Remaking Old Computer Graphics With AI Image Generation

Can AI Image generation tools make re-imagined, higher-resolution versions of old video game graphics? Over the last few days, I used AI image generation to reproduce one of my childhood nightmares. I wrestled with Stable Diffusion, Dall-E and Midjourney to see how these commercial AI generation tools can help retell an old visual story - the intro cinematic to an old video game (Nemesis 2 on the MSX). This post describes the process and my experience in using these models/services to retell a story in higher fidelity graphics. Meet Dr. Venom This fine-looking gentleman is the villain in a video game. Dr. Venom appears in the intro cinematic of Nemesis 2, a 1987 video game. This image, in particular, comes at a dramatic reveal in the cinematic. Let’s update these graphics with visual generative AI tools and see how they compare and where each succeeds and fails. Remaking Old Computer graphics with AI Image Generation Here’s a side-by-side look at the panels from the original cinematic (left column) and the final ones generated by the AI tools (right column): This figure does not show the final Dr. Venom graphic because I want you to witness it as I had, in the proper context and alongside the appropriate music. You can watch that here: