Let's Not Play

May 25, 2018 10:38 AM

Idle Animations, depending on who you ask, are either the animation a video game character plays when no input is given, or the animation played when no input has been received for while. Read what a number of game developers have to say about their favorites, or maybe you'd just like to sit through 20-odd minutes of sprites killing time.
posted by subocoyne (23 comments total)

Idle animations are great.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:55 AM on May 25, 2018

The Earthworm Jim ones still seemed very familiar to me
posted by aubilenon at 10:58 AM on May 25, 2018 [4 favorites]

I like the one where the idle sprite opens up Metafilter.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 11:16 AM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

Oh man, Metal Slug 3 idle animations bring me back

Also all the ridiculous sounds from Warcraft II crack me up. If you overclick a character they gradually get more and more annoyed with you.
posted by Existential Dread at 11:25 AM on May 25, 2018 [3 favorites]

In one of the Retro computing youtubes I subscribe, one of them mentioned how the Sonic idle animation at the time felt like a "fuck you I can even spare space with animations for doing nothing" to 8-bit systems.

On the other hand, when they added the elemental power ups, I think not making little animations to mock traps of the same element was a lost chance. Think something like waiting on water with a bubble? Sonic filling his lungs with air like he's in the Alps or something. Fire trap? Puts his hands like he's warming them on a fire. Electricity? Prepare a kite to fly.
I wonder if they made something like this on Sonic Mania.
posted by lmfsilva at 11:26 AM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze which was just re-released on Switch has some hilarious idle animations.
posted by Fizz at 11:39 AM on May 25, 2018 [5 favorites]

He's playing a tiny Switch. :D It's so cute.

Also, Sonic tapping his shoe impatiently will forever be my favourite idle animation.
posted by Fizz at 11:39 AM on May 25, 2018 [11 favorites]

Although my wife has no interest in watching me actually play XCOM 2, she almost always stops what she is doing to watch the team's idle animations as they are sitting on benches in the Sky Ranger being transported to and from missions. She has developed theories that the animations are related to the soldiers' personalities, and studies them quite carefully as they fidget, turn to speak to a teammate, cross their arms, tap their legs, and so on-- so she can tell me about them once she has deduced what that particular operator's quirks are. Then the actual mission starts and she goes back to her cross-stitch and occult romance novels. But when the end mission music plays, she looks up again so she can study the idle animations.
posted by seasparrow at 11:46 AM on May 25, 2018 [13 favorites]

my gold standard of idle animations is dragon age 2.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:48 AM on May 25, 2018 [5 favorites]

This pushed a nostalgia button I didn't even know I had.

I found myself waiting for a few very specific ones: Vectorman, Sonic, and of course Earthworm Jim. There's plenty of great ones in the video, but a few just seem like throwaways. I'd love to see a more carefully curated roundup.

Watching that also brought home just how different game screens look today--not just in terms of graphics but what's displayed (score, timer, lives).

Thanks for this!
posted by xenization at 11:49 AM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

Now I'm kinda wondering what game featured the first idle animation. Found a thread, but not totally convinced.

(I was about to go through the Apple IIe Introduction Disk, but you have to unlock all 10 lessons before it lets you play with Tutorial Rabbit)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:06 PM on May 25, 2018

Sonic the Hedgehog had the first idle animation I can recall seeing (I don't know of any from NES games, although that thread indicates there were some for PCs). It was definitely an eye opener when it happened and showed how the technical boost of 16-bit consoles could inject a lot more personality into game characters beyond graphical fidelity. The fact that Sonic was a launch/flagship title meant every other developer was looking to it to see what a 16-bit platformer was and thus idle anims were essentially mandatory for any platformer of that time. I'd say that the 90's were the golden age of idle animations.

And they are still certainly a thing. Although they are more understated in realistic titles, modern 3rd person games have complex systems of fidgets and twitches that make characters seem more alive. FPS titles as well typically have "weapon inspection" animations that play when the character is standing still. Gordon Freeman teasing the snark in Half-Life is a classic example.

Apparently they can also kill the player character sometimes.
posted by subocoyne at 12:16 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Obscure, but Atari's Major Havoc is missing.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:17 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

My son played Earthworm Jim for a while back in the mid-90's; we always laughed when he tunelessly belted out "LA LA LAA".
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:18 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

Glad to see a shoutout to the very fist idle animation I ever saw, from Commander Keen. I seem to remember the book he's reading having "KANT" emblazoned on it, though.
posted by phooky at 12:25 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Also, Sonic tapping his shoe impatiently will forever be my favourite idle animation.

It's nowhere as elaborate or even interesting as most of the other big examples, but on the other hand it's simply a perfect encapsulation of the character. (Perhaps even on a meta-level where he's not even the first platformer mascot to have that specific idle animation. ;))
posted by tobascodagama at 12:27 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

Captain Goodnight and the Islands of Fear on the Apple ][ back in the day had the titular character pull out a yo-yo and play with it as an idle.

My favorite idle animation is from the Star Trek screensaver, where Spock would come in, play the lyra, shoot stuff, take tricorder readings, or mind-meld with a horta. (Though that's stretching the definition of idle a bit...)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 1:07 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm now wanting to dive deeper into semi-related nostalgia, specifically loading icons such as the Netscape logo from back in the day.
posted by Fizz at 1:16 PM on May 25, 2018

Fans of Earthworm Jim's idle animations may enjoy the intro to the CD version, which is basically a straight minute of an idle Earthworm Jim doing various amusing things.
posted by qntm at 2:27 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Crazy Climber (1980) played a "Go for it!" voice sample whenever the player stayed still too long, so I guess that's the first audio-only idle animation (stretching the definition a bit...)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:44 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Dragon age II? You mean the crack dances?
posted by lastobelus at 4:15 PM on May 25, 2018

loading icons such as the Netscape logo

Those damn asteroids
posted by not_the_water at 7:52 PM on May 25, 2018

I wish that gamasutra article had gifs for all of them! How am I supposed to know what "Sparkster's long idle in the original Rocket Knight Adventures" looks like?
posted by quaking fajita at 7:16 AM on May 26, 2018 [2 favorites]