ENHANCE!!!

Rockstar: looks great, ship it!

Did the AI create Mario Junk™️ that had to be blurred out?

Most retro games

"Screenshots taken from various formats"

As a ZX Spectrum owner that phrase is still traumatising.
True. However back when these games were state of the art, you somehow were able to imagine the graphics to be better than what was actually on screen. At least that's how it felt to me (played my first games in the early 90s).
- Of course, although in the 90s there were also some that stood out in terms of graphics and soundtrack 10 years ahead of the rest, like MDK, a real gem. Now you can play it for free, right in your browser
  
  https://playclassic.games/games/action-dos-games-online/play-mdk-online/play ( it loads DOS Box)
  
  or download it from GOG or Steam for Windows (€9.99)
  
  https://www.gog.com/game/mdk
  
  https://store.steampowered.com/app/38450/MDK/
- Well, I grew up with my first games being in the early 90s, and I'd argue the majority of that era still stand up visually today. Look at Sonic 3, Secret of Mana, Outrun, Turtles in Time, etc. They all still look fantastic. Even many NES and Master System titles still hold up today like Super Mario Bros 3 and Kirby's Adventure.
  
  It was earlier, the Atari 2600 era to be exact, that needed an imagination...

Another young actor's life destroyed by drugs and alcohol (I knew something was fishy about these shrooms.)

Looks like one of those stills from Ren and Stimpy, or Sponge Bob.

"4K" apparently just means "some higher resolution than pixel art" now

Yeah, that botheres me, too. Also when a game is labeled to have "psx graphics" and it just means that they use low res textures without filtering but at the same time it has real time shadows, requires 4GB VRAM and uses bunch of other modern techniques.

Aftermath of exploring worlds under drainage pipes.

Mario meets the Teenage Meth'n Turtles.
- Mario meets long term workplace illness. Unfortunately I don’t think Mario belongs to a union. Bowser be like “just one more castle and you’ll make it big here Mario”

JFC that’s unsettling shit right there. It makes my scalp itch

How did it know to put an M on the hat?

Because either the person who made this face the AI some extra prompting, which might explained the other oddities, or this isn't the work of AI at all.
- The more I look at this, the more I doubt an AI was involved. Too many aspects of the clothing, body, etc are just way too consistent.

Why is the crotch greyed out?

Mario is suffering from incontinence these days. Dude is well over 70 years old maybe 80. He was a master plumber back in the early to mid 70s, so he would have been 25 bach then, at least.

Do you have one of him naked?

Oh god, I cannot unsee the buttons as nipples from now on 🙈🙈🙈

Luigi: "Mario, I think the mushrooms are kicking in."

Is this like when porn performers complained about 4K because you could see their imperfections?

New Mario X The Last of Us crossover.

Turns out all that jumping about in the sewers was not the best for Mario’s health

Someone needs to make a ROM hack out of this lol

I'd say this pretty accurately shows the current state of video game remakes.

Thanks, I hate it.

Take it back!!

I see AI still can't render hands well. Apparently pixelated feet give it problems too, judging from Mario's nightmare fuel feet.

There's AI that can sometimes do hands okay. It still often fucks up, so a human has to curate the work. And ideally selectively prompt the AI to regenerate parts of the image until the whole thing is perfect. I think Midjourney has the best performance so far. You can take a look for yourself in one of the many AI art communities. They're sadly not as active here as they were on Reddit, but there's imageai and stablediffusion communities (I forget the instance)
- Yeah I have stable diffusion (installed on my PC, works great with my rtx 3080 12gb) and it is scarily good. You have to inpaint and regen a fair bit if you want ideal results but it takes no time at all.
  
  I can see how designers and artists are concerned.