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Another World was built around a practical technical choice: Éric Chahi used 2D polygons to create broad, cinematic images with less stored data than conventional bitmap artwork. He then made the tools and a small interpreted scripting language needed to turn that experiment into a game. The result was a hybrid production approach—not a modern 3D renderer, and not a game in which every animation was rotoscoped.
What was Another World’s architecture?
Created by Éric Chahi, Another World debuted in 1991 and was known as Out of This World in North America. Its visual identity came from combining polygon-based characters and scenes with bitmap backgrounds, custom production tools, and scripted sequences. The architecture is best understood as a way to make a small set of visual elements feel expansive and cinematic within the memory and performance limits Chahi faced.
Chahi’s first experiments tested whether the Amiga could draw polygons quickly enough. A retrospective account of his 2011 Game Developers Conference postmortem reports a test running at about 20 frames per second. That is a reported result from his experiment, not a general Amiga specification or an independently reproduced benchmark. His early idea of building backgrounds from “pixigons”—tiny polygons used like pixels—proved inefficient, so he shifted to bitmap backgrounds instead. The finished production was therefore a hybrid, rather than a pure polygon renderer. Game Developer’s account of Chahi’s 2011 postmortem describes those experiments.
Why did Chahi choose 2D polygons?
Polygons let a relatively small number of points describe large areas. In his interview with Nintendo World Report, Chahi explained that this could use less memory than traditional bitmap imagery and make large animations and movie-like cuts possible without a loading delay. His explanation concerns the game’s 2D polygon technique; it should not be confused with modern 3D graphics or a fully three-dimensional game world.
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- Rediscover the 90's cornerstones of adventure videogames, gathered together for the first time
- Another World is a pioneer action platformer that made its debut in 1991
- Attained cult status among critics and gamers alike
- Chronicles the story of a young scientist hurtled through space and time by a nuclear experiment that goes wrong
- Remastered presentation high definition graphics faithful to the original design.Flashback after feeling from a spaceship but stripped of all memory, a young scientist wakes up on Titan, a colonized moon of the planet Saturn.Help him find his way back to earth and encounter an extra terrestrial plot that threatens the planet.Rediscover this classic consistently ranked among the best 100 games of all time .Choose to play with the original graphics and sounds from the 90s and face unforgiving difficulty.Play with modern mode completely remastered sound and music, a new rewind function and post FX graphic filters
“It was born from a technical choice to create a game with 2D polygons, as the approach I used overcame technical memory limitations.”
The visual constraint also became an artistic advantage. Chahi said, “I had the desire to create a game with a movie flavor, so this approach was perfect thanks to its strong visual particularities.” Polygons gave the game a distinctive, stark look while making it practical to present broad forms and animated moments on limited hardware. The interview records Chahi’s explanation of the trade-off; it does not provide a detailed memory budget or low-level rendering specification.
Rank #2
- Rediscover the 90's cornerstones of adventure videogames, gathered together for the first time
- Another World is a pioneer action platformer that made its debut in 1991
- Attained cult status among critics and gamers alike
- Chronicles the story of a young scientist hurtled through space and time by a nuclear experiment that goes wrong
- Remastered presentation high definition graphics faithful to the original design.Flashback after feeling from a spaceship but stripped of all memory, a young scientist wakes up on Titan, a colonized moon of the planet Saturn.Help him find his way back to earth and encounter an extra terrestrial plot that threatens the planet.Rediscover this classic consistently ranked among the best 100 games of all time .Choose to play with the original graphics and sounds from the 90s and face unforgiving difficulty.Play with modern mode completely remastered sound and music, a new rewind function and post FX graphic filters
How did he build the engine and tools?
There was no ready-made polygon workflow that met Chahi’s needs, so he built one. The official GDC session record identifies the postmortem as Chahi’s account of Out of This World/Another World, and his presentation materials list a polygon editor among the tools. GDC Vault’s session record and the GDC presentation document the talk and its tooling.
He also designed a small interpreted language to control scenes and game behavior. Game Developer’s report of the 2011 postmortem says it contained 20 instructions and 256 variables. One instruction, BREAK, divided execution into time blocks. In practical terms, the scripts could sequence animation and events over time, rather than simply describe static scene content. These implementation details are Chahi’s reported retrospective account, not results from a modern inspection of the game’s code.
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Rank #3
- Limited 15th Anniversary Collectors Edition
- CGW rated ANOTHER WORLD 'Its Highest Rated Game Ever!
- Play in High Definition 2048 X 1536 Resolution
- Redesigned game-play by original author ERIC CHAHI / Music and SFX re-recorded by the original composer / Totally customizable by the player
- Includes:The Making of Another World, The Development Diary, The Technical Handbook, The exclusive original soundtrack.
Was Another World rotoscoped?
Only selected complex movements used rotoscoping; describing the whole game that way overstates the technique’s role. Chahi said that tracing video was useful for difficult animation such as the car skidding in the introduction:
“Rotoscoping turned out to be very useful for complex animations like the car skidding in the intro.”
He also described the process as laborious: he had to superimpose video on the Amiga screen, and a VCR pause could fail, forcing him to rewind and reposition. For Lester’s walking and running, he used keyframe animation instead. That distinction explains how some movement can feel lifelike without every frame being traced from live action.
Rotoscoping and keyframes served different jobs
- Rotoscoping: useful for complex, specific action such as the opening car skid, but awkward and time-consuming to capture and trace.
- Keyframe animation: used for routine movement such as Lester’s walking and running, without the same video-overlay workflow.
How did the technical choices shape the cinematic style?
Chahi has said the story developed progressively, level by level. He was initially pursuing a cinematic style, with atmosphere, rhythm, and narrative tension guiding the presentation. The postmortem account describes brief cinematic inserts and shifts in pacing as deliberate ways to create emphasis and tension.
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It is reasonable to connect that style to the system’s ability to show animation and cuts without a loading pause: the polygon approach and scene scripting supported moments that could feel like edits in a film. That connection is an interpretation of Chahi’s account, rather than a separate measured performance claim. The important point is that the engine and tools were not just technical plumbing; they helped determine how the player experienced timing, transitions, and suspense.
Further reading
Game Anim: Video Game Animation Explained includes an interview with Chahi about Another World’s cinematic style, polygon choice, and rotoscoping. The publisher’s page is available from CRC Press / Routledge.
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