Idle animations

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Idle animations refer to animations within video games that occur when the player does not do any action (hence being idle). These sorts of animations are largely popular with action games, where players may rarely be idle and thus serve as easter eggs. One of the first games ever to introduce idle animations on a mainstream basis was Maziacs; the sprite taps his feet, blinks and sits down. This trend spread to many other action genre games, becoming more complex as allowed by the advancing hardware. For example, in Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, Diddy Kong juggles a few balls if the player offers no controller input for a few seconds.

Idle animations in modern 3D games are used keep them realistic. For example in Super Mario 64, Mario will occasionally look around, and eventually fall asleep. For most games, steady breathing suffices as an idle animation.

[edit] Examples

• In Sonic the Hedgehog Sonic will impatiently tap his foot.
• In Ristar the character will perform a unique idle animation depending on what stage he is on. For example, on the snow-themed stage, he will make a little snowman and on the music-themed stage he will start to dance happily.
• In StarCraft the images for the units will look around after a given time.
• In Battlefield 2, if one has the vehicle mine selected but takes no action, the player flips the circular mine several times. Each weapon in Battlefield 2 has an animation.
• In Half-Life if one is holding a Snark, it will attempt to bite the hand holding it. Gordon will then admonish it with his left index finger, almost getting bitten in the process.
• In Rayman 2, Ray man will take his body, and bounce it like a basketball. He will spin it on his finger, then put it back.
• In Command and Conquer: Red Alert infantry do pushups when left idle for a short period.
• In Kirby: Squeak Squad he will fall asleep and dream of Strawberry Cake until he wakes up, when he swallows the dream cloud.
• In Just Cause Rico will flip his dual wields.
• In Future Knight (ZX Spectrum version) the hero starts to get annoyed and, after a while, will start losing energy until game over occurs.
• In Commander Keen 4, Keen becomes impatient, tapping his foot then sitting down to read a book. There is also an Easter Egg: the first time Keen becomes idle when standing on one of the moon symbols in the Pyramid of the Moons, instead of the above sequence he "moons" the player.