James Pond, a quirky platformer series from the early 1990s, is getting a big re-release for its 35th anniversary. The James Pond Legacy: The Pond Is Not Enough collects 12 games from across the Amiga, Genesis, Commodore 64, and SNES, and updates them for current platforms. System 3 Software is handling the collection and has made a trailer to announce the—the fuck?
Sometimes genAI slop in a game is subtle, requiring eagle eyes and fine-toothed combs to spot and identify. Other times it just hits you over the head with a fucking baseball bat, screaming all the while. Like, what happened here if not the genAI hand goblins striking yet again?
Every 3D render in the trailer is permeated with the stink of genAI’s telltale matte finish that evens everything into a dull same-ishness. Even the song used in the trailer is suspected of being genAI. The errors were so glaringly obvious, System 3 temporarily shut down comments on the video to stop the flood of slop accusations.
System 3 later made a statement in the comments section of the trailer. “To be absolutely clear, no generative AI was used in the James Pond Legacy trailer or character artwork,” System 3 wrote. The comment also pointed to a blog post on System 3’s website that it says “reveals the painstaking, human-led process behind the transformation of an original James Pond character from retro pixels into a modern 3D creation.” Let’s take a look. Oh no.
The blog goes into detail about how the Bovine Bomber character was transformed from its original pixel art to a 3D render, affirming that a human was involved in the process every step of the way. It doesn’t seem like anybody on Reddit or elsewhere is buying it, though, pointing out how, among many other errors, the “manually redrawn” cow has had its obvious milk-jug arm cannon turned into a generic Mega Man-esque blaster.
Once the comment section under the trailer was reopened, the flood of genAI accusations continued, this time with more anger at System 3 for thinking its explanation would be enough to prove no genAI was used, forgetting that some of us have eyes that can see.