There's a reason that this technique (prerendered sprites on camera-facing billboards) has been used for so many years, and continues to be used to this day. Wh

There's a reason that this technique (prerendered sprites on camera-facing billboards) has been used for so many years, and continues to be used to this day. When you have an effect too intensive to be rendered in real time, prerendered billboards are a workaround that can often yield impressive results. Clouds and other pseudo-particle effects are a really common place to see them these days, but I remember first being aware of them used for the Mumbo Tokens[1] in Banjo Kazooie on the N64. [1] http://banjokazooie.wikia.com/wiki/Mumbo_Token http://banjokazooie.wikia.com/wiki/Mumbo_Token