As a weird side-effect of technological anxiety and the transition from 2D to 3D games, pre-rendered graphics had their place. In some cases, that was a very, very bad place, like where Big Bird said strangers couldn't touch you; basically, any game with pre-rendered, animated sprites. Though in the 32-bit era, it's reasonable to say that some pre-rendered graphics were necessary--if a circa 1997 Square programming team tried to make a real-time Midgar, the result would be an abominable pile of warping polygons and broken dreams.
But so many years later, you'd think that we, as a people, could unite against pre-rendered graphics and say "No more." In what can only be considered an affront to the eyes and good taste of gamers everywhere, developers are still using pre-rendered graphics. And it's high time they stopped.
I've always thought that pre-rendered graphics--at least in their first few years--were a strange sort of technophilia in that they assured us that somewhere, very powerful computers exist; and these computers are hard at work, rendering things ahead of time so your puny hardware doesn't have to. Never mind that pre-rendered sprites always look muddy, fuzzy, and ill-defined when compared to their hand-drawn counterparts, there are SGI workstations spending countless hours making Donkey Kong uglier and you will show them respect!
This kind of attitude made sense in the mid-to-late 90s, when there was a real tension between 2D and 3D gaming, and many 2D games were cast in the pre-rendered mold in order to make them "acceptable" to modern gamers--even great games like Klonoa suffer from bloated, fuzzy sprites. But why, in 2008, must we continue to suffer through the anxieties of hardware generations past? Fire Emblem, a series known for its beautiful, hand drawn sprites and character art, has now gone the pre-rendered route with its newest DS iteration, leaving a legion of fans scratching their heads and clawing out their eyeballs. And this is by no means an isolated event; both updates to the phenomenal Donkey Kong '94 (seriously, go play this game) have been zombified by the process of pre-rendering. In the words of Nancy Kerrigan, "WHY WHY WHY WHY!?"
Does anyone still like pre-rendering? Has it ever improved a game? These are questions which demand answers.
Related Links:
Alternate Soundtrack - Donkey Kong '94 vs. Les Savy Fav
Where is Shuichi Sakurazaki, Creator of Ninja Gaiden?