You’d be led to believe that here in 2024 gaming is all about the most perfected visuals with ray tracing, unbelievably detailed faces and fabrics, and fluid particle movements, and while those supposed hallmarks of modern gaming are surely impressive, they aren’t required for a fascinating visual experience.
In his latest upload combo creator Desk uses FGCDraft’s “Potato Mod” to turn the settings for Street Fighter 5 down so far that we’re effectively viewing basic character models and simplified placeholders for special effects. Surprisingly enough, we couldn’t look away.
FGCDraft’s mod is actually a tool developed to help players with old set-ups run fighting games at a decent frame rate as it strips details down so much so that we no longer see backgrounds and character looks as though they’re just one draft removed from being clay lumps.
Desk felt this aesthetic was interesting, however, and decided to produce an entire combo video with these massively toned down graphics with only a few tastefully occasional glimpses of the normal experience.
Though it reminds us of facing down the fighting polygon team in early Super Smash Bros., the potato mod can easily become mesmerizing, especially when projectile and explosion effects start going off.
G’s massive orb V-Skill, for instance, becomes a solid globe that instantly captures viewer focus. Many of the explosion remnants manifest as solid squares, rectangles, and diamonds of various color, that could easily be part of a James Bond intro credits sequence.
Check out the showcase below and let us know if it struck your fancy in the way did ours in the comments after you watch.