He once made many unsuccessful attempts to fix the visual glitches on Sony’s console, and now he’s frustrated that many developers are deliberately recreating them. Veteran programmer Koji Sugimoto (Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Final Fantasy X) criticized the emulation of retro visual glitches in modern games, focusing on the original PlayStation’s texture warping—a common feature in lo-fi, retro-inspired indie titles.

On August 5, Sugimoto replied to a Unity Japan tweet about a new tool that helps developers more easily emulate PS1 texture distortion. This issue, caused by hardware limitations, made flat textures appear warped and shaky when viewed from any angle other than head-on. He also linked to a much harsher critique he wrote back in 2019 about intentional texture warping.

“Back in the day, we put in painstaking work and made many futile efforts to avoid texture warping, only for it to be called ‘charming’ nowadays. It’s detestable. I spent so many work hours in vain trying to work my way around warped textures. I just don’t get what’s so interesting about trying to replicate that,” Sugimoto wrote.

His frustration is understandable given his direct experience trying to solve the issue. Texture warping can be acceptable as a nostalgic embellishment, and there is indeed a certain charm to a game that looks a little rough because of it. An old game can be ugly yet memorable: the NPCs in Thief: The Dark Project, for example, were built from just a few triangles, yet the game remains excellent.

Brian Eno’s excellent book A Year with Swollen Appendices contains a passage that explains and defends the creation of artificial flaws like texture warping far better than we could. Eno argues that anything initially considered strange, ugly, uncomfortable, or unpleasant in a new medium will eventually become a defining characteristic: CD distortion, digital video jitter, and 8-bit sound will all be appreciated and imitated once they are no longer mandatory flaws.

Still, Sugimoto’s stance comes across as a bit aggressive.

Source: PCGamer

当時は虚しい苦労を費やして歪みを回避していたのに、今では「味わい」とか言われてしまっている。 https://t.co/r90BkvvUAq

— Koji Sugimoto (@k_sugimoto) August 5, 2025