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By Published At a glance, the release of Kirby Mass Attack late last month was an inauspicious event. The umpteenth title in a series that has never really taken flight in Europe on a system recently put out to pasture, it huffed and puffed into the UK DS chart at number 30, just behind something called Horrid Henry's Horrid Adventure. However, its passing could prove rather significant. With development shifting onto the more powerful 3DS, Mass Attack - with its charming, intricate, old-fashioned sprites - might be the last 2D pixel art title that Nintendo ever releases. The humble DS is arguably the final platform where the decision to visualise a game by painstakingly filling in tiles of pixels is a pragmatic, technical necessity. With the 3DS boasting a considerable leap in horsepower over its predecessor, the only reason to develop a mainstream retail release using pixel art rather than more modern graphical techniques would be an aesthetic one. Matt Bozon, creative director at sprite specialists WayForward Technologies, whose might similarly be among publisher Sega's final pixel art projects, suggests that while we might see a handful of such titles on the 3DS, it's not a creative path many major publishers will likely take.

'There was a decline in pixel art on the Game Boy Advance, and there was even less of it on Nintendo DS,' he tells Eurogamer. 'And with the games industry quickly changing into a summer blockbuster movie-making model, the pixel isn't flashy enough to feed the masses.' Nintendo wouldn't offer a definitive answer when approached for comment, but Mass Attack's director Mari Shirakawa didn't offer much cause for optimism. 'The display resolution of hardware will certainly continue to improve and, as you say, the necessity of pixel art will most likely diminish,' she explains. 'I think pixel art has a unique artistic charm that you can't find in polygon art and it is personally one of my favourite graphic styles, so it would indeed be sad to see pixel art being used less and less frequently. 'At the same time, I don't necessarily see this as a major loss since improved graphic display will help to expand the possibilities of games.'

Along with Wayforward, Toronto-based Capybara Games is one of the few other Western studios still priding itself on its pixel art. The original DS version of this year's sported some of the most skilful, charismatic sprite work since the 16-bit golden age.

Capybara agrees that times are changing. 'On prior handhelds up to the PSP, the screen resolution was small enough that pixels were often the best choice for clarity,' explains co-founder and lead artist Anthony Chan. 2008 Polaris Rzr 800 Service Manual Download.

CLASSIC PIXEL ART: MEGA MAN - Matt Bozon, Wayforward: 'The directors at WayForward have separately come to the conclusion that 8-bit Megaman's jump pose is the greatest piece of pixel artwork in existence. If we're any kind of authority in the field of stacking colored blocks, then he gets our vote.' 'As we move out of 'small screen devices', that limitation goes away.