What?

That seems like it would be cost prohibitive, especially if you're trying to go for that weird look that I'm sure they were going for.. CGI would have been way more expensive especially in its early years

Cost was a factor, I'm sure. But I'm guessing time was probably a bigger consideration.

Rendering time back then must have been monstrous.

Still, they slathered poor Matt Frewer in layers of latex and made him wear those fiberglass shoulders when they could have technically gotten comparable results from CGI.

I'll bet you could get identical results on a modern personal PC.

In 1986, just rendering something that looked like what we saw here would have required a multimillion dollar supercomputer and taken hundreds if not thousands of hours. And that's not even touching on how hard it would be to develop the software needed to model and animate it, and then actually do that.

It took ILM half a year to make the Glass Knight CGI in Young Sherlock Holmes the year before. That was 31 seconds long and didn't even have facial animation.

Binro, I'm honestly ashamed you didn't think of this?

Why do they even use parachutes when the technology of the time is fully capable of Final Fantasy Spirits Within landing goo?