Follicle Follies, From The Atari Age Until Now

There are approximately 100,000 hair follicles on the human head. Over the past three decades, video game developers have valiantly attempted to render them all. We’ve charted those attempts in one massively hairy infographic.

Hair is one of the most difficult features of the human body to render accurately. Not only are there 100,000 pieces of it to account for on the head alone, each piece has unique behaviours and textures that dictate how they work together to give you that stylishly tousled look. So while games today sometimes feature freakishly realistic faces, it’ll be quite some time before we start mistaking the characters we play for real people, at least from the neck up.

So here’s to 30 years of trying to find a suitable way to depict our distinctive plumage in video game form.

Click here to grab your own copy, suitable for framing.