMBER_TOKEN by NUMBER_TOKEN. mega man was made out of NUMBER_TOKEN tiles and then you've got punch-out opponents who are built of just so many tiles they're very large but these NUMBER_TOKENxNUMBER_TOKEN sprite tiles also had to be used sparingly because poor little nes here could only handle NUMBER_TOKEN of them on screen at one time plus the sprite layer could only use NUMBER_TOKEN colors at once and no more than three colors per NUMBER_TOKENxNUMBER_TOKEN tile also you couldn't have more than eight sprites occupying the same horizontal scan line at once without some of them disappearing or flickering now what i have just given you is a somewhat no very oversimplified explanation of how nes graphics worked but it should be enough for our purposes here you get the basic idea of what this little nostalgia brick was capable of that said if you find the topic of retro console graphics interesting i highly recommend checking out retro game mechanics explained alex is far more qualified than i am to discuss this topic and his videos are fantastic and also thank you alex for proofreading the script i appreciate it anyway now that we have gotten a better understanding of the nintendo entertainment system's limitations it's not too hard to guess at how final fantasy's graphics are constructed in the overworld view the world geography lives on that scrollable background layer and your player character runs around on top on the sprite layer same thing in towns and dungeon screens the environment is on the background layer and the background tiles are also temporarily used for rendering dialog boxes when you talk to somebody then on the sprite layer you've got the player character npcs and whatever else is running around on top of that environment then we've got the battle screen where the black background the windows that frame everything that little strip of scenery up top the text and even the enemies all live on the background layer then on the sprite layer you've got the party members the selection cursor weapons and battle effects like these little hit
START_SELFPROMO_TOKEN that said if you find the topic of retro console graphics interesting i highly recommend checking out retro game mechanics explained alex is far more qualified than i am to discuss this topic and his videos are fantastic and also thank you alex for proofreading the script i appreciate END_SELFPROMO_TOKEN