Graphic design of NES games

Graphic design of NES games
by UncleSporky on 2010-01-28 (#55876)

I thought I would make a thread where I can look at different games and examine their graphics in some detail, maybe see what makes them tick, and why they might be appealing or not. I don't know how often I'll be doing this, or whether I'll be doing it more than once, but I thought it might be interesting/helpful.

Tonight I am going to look at Castlevania 3, because I found a page full of handy screenshots, and while they may not be pixel/color perfect they highlight the game's graphic design very well.

I always thought that Castlevania as a series on the NES looked very "busy," graphically crowded. They tried to cram in as much detail as possible with very limited graphical capabilities, and didn't always succeed.

In the above screenshot you can quickly see some of their methods: for one, they generally highlighted walkable areas using blocks with a lot of contrast to everything else. This way they could fill in the rest of the background with whatever detail they wanted, in contrast to many platformers, where the walkable area connects to the ground and extends downwards. Castlevania's blocks are technically hovering in the air, but the background can show them as part of anything they want. It's as if there are foreground and background layers of architecture, as desired by the artist.

They also had no qualms about using tiles in the "wrong" way - that is, using an incomplete part of a graphic in order to give an overall affect they desired. Notice in the screen above that the left part of the arch only fully completes right behind Trevor (and in one other spot). Everywhere else, the arch just sort of ends next to the wall. This sort of thing always looked sloppy to me, but it is effective in making smaller arches and/or simplifying the necessary metagraphics.

Similarly, notice how the higher bridge arches just end and don't look braced up too well, but it provides a great negative shape overall. Again, the bright salmon blocks clash with the rest of the scene, but give players necessary information about what is solid.

The stained glass windows are pretty nice, although the top half looks rather messy. The tiny stained glass windows however are really ugly (in my opinion). They're just small parts of the larger ones, which is logical for saving space but they have clearly been chopped up.

You will also notice the theme of using a black background color, which of course many NES games use for outlines and shadow. It may seem an obvious choice, but it's important to keep in mind other options - this is just one way to do it.

Hm, I guess they didn't always use blocks to show ground. Anyway, I really dislike this rocky wall/stalagtites. While it portrays a natural sort of chaos you might expect in a cavern, it's obviously made up of many small blocks with straight edges. Castlevania attempts too much realism without the capability to do it effectively.

Though to be honest, I don't notice a lot of this while playing. It's recognizable as what they intended it to be, and only really hard to look at on close examination.

Speaking of close examination, this is the sort of scene I don't fully appreciate unless I'm looking at it like this. The pillars are quite striking and nicely aged, and the colors are well-chosen. I really like the water. I don't think I ever noticed the temples in the background before, they're easy to miss when it doesn't scroll on an independent layer and monsters are attacking you.

It's interesting how different NES games do the "waterfall in the background" graphic. Notice how they used a light blue in one of the background palettes to make the water appear to reflect off the pillars.

And look at how the pillars fade out under the platforms to show a deep shadow. It's not hard to use a technique like this in your own graphics to save on detailed tiles and give a scene more depth.

This scene is very busy (and a little too complicated for a clock tower) but it looks very impressive animated in the game. It's well worth seeing how it's put together by watching the PPU data. It's the second level, top path, I believe.

Also notice how the large gear is highlighted using a lot of smaller bits, that even make it seem to have a gritty metal texture.

I always liked the design on the name entry screen. Good choice of colors, nice effect with the partly ruined brick wall and the vines. And it doesn't look too badly chopped up due to the tiles, either.

The haunted ship is nicely aged, though not too colorful. I was never a big fan of this part.

The remake of CV1's first level. Look at that first curtain - they just repeated the top part twice! And yet somehow, it doesn't look that terrible, if I squint I can buy that as folds in cloth...sort of. And the area of missing paint is repeated in the same way. It breaks the monotony of seeming the same pattern every time, but still sticks out to me as repeated data.

The intro has some nice use of graphics. You can see repeated data but none of it breaks against other graphics, everything fits. The highlighted castle looks especially cool, reminds me of a comic book.

One of the first things you see when starting a game. I still think this is one of the better images you will see in a NES game. Composed like a work of art, balanced, and well-colored. From the shadows of the ruins, to the cross, to the moss and vines, it's a striking scene. If you look at it closely you can see how it was crafted carefully to also use repetition to save space as well. I don't know if I could do something like this, I would sooner go the easy stylized route of something like Mario 3 than attempt this.

The moss is a bit too glowy but I like the dead tree graphics a lot. The mud doesn't fit well though, it reminds me of earlier generation games. The mountains look good until that strange split point where again we see graphics have been chopped.

I always liked the look of the woods. I haven't said anything about the character/enemy graphics, but those owls are really well designed. The blue and red go together well to show both wood and darkness lit by the moon. Shadows are put to good use on the vines that just fade into darkness. The ground is a nice change from bright cubes. But again we see some straight edges up in the branches, and the green at the top sticks out a bit too much for me.

Well that was really long, I don't expect a detailed reply or anything, I just felt like looking over CV3 for fun. I think it would be quite difficult to design a game with graphics like this. It uses a complicated mapper and a lot of ROM to store all this data, and even then they had to cut a lot of corners. As I said, they decided to give us more of an overall impression of objects, even if it meant some graphics tiled strangely at times. Lots of dark images, lots of scratches and crumbling stone and aging. Hard to pull off on the NES, but they mostly succeeded.

by MatthewCallis on 2010-01-28 (#55878)

That's a really in-depth look, and a fun read.

I always found the whole Mega Man series, particularly Mega Man 5 had a very nice balance of not being too plain like the early Famicom games and not too busy like some side scrollers.

by Dwedit on 2010-01-28 (#55880)

It seems like you'd really need to turn on the NTSC filter to see what they would really look like.

by Bregalad on 2010-01-29 (#55886)

Wow this is a very interesting topic. I love CV3, and I admire some of it's graphics.

Like you said, they obviously put a lot of trought in the backgrounds, and designed it to be as if there was multiple layers. This is especially seeable when there is the acid rain that melts the blocks and that background show up behind the melting blocks.
The trick to highlight the solid platforms should be remembered off. I remember that in some games (can't remember exactly) it wasn't clear which tiles are background, and which are solid.

I've also noted those weird patterns, but surprisingly most of the time it looks good. The incomplete arches looks ok, it gives a natural randomness to it. Same goes with all the other stuff you mentionned, I also like the random mud in the cave you said it looks terrible, and I find it looks fine.

The only thing that looks real bad is this "highlight" on the clockwork wheels. It looks like a cloud or something like that, not like a highlight.

I also love the name entry screen. With the statues, the vines, and the gothic font I was blown away the first time I've seen it. Now I'm used to see it very regularly

EDIT : One last thing, have you noted how some of the sprites looks really lame as compared with the BG ? More specifically Trevor looks really lame - he's a barely affected Simon sprite from CV1. Sypha looks terrible too - I think Grant looks better.

I wanted to say that, in first level, right after the crurch, there is somewhere in the background there is a block that looks really ugly - they should have selected the wrong palette for it or something.
Also note how there is ofther either attribute clashes or black blocks arround the stairs

by miau on 2010-01-29 (#55891)

Nice!
Your review opened my eyes for details I've never noticed before. I love the use of the blue highlight in the waterfall scene.
Mind if others (me) post their own graphics reviews here as well? Can't promise anything, but I'd like to take apart Gimmick! some time.

Dwedit wrote:
It seems like you'd really need to turn on the NTSC filter to
see what they would really look like.

I agree. I think it'd be cool if each scene had two screenshots: one with NTSC filter enabled and one without it. It'd be interesting to see what the filter does to the graphics.

by UncleSporky on 2010-01-29 (#55906)

miau wrote:
Nice!
Your review opened my eyes for details I've never noticed before. I love the use of the blue highlight in the waterfall scene.
Mind if others (me) post their own graphics reviews here as well? Can't promise anything, but I'd like to take apart Gimmick! some time.

Of course, that would be fine. I like to see the styles of different games which I may have not played or looked at closely. Partly analysis for personal use, and partly just admiration of what they accomplished.

Quote:
Dwedit wrote:
It seems like you'd really need to turn on the NTSC filter to
see what they would really look like.

I agree. I think it'd be cool if each scene had two screenshots: one with NTSC filter enabled and one without it. It'd be interesting to see what the filter does to the graphics.

I suppose so. There are a couple reasons why I might not: first, I am lazy, and don't want to play through an entire game when there are hundreds of screens available online and complete maps found here. (If there is a standalone NTSC filter that applies it to any picture, that might work.)

Second, it can be advantageous to be able to copy a picture into an editor and count out the pixels by hand to see how their graphics fit together.

Third, my NTSC Nestopia screenshots come out like this:

Although I can correct them in Photoshop, but I'm not sure if it looks quite like it should.

Bregalad wrote:
EDIT : One last thing, have you noted how some of the sprites looks really lame as compared with the BG ? More specifically Trevor looks really lame - he's a barely affected Simon sprite from CV1. Sypha looks terrible too - I think Grant looks better.

I agree, they don't always look that good. Who stands like Trevor does, anyway?

Sypha looks ok to me, since she is supposed to be a ghostly mage. I never liked Grant's face, his nose sticks out too much. In fact it seems like they had different people working on the sprites, some enemies have no outlines (zombies) and others do (bats).

Quote:
I wanted to say that, in first level, right after the crurch, there is somewhere in the background there is a block that looks really ugly - they should have selected the wrong palette for it or something.
Also note how there is ofther either attribute clashes or black blocks arround the stairs

Yeah, it looks kind of messed up. The whole rest of the area is viny and grey, and there's just this weird yellow part that doesn't seem to fit.

Another thing I didn't notice earlier, these houses are really cool:

Lots of solid black is used to save on tiles but the diagonal wall still makes it look like a three dimensional building.

The highlights on the roofs and walls are done well too, the scene has a well defined light source at the top left. A lot of games don't try to portray this, and just lighten things that pop out and darken things in the background.

by Bregalad on 2010-01-29 (#55911)

Well, I've noticed that sometimes it makes things easier to have light at topleft and shadow at bottomright - but for other objects (sprites) it's easier to have a "front light" where you light things that are supposed to be "close" and dark what is supposed to be "far away".

I'll just do light effects that are the easier to come with - and won't worry about the whole scene. Since the game is in 2D it won't look too weird I think.

I think objects looks very poorly when not outlined. Just look at games like SMB, Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus : I think they look cheap because Nintendo didn't seem to understand what an outline was back then. Black outlines are often the way to go - but non-black outlines can work as well in some cases - as in Gimmick because it's kinda cartoony - or bats in Castlevania because they're black themselves.

by tepples on 2010-01-29 (#55913)

UncleSporky wrote:
Although I can correct them in Photoshop, but I'm not sure if it looks quite like it should.

Nestopia images come out at 602x240. For comparisons, you can use GIMP or PS to resize them to 294x240.*

UncleSporky wrote:
the scene has a well defined light source at the top left. A lot of games don't try to portray this, and just lighten things that pop out and darken things in the background.

Tengen's pirate-original version of Tetris portrays a light source from the top right, as does Tetris 2 + Bombliss (J). But I think the reason that more games don't try to portray light coming from the left or the right is that they flip sprits. In order for sprite lighting to be consistent, they'd have to store twice as many sprite cels.

* The NTSC NES pixel aspect ratio is exactly 8:7, or about 1.143. Nestopia is set a tad wide at 1.175.

by UncleSporky on 2010-01-29 (#55920)

Bregalad wrote:
I think objects looks very poorly when not outlined. Just look at games like SMB, Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus : I think they look cheap because Nintendo didn't seem to understand what an outline was back then. Black outlines are often the way to go - but non-black outlines can work as well in some cases - as in Gimmick because it's kinda cartoony - or bats in Castlevania because they're black themselves.

It's difficult on the NES where you have limited pixels to work with. Outlines mean taking up valuable space, when simply having colors next to each other might be just as effective. Sprites can't rely on the background color to do their outlines for them (because it's transparent), so you also need to decide if you can make it look better with black or some other dark color.

The top left is original Megaman. Notice how some parts of him are outlined and some aren't. It's balanced carefully to make him a cartoon character without wasting too many pixels.

Notice how he looks different against a light or dark background. He loses a bit of his volume and definition against black, his bent foot is just awkward.

To the right of the first Megaman is what he might look like if you outlined everything. Not terrible, but not as good, I think. This shows that you have to think about what you're doing and not just outline everything. Megaman's spandex underwear looks just fine right next to his shirt!

And below you have what he might look like with no outlines. That looks pretty terrible, but it's also only using two colors which you generally wouldn't do. It's just for illustration. I do think it looks a lot like earlier Nintendo games like Kid Icarus.

In the other corner is what Megaman might look like with a third color besides black, a dark blue. I also added highlights with his medium blue where I could (on his arm and helmet). I don't think I've built a better Megaman necessarily, but notice how you can still see his entire outline against black. His face is also more different than the surrounding color because it does use black. This is just something to think about when designing sprites.

It should also be noted that Megaman's black outline enabled his artists to make him flash when charging his beam without changing his entire color scheme. That's one potentially useful aspect of outlines.

by tepples on 2010-01-29 (#55923)

UncleSporky wrote:
In the other corner is what Megaman might look like with a third color besides black, a dark blue. I also added highlights with his medium blue where I could (on his arm and helmet).

It reminds me of the "selective outlining" that Capcom used in 16-bit fighting games.

by Bregalad on 2010-01-29 (#55925)

It's hard to tell because I got used to see Mega Man so much it's hard to remain objective about how he looks. But I think the version where you added outlines actually look better than the original - exept his underwear which looks weird.
Again it's hard to say beacuse I'm used to much to see Mega Man against a black BG that it don't seem weird any longer to me, but it's true the version with the dark blue outline looks better against a black background - but it would look terrible against a dark blue background.

Ideally you would do what some SNES games do - that is pick the darkest gray (but not black) for sprite outlines, so they still look OK against a black BG. But the darkest legal gray on the NES is $00 which is already a medium gray who would look terrible for outlines. So you have to go with black or dark blue - depenging on how much black backgrounds you have in the game.

by UncleSporky on 2010-01-29 (#55949)

After Castlevania 3, let's look at Faxanadu!

In case you don't know, Faxanadu is a side scrolling RPG like Zelda II. It is liked by many though I never really enjoyed its physics - you fall way too quickly and there is no run button, you simply move faster after walking for a second. Kind of odd.

These first set of pics have the NTSC filter.

Dithering is the name of the game in Faxanadu. Everything is heavily dotted and textured. It makes stone blocks and columns look very nice, but the patterns are really obvious. I don't think it looks that bad here, though.

This is near the start of the game. We are looking at the roots of the giant world tree which has been corrupted. The enemy sprites in this game are pretty well done, creepy and freakish.

This is the intro scene. Wow, that first tree has some messed up colors. It looks like they mostly made a lot of random speckled patterns and put them together to form a scene. I think that's supposed to be a dried up waterfall and river at the right side, but you can't be sure. The city, tree and clouds look decent, at least.

When the game's not dithering-obsessed it does have some nice clear graphics. The blocks at the top are textured in a unique way, light and shadow are portrayed nicely, and the chandeliers are well-rendered. The portraits look as good as can be expected on a NES game.

The text boxes have a strange color scheme because the game reserves that red/green/white palette at all times for the top display. This means all items such as keys also use this palette. They placed the importance of bold green and red meters above that of other graphics, and so we have some festive looking interface elements.

Another view of the early areas. I like this one because of the shadows of the pillars - notice how the shadow on the giant root is much closer to the pillar than on the bricks. It gives us the illusion of depth. I really like the texture on the green blocks too. Compare these to the more solid colored bricks in Castlevania 3 above.

Here's an NTSC/emulator comparison (two different emulators):

Faxanadu actually writes text boxes to a space in the background tables. This makes it trivial to pop up the box and they don't have to modify the nametables in real time, but it wastes a lot of valuable PPU space.

They use black as the background color at all times, but many palettes also use it. This is so they can apply different palettes to the same graphics to show objects in the foreground and background. You can see this at the bottom of the screen where the floor meets the background - same graphics, different palette. Black, brown and tan become brown, tan and pink (of all things). It's effective for showing a single color from its darkest values to lightest, but since that takes up two of the three unused background palettes it doesn't leave much room for variation. Indeed, Faxanadu doesn't use many different background color schemes at once, you won't see any green leaves against stone in this game.

Compare these stalactites with Castlevania 3's above.

Most towns in the game look like this. They pick some really odd colors at times, though that could be my emulator showing yellow as green. The brick patterns on the buildings look pretty good. The colors are a little messed up on the tavern's lamps because they wanted them to look lit, leaving the surrounding blocks red.

I don't like the pixelly haze around the town either, it just seems like filler for the fact that they didn't have any details to put there.

The rest of the backgrounds I have taken from the world map at this site.

The second section of the game takes place in a hazy mist. I have to be honest, I just don't like how this looks. It's animated, too, with sprites appearing behind it. I suppose it's one of the better ways you could portray mist in a NES game, but it's so blocky that it just feels like a mess. The big pillar looks alright, though.

The mist is supposed to be covering the top of this castle, but I don't get that impression as well because we can't see any hint of red through it. The random-looking rocks don't help the scene much either. I might expect to see something like this in a haphazardly-designed game like Action 52...

By the way, this is the interior of the castle. My eyes! What's with the bright green floor? This shows one of the pitfalls of designing with a single color in mind: some colors are just too bold.

The third part of the game takes place in the high branches of the world tree. I always liked how this part looked, showing a cross section of the hollow branches. The shadows are again an important part of the visuals.

This is the final dungeon of the game. I really like the colors chosen here. Look, you have brown and two greys, and green/grey/blue, and they don't clash against each other too badly! Experiment with your colors, you might like the result. The lighting here is very well done, notice the varying length of the shadows under the platform.

So that's Faxanadu. As we've seen, some...adventurous color choices, lots of dithering, and a wide range of good to bad graphics. Their more unified colors let them show light and shadow more easily than the colorful Castlevania 3, but many scenes are monochromatic as a result. You can find a lot of worse examples on the NES though, overall it is a decent looking action RPG.

by tepples on 2010-01-29 (#55954)

I think the "corrupt" graphics on the tree at the far left in the intro might have something to do with vector quantization: find the 256 or 128 or whatever tiles that best represent this bitmap image.

Quote:
Faxanadu actually writes text boxes to a space in the background tables. This makes it trivial to pop up the box and they don't have to modify the nametables in real time, but it wastes a lot of valuable PPU space.

WarioWare for Game Boy Advance does the same thing, and probably for the same reason as Faxanadu: the game engine also supports Japanese, and Japanese has too many letters (about 100 counting both kinds of kana) to fit into that box. Mario Is Missing for Super NES does something similar for a different reason: it uses a small proportional font to fit more text into the same size text box.

by Bregalad on 2010-01-29 (#55955)

Wow this was interesting. They obviously put a lot of thought in the backgorund in this game as well (contrary to CV3, I haven't played it).
I really wonder how the mist part looks. On your screens it looks terrible, but on the Youtube video it looks awesome (probably because pixels are blended together).
Maybe it's one of the few NES places that really relies on a filter to look any good ?
I'll definitely have to play through this game with my Power Pak

I'd say I don't quite like the idea to have one palette a faded out version of another. You could as well fade the tiles - unless you use it to fade a very large number of tiles - it sounds like a waste to me.
In my game I took the choose to have 2 constant BG palettes for the status bar - which can of course also be put to good use on levels. That way I have a colorful status bar - at the expanse of being slightly more reducted in my choice of colors for the BG. I'll take new screenshots (because the ones on my website are outdated) and ask your opinion

And yes if it loads the letters in the pattern table instead of the name table, it's probably not because they didn't want to modify the name table in real time - modify the pattern table in real time sounds like much more a big deal to me. It's more likely because all Japanese letters didn't fit on the original version. But does Zelda II, Castlevania II, etc.. do this as well ? After all 50 letters for Hiragana is 2 less than 2 * 26 letters for upper and lower cases.

EDIT : Is there a password that can take me easily to the mist part in Faxanadu ? I've seen some password on Gamefaqs but don't know which one to use. Thanks.
EDIT 2 : The hero looks TERRIBLE too.

by UncleSporky on 2010-01-29 (#55956)

Bregalad wrote:
EDIT : Is there a password that can take me easily to the mist part in Faxanadu ? I've seen some password on Gamefaqs but don't know which one to use. Thanks.

Start in Mascon: zKPcAvt1iEQoFzwhAxjA

Look at the PPU data too, you can see how they used a gradient of mist tiles, and which ones animate.

by Celius on 2010-01-29 (#55959)

I don't know that I have much to say at the moment, but I find your in-depth analysis or commentary on the graphics of the selected games to be very interesting! You should make a website or something where you post all these commentaries on there; I'd like to read a whole bunch more. It's also interesting to see parts of games that I haven't played much of that have "interesting" graphics. By "interesting", I mean just graphics that are either noticeably good or bad.

Well, okay, I'll make a little comment about Castlevania 3. I've always heard people talk about how good the game's graphics were, and I've never been able to fully agree with that stance. A lot of the graphics seem to be directly imported from CV1, which in my mind has some pretty bad graphics. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love CV3. I love the music, and the environments are really cool. Some of the bosses has nice graphics, but there are some parts of the background that are really dumb. Mostly curtains and moss that's all blocky. Though there are a few parts in the game that look very nice, but lots of the graphics aren't that impressive.

And also, I've always loved the ghost ship part! I don't know why you don't like that part, it's one of my favorites. I also think those stainglass windows in the first level look really stupid, especially the small ones. I never looked at them and thought they were convincing small windows. I was always thinking "oh crap, the game is glitching. Look at those windows; those peices shouldn't be there". Then when I found I was wrong, I was surprised to see that someone would actually put those graphics in a video game. Some of those other parts that are more cave-like, I really enjoy looking at. Though it's not perfect looking, there's something about it that I like. Perhaps it's the color that pops; I'm used to seeing dull colors. I also enjoy the forest with the owls, though I'm not sure if I would've chosen those same colors. I think the owls are the best looking part. And let me just say: that fire effect SUCKS.

About the intro, I don't think it has really good graphics. The castle looks strange when outlined, and I think the drawing of the cape blowing in the wind is really amateurish. Though I'm probably forgetting some other stills they showed that I found cool-looking. For the most part, I found the water and cave areas of CV3 to be the most impressive. The clock tower was good for the most part, but I hate the colors of the blocks.

I lied about not having anything to say! About faxandu, I really like some of the patterns shown. It is indeed a lot of dithering, but it looks pretty good for the most part. Dithering really helps for games with limited color selections, provided that the colors in each palette relate to one another. Actually, scrolling through these screens you've posted, I have to say that I'm really impressed with this games backgrounds. The only thing I think doesn't look that good is the misty part. Perhaps I'd need to see more of it in motion (I checked it out for a little bit), but it was nothing really special. Also, the tree in the intro is terrible. What the heck random combination of garbage tiles is that?? Plus, if you actually watch the animation there, the perspective is pretty stupid. With such few scaled versions of that sprite to go off of, you shouldn't even try making that animation of him walking down the path.

This is a rant, sorry. I just wanted to make a few comments and say that I really like reading these posts! You should keep doing these reviews, because it's interesting to read and comment on.

by Dwedit on 2010-01-29 (#55964)

The mist looks much better with the NTSC filter than without. Fortunately, Youtube video also encodes the mist so it looks somewhat similar to what the NTSC filter does to it.

by UncleSporky on 2010-01-29 (#55965)

Celius wrote:
I also think those stainglass windows in the first level look really stupid, especially the small ones. I never looked at them and thought they were convincing small windows. I was always thinking "oh crap, the game is glitching. Look at those windows; those peices shouldn't be there". Then when I found I was wrong, I was surprised to see that someone would actually put those graphics in a video game.

Exactly!

Although it sounds like most people disagree with what I like or dislike, which is fine - the whole point is to be able to look closer at the details and adopt similar techniques if you enjoy it and your game warrants it.

Quote:
I lied about not having anything to say! About faxandu, I really like some of the patterns shown. It is indeed a lot of dithering, but it looks pretty good for the most part. Dithering really helps for games with limited color selections, provided that the colors in each palette relate to one another. Actually, scrolling through these screens you've posted, I have to say that I'm really impressed with this games backgrounds.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with dithering in general, it's much harder to make a game without using it much. The problem is more with their color choices being restrictive for anything more than basic architecture, and some of their tiles being too generic. I prefer for each tile to have a specific use if possible, because generic "fuzzy" tiles tend to stand out to me.

Quote:
Also, the tree in the intro is terrible. What the heck random combination of garbage tiles is that?? Plus, if you actually watch the animation there, the perspective is pretty stupid. With such few scaled versions of that sprite to go off of, you shouldn't even try making that animation of him walking down the path.

If you don't mind spoiling the ending, you can see a much better view of the same area here. Still some screwed up tiles in the trees but other elements are actually impressive, like the reflections in the water.

by Bregalad on 2010-01-30 (#55972)

Celius wrote:
A lot of the graphics seem to be directly imported from CV1, which in my mind has some pretty bad graphics.

Sorry to catch you here, but I'd like to remember you that CV1 is a 1986 game. The graphics standard back then were like Kid Icarus, with no outlines, black background - or the crappy Draogn Quest characters facing the same direction all the time. Needless to say, Castlevania had WAY better gaphics than other 1986 games. Of course comred to early 90's game it might not be awesome (especially the hero who looks terrible).
Quote:
Plus, if you actually watch the animation there, the perspective is pretty stupid. With such few scaled versions of that sprite to go off of, you shouldn't even try making that animation of him walking down the path.

I agree, but see the intro in Dragon Warrior II which is MUCH worse.

by tokumaru on 2010-01-30 (#55974)

Bregalad wrote:
Sorry to catch you here, but I'd like to remember you that CV1 is a 1986 game.

But he wasn't criticizing CV1, he was criticizing CV3 for reusing CV1 art at a time when they already looked dated.

by Celius on 2010-01-30 (#55986)

Well, to be fair I guess I was kind of criticizing both CV1 and CV3. Bregalad has a point about CV1 being from 1986, so I guess it was pretty good for it's time. But I wasn't really trying to criticize CV1. I was just saying it's graphics aren't good enough for you to carry them over to a heavy-duty MMC5 game like CV3.

About the intro to DW2, I don't remember it being as bad. But I guess it's been a long time since I've seen the Faxandu intro so I can't make a fair comparison. Also, UncleSporky, I'm sorry to say that I won't be watching the ending on YouTube. I think I actually want to play the game now!

by Jeroen on 2010-01-30 (#55990)

Celius wrote:
Well, to be fair I guess I was kind of criticizing both CV1 and CV3. Bregalad has a point about CV1 being from 1986, so I guess it was pretty good for it's time. But I wasn't really trying to criticize CV1. I was just saying it's graphics aren't good enough for you to carry them over to a heavy-duty MMC5 game like CV3.

About the intro to DW2, I don't remember it being as bad. But I guess it's been a long time since I've seen the Faxandu intro so I can't make a fair comparison. Also, UncleSporky, I'm sorry to say that I won't be watching the ending on YouTube. I think I actually want to play the game now!

Don't forget however that it wasnt written for mmc5. But for vrc6.

by Celius on 2010-01-30 (#55995)

Does that make it more, or less excusable? I seem to recall them having to scale it down for MMC5. Were the graphics much better on the VRC6 version? I know the intro was really awesome looking, but I didn't notice much difference on the levels. Maybe I didn't look hard enough. Whatever the case, the game is great, and I give it probably an eight or nine out of ten, I just find it pretty dumb that they'd keep crap tiles from CV1.

by Jeroen on 2010-01-30 (#55996)

The only thing they had to scale down was the music. I'm just saying...accusing it of not using mmc5 to its full potential isnt really fair. (as vrc6 had alot less horse power)

by Celius on 2010-01-30 (#55997)

I guess you're right, but I would think that if MMC5 is graphically superior, and inferior in terms of audio, you would want to make up for the lost audio by improving the graphics. After all, they did take the time to edit the music. What's stopping them from tweaking the graphics?

Actually, from what I've read, I don't think anything did stop them from tweaking graphics ! I know Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source, but I swear of read the same things stated elsewhere:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevani ... %27s_Curse

If you read under "Version differences", you'll see that they did actually downgrade the graphics. I don't know much about the VRC6 chip, so I don't know anything that gives it graphical advantages over the MMC5. But, I know many people drool over MMC5 for things like the extra name and attribute table capabilities. So what I'm wondering is why, with all of the extra capabilities of the MMC5, would you take the time to make graphics worse rather than better? It seems that's exactly what they did...

by Bregalad on 2010-01-31 (#56000)

Well I want to clarify this. They didnt' downgrade anything because of the MMC5.
They downgraded the music because of the NES itself (as opposed to Famicom) which would rely a resistor being plugged in the bottom connector for the extra MMC5 sound to work. By redirecting VRC6 Sawtooth channel to Triangle channel, and both VRC6 square channels to MMC5 square channels the music of CV3 could have been ported almost "as it" (exept that the bass would be triangle instead of sawtooth).

There is no such thing as downgraded graphics :
- CV3 has a gothic font instead of a standard font
- The "Nightmare" level uses green walls instead of purple - which one looks better is highly subjective but it's just a palette swap and has nothing to do with mappers
- The statues are more covered - this has nothing to do with mappers it's Nintendo's censorship
- The cross at the intro is modified - again it has nothing to do with the mapper but it's censorship

by ccovell on 2010-01-31 (#56001)

Another difference is that for some reason, the clouds in the first pic of the intro don't warp off-screen in CV3 as the Japanese version does.

by UncleSporky on 2010-01-31 (#56003)

Bregalad wrote:
The cross at the intro is modified - again it has nothing to do with the mapper but it's censorship

I don't know if I would call that censorship, but otherwise it seems inexplicable. They didn't actually remove the cross like they did in most other cases, they just removed the radiating lines. It's like they just wanted to say "nah, this thing doesn't have any special power."

One other modification is the little jumping guys. In MMC5 they're strange little men (fleamen) that I never quite understood - you can see a head and legs and a wing or something, but the sprite's just too compact. On the VRC6 they are much better looking little gremlins.

They have two frames of animation in each version, but in MMC5 they constantly animate as if they're wiggling, and on VRC6 they have a standing frame and jumping frame. The jump frame is slightly larger, which may be why it was changed.

by mic_ on 2010-02-01 (#56017)

I'd like to see a breakdown of some of my favorite futuristic-themed NES games; Batman, Ninja Gaiden 3, Journey to Silius and Shatterhand.
Perhaps I'll take a stab at it myself someday when I've got the time..

by thefox on 2010-02-01 (#56018)

Good analysis! This is really interesting stuff, keep them coming.

by AWJ on 2010-02-01 (#56024)

Bregalad wrote:
And yes if it loads the letters in the pattern table instead of the name table, it's probably not because they didn't want to modify the name table in real time - modify the pattern table in real time sounds like much more a big deal to me. It's more likely because all Japanese letters didn't fit on the original version. But does Zelda II, Castlevania II, etc.. do this as well ? After all 50 letters for Hiragana is 2 less than 2 * 26 letters for upper and lower cases.

The Japanese version of Faxanadu, a bit unusually for a Famicom game, uses a 16x16 pixel font with hiragana, katakana and (limited) kanji. Zelda 2 and Dracula 2 use 8x8 katakana only.

by UncleSporky on 2010-02-01 (#56028)

AWJ wrote:
Bregalad wrote:
And yes if it loads the letters in the pattern table instead of the name table, it's probably not because they didn't want to modify the name table in real time - modify the pattern table in real time sounds like much more a big deal to me. It's more likely because all Japanese letters didn't fit on the original version. But does Zelda II, Castlevania II, etc.. do this as well ? After all 50 letters for Hiragana is 2 less than 2 * 26 letters for upper and lower cases.

The Japanese version of Faxanadu, a bit unusually for a Famicom game, uses a 16x16 pixel font with hiragana, katakana and (limited) kanji. Zelda 2 and Dracula 2 use 8x8 katakana only.

That's very interesting. Must've been quite tricky for them to fit it all in.

I also just noticed the usual censorship in removing the cross from the church in this screen, but the shadow was left behind!

If anyone's interested in the history of Faxanadu, this page is informative:

http://hg101.kontek.net/xanadu/xanadu.htm

"Faxanadu" stands for "Famicom Xanadu" - it was first released on Japanese computers such as the MSX, though Faxanadu doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with the original game.

mic_ wrote:
I'd like to see a breakdown of some of my favorite futuristic-themed NES games; Batman, Ninja Gaiden 3, Journey to Silius and Shatterhand.
Perhaps I'll take a stab at it myself someday when I've got the time..

I was thinking of doing Shatterhand sometime, it's a good looking game that a lot of people have never played.

by tokumaru on 2010-02-01 (#56033)

UncleSporky wrote:
That's very interesting. Must've been quite tricky for them to fit it all in.

Well, with CHR-RAM they don't have to worry much about tile usage, since only the characters being displayed need to be loaded. It sure needs more PRG-ROM than the average font though... but still probably not much, specially if compression is used. The most obvious compression would be to only store one plane of the tiles, since the text is black and white.

by UncleSporky on 2010-02-01 (#56048)

This time I'm doing it a little differently, looking at a wide variety of games and comparing similar areas.

Specifically, forest and tree levels! Usually found sparsely in the first level or more densely in level two or three, forest areas are quite common in NES games. And unsurprisingly, there are many ways to portray them, depending on the mood you want the player to feel.

As usual, many graphics are taken from here.

Contra:

Earlier NES games tended to do it in this style: lots of dense, vertical lines with some leaves on top. That does get at the essence of what forests are about, but isn't terribly interesting. At least it's not too intrusive.

Duck Tales:

This is the other common method for forests. Rather than fading into darkness, they show a connected canopy of leaves with sparse, thin trunks. Personally I don't think it looks very forest-like, but if you lack the tiles to do a lot of details, it's functional.

The moss and vines on the trunks here almost seem like an excuse not to use another brown in the palette.

Darkwing Duck:

Three years later, Capcom's Disney adaptations had much better forests! Nice use of light and dark colors, different tree heights and horizontal distribution, and a black background pattern that shows more forest beyond. It only uses one shade of green but it's dark enough that the lack of varying color isn't too glaring. Reddish brown is even used again in the foreground plants as berries. This is one of the better forest scenes on the NES, I think.

Castlevania 2:

Similar to Contra, very repetitive. A common method on the NES is to do this sort of fade to darkness with the leaves. You can see how they saved on colors compared to other games' trees by using only one shade of green and brown. It's not as dynamic as a result, though - it might've been better to use the ground colors for the trunk and add a second green to the other palette. I'm not sure that would be possible with this exact design, though.

In my opinion, they attempted to put too much detail on the trees and branches using only brown and black. Repeated tiles are very visible. I also don't like the horizontal web of branches, it's sort of distracting to the eye and still makes it look like there is just one perfect row of trees, rather than a whole forest.

Again, compare this to their efforts two years later in Castlevania 3:

Much spookier. The larger trees help to sell it too, along with the irregular canopy. Last time I didn't have a screen of the clearing at the start with the trees off in the distance, very cool.

Astyanax:

I like scenes with larger trees because they look more imposing and it gives you more room for detail, assuming you have the skill to do it justice. This compares well with Castlevania 3: notice how this game uses plain brown for the trunks and plain green for the leaves. It also doesn't leave anything to the imagination, doesn't imply more leaves going up into darkness or more trees in the background. It's not horrible but it could be a lot better. It's a good lesson in suggesting when you can, rather than being explicit. Of course if you like how it looks, then by all means do it!

Mickey Mousecapade:

Another hallmark of early NES games - lots of solid color, and yet too many lines crammed into certain places (the "scribbled on" leaves). I do like the randomized look of the trees here.

In this level the trees actually do matter, the closest ones are often hiding goodies and secret doors that warp you to other seasons (different palettes).

Big Nose the Caveman:

There are certainly other ways to do forests than the examples above. This one just gives you the impression that a forest is back there. I have to say I'm not a big fan of it, partly because the foreground graphics are much more detailed. They don't fit together very well, but it does bring the action into focus. Part of the weirdness here is how from the bottom up, the colors go from dark to light rather than vice versa or another configuration. Why are the closest plants in silhouette? Ah well.

Bible Adventures:

This one is simple but doesn't do a bad job at conveying dense woods and random growth. As should be obvious, these trees are also an important part of this game, so they made sure to have them stand out. Bark spiraling around the tree is a little odd but the shadowy canopy looks fine.

Bram Stoker's Dracula:

The pattern is very visible but at least the trees fade out into the distance, and they even left room to show mountains. All in two shades of green.

Later in the NES's life, more devs made games that either had a cartoonier style that played to its strengths or showed details only on the edges of scenery. This shows some of that technique, how one side of the tree is highlighted and the rest is dark, and we only see the peaks of the mountains.

Blaster Master:

Somewhat similar in feeling to the one above. The use of brown, grey and blue for the trunks is interesting (obviously the blue was used for the horizon). It's also neat how the background trees are more fuzzy and indistinct. The leaves at the top are especially well done, implying a lot more than we are able to see.

Double Dragon:

I like the texture on these trees, although it ends up looking a bit like a middle school play with prop trees. The leaves are again too patterned and flat.

Frankenstein:

I only show this one because it's unique in that it uses non-standard sized trees. These seem like they're based on photos. The canopy is much too regular though.

Kirby's Adventure:

To be honest this isn't the most beautiful forest I've seen, but it fits in perfectly with the rest of Kirby's art style and plays to the NES's strengths. I think it's intentionally designed to look like hanging sheets of paper, and it shows some great depth.

Gimmick:

This is one of my favorites. Very clean art, nice use of highlights and shadow, and it suggests detail without needing to show all of it.

Ninja Gaiden 3:

This one is very detailed and interesting to look at. Here's a zoomed view:

Really varied colors is the first thing that jumps out at me. Green and yellow makes the foliage look dry or dying, in contrast to the bright red bushes and purple trees. Very dreamlike. It's got the same far off tree pattern as Darkwing Duck, except anti-aliased with light purple. These colors aren't often put to good use in NES games, but I think it works very well here.

Moon Crystal:

Moon Crystal is an awesome game with great animation, I may look at the rest of it someday. For now, here is its opening forest. It's not among the best here, but it could be a whole lot worse. Simple and effective, good use of shadows and highlights.

Finally I wanted to look at what is probably my favorite forest area. First, look at Megaman 2:

Six years later, Megaman 6:

I suppose it doesn't do everything perfectly, but it's the overall package that sells it. Four palettes that complement each other well. The use of multiple shades per color so that nothing looks underdeveloped. Three greens in the leaves means that it almost looks like a SNES game (reminds me of Secret of Mana trees). Anti-aliased silhouettes in the background with an unobtrusive blue. I really like the hanging vines.

They incorporate purple flowers in the canopy later that also fit in well:

They don't even interrupt the leaves too much, it just looks like shadow around them. It's very well put together.

One other forest I really like is the one in Magician. I don't have any screens yet, but you can see it in this video. Another unique style with non-vertical trees and a detailed environment.

Well, that was super long. Hopefully that will provide some good ideas for trees in your own games, or at least open your eyes a bit to designs in different games. Style affects many things, and you've got to use those four palettes wisely.

by Dwedit on 2010-02-01 (#56049)

Other games with forests:
MC Kids
Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout

by HJRodrigo on 2010-02-01 (#56051)

Talking about forests, THIS is one of the best looking forest I have seen on the NES. At first I thought it was SNES graphics

by Banshaku on 2010-02-01 (#56052)

HJRodrigo wrote:
Talking about forests, THIS is one of the best looking forest I have seen on the NES. At first I thought it was SNES graphics

I have to agree, if this is not a fake, it does look impressive the choice of color.

by strat on 2010-02-01 (#56053)

Kirby's Adventure is my favorite NES game for graphics. I'm a fan of elegant simplicity and the sparse outlines and shading really bring out the solid colors in that forest.

Here's a Gameboy Color game I almost mistook for Gameboy Advance. Heck, it doesn't look any worse than Mario Advance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foWNrigJa1k

by UncleSporky on 2010-02-01 (#56054)

Banshaku wrote:
HJRodrigo wrote:
Talking about forests, THIS is one of the best looking forest I have seen on the NES. At first I thought it was SNES graphics

I have to agree, if this is not a fake, it does look impressive the choice of color.

Wow, that is fantastic. It looks too good for the NES, but on close review it does look achievable. Thanks for posting that!

by Zepper on 2010-02-01 (#56056)

- Don't forget the japanese version of Contra, regarding the japanese font size.

by HJRodrigo on 2010-02-01 (#56060)

Banshaku wrote:
I have to agree, if this is not a fake, it does look impressive the choice of color.

The good news is that it is not a fake. Sliver X is a well known and respected romhacker. Dragoon X Omega II is one of his works.

UncleSporky wrote:
Wow, that is fantastic. It looks too good for the NES, but on close review it does look achievable. Thanks for posting that!

Your welcome. You can go HERE to leave any comments for Sliver X if you want to share your thoughts .

by mic_ on 2010-02-01 (#56065)

Sword Master has that fake two-layer scrolling going on, which was kinda cool. But the treet still looked pretty ugly.

Some other games that came to mind that had forest/tree areas:

Rygar
Chip n Dale : Rescue Rangers
the Wizards & Warriors series
Gargoyle's Quest
Little Nemo the Dream Master
Ninja Gaiden 1

by Bregalad on 2010-02-02 (#56066)

HJRodrigo wrote:
Talking about forests, THIS is one of the best looking forest I have seen on the NES. At first I thought it was SNES graphics

I was algo going to mention it, if it's not a fake (hopefully it's not !!) then I really can't wait for the patch to be released. In fact it looks better than most SNES games.

I also have a few forsest areas in the game I'm making and most of my future games will have them too (if I ever make them). In fact I think the vast majority of games have forest areas... listing all of them would be near impossible. But you should have mentionned forest of the first Wizards & Warriors, it's quite special.

Anyway my favourites are :
- This CV2 hack (if it's real)
- Megaman 6
- Darkwing Duck

by miau on 2010-02-02 (#56068)

Whoa, that CV2 hack is indeed stunning. It always looks a bit artificial to me, though, if there's that much depth to the graphics, but all "layers" are scrolling at the same speed. Too bad you can't do much about that on the NES without sacrificing a lot of possible graphical detail or CHR space. Obviously, it's still better than no depth at all!

Again, a very interesting and useful review. Apart from the hack my favorites are CV3, MM6 and I've always been a sucker for the clean-ness and style of Gimmick's graphics. Blaster Master is pretty interesting, too.

As for Ninja Gaiden 3, the bright purple in the screenshots is really throwing me off.

by Bregalad on 2010-02-02 (#56070)

miau wrote:
As for Ninja Gaiden 3, the bright purple in the screenshots is really throwing me off.

I totally agree ! It looks like they wanted to put so much detail that they failed at it. This don't look like trees anymore - it looks more like a cursed swap where all plants have gone mutant to me. With the animated BG (which the screenshot don't show) it looks even weirder. In fact I think animated BGs are WAY too much overrated - I'd rather go for a statuc BG which is good looking.

by tokumaru on 2010-02-02 (#56074)

Bregalad wrote:
In fact I think animated BGs are WAY too much overrated - I'd rather go for a statuc BG which is good looking.

It depends. When they start animating things that wouldn't normally move, just for the heck of it, then it's too much. But a certain degree of background animation gives the games more life.

There are certain games that if there are no enemies on the screen you can't even tell if they're paused or not, because everything is so static. I believe that a little background animation makes a good difference, and makes the worlds more alive.

by UncleSporky on 2010-02-02 (#56076)

tokumaru wrote:
Bregalad wrote:
In fact I think animated BGs are WAY too much overrated - I'd rather go for a statuc BG which is good looking.

It depends. When they start animating things that wouldn't normally move, just for the heck of it, then it's too much. But a certain degree of background animation gives the games more life.

There are certain games that if there are no enemies on the screen you can't even tell if they're paused or not, because everything is so static. I believe that a little background animation makes a good difference, and makes the worlds more alive.

In areas where I can be sure there won't be too many enemies on the screen at once, I want to devote a number of sprites to scenery effects. Leaves falling, light filtering through the trees etc.

Anyway, that CV2 forest is so simple and yet works so well. It's just a few vertical sections of tiles that can be chopped up and rearranged, and they look good in almost any configuration. End a section early and the vertical edge just becomes another tree.

by AWJ on 2010-02-02 (#56077)

Those Ninja Gaiden 3 screenshots are using a truly awful emulator palette (Nesticle?) The foreground foliage (i.e. the platforms you can walk on) should be yellow-green, not brown, and the background bushes should be brown, not bright red.

by UncleSporky on 2010-02-02 (#56079)

AWJ wrote:
Those Ninja Gaiden 3 screenshots are using a truly awful emulator palette (Nesticle?) The foreground foliage (i.e. the platforms you can walk on) should be yellow-green, not brown, and the background bushes should be brown, not bright red.

I wouldn't know which emulator they used, but you're right. Brown and red on the NES are pretty similar though.

by Bregalad on 2010-02-02 (#56080)

Quote:
It's just a few vertical sections of tiles that can be chopped up and rearranged, and they look good in almost any configuration. End a section early and the vertical edge just becomes another tree.

My god I admit this is very clever and works surprisingly well !

by miau on 2010-02-02 (#56081)

UncleSporky wrote:
AWJ wrote:
Those Ninja Gaiden 3 screenshots are using a truly awful emulator palette (Nesticle?) The foreground foliage (i.e. the platforms you can walk on) should be yellow-green, not brown, and the background bushes should be brown, not bright red.

I wouldn't know which emulator they used, but you're right. Brown and red on the NES are pretty similar though.

(image)

Ah, that looks much better
I still don't like the purple highlights on the front trees much, they look like pieces of cloth to me, but the rest is pretty good.

I especially like the the bottom half of the screen. The hero isn't walking on the foremost background pane like in most games, you're actually watching him from the other side of a river - or at least that's what it looks like to me. Very cool.

by Celius on 2010-02-02 (#56102)

That CV2 hack is really inspiring, actually. That forest is simply incredible. More than that, I think the rocks with the moss look AWESOME. I can see how they might do that, dedicating two background palettes to be like this:

Color 0 = Black

Palette 1:
Color 1 = Dark Grey
Color 2 = Dark Green
Color 3 = Light Grey

Palette 2:
Color 1 = Dark Grey
Color 2 = Dark Green
Color 3 = Light Green

With these two palettes, they can put the rock patterns with moss next to each other, and switch between showing highlighted rocks and highlighted moss. It's really pretty, but I would be scared to dedicate two palettes to make this. I guess less variety of higher quality can be better than greater variety of lower quality.

The forest is also great. These are actually the kind of visuals I was dreaming my game ChateauLeVania would have, but I didn't know that it was possible. This is definitely proof that you can have great graphics with limited capabilities.

by UncleSporky on 2010-02-02 (#56104)

I didn't intend for this to be a pixel art thread, but building on forest graphic examples and what I put together above:

by Bananmos on 2010-02-02 (#56105)

Thanks for your great analysis UncleSporky! (and other contributors to this thread) I've recently been thinking about how to design a NES forest area, and both Darkwing Duck and Gimmick have been impressive models to study, but your thread shows there are many great NES forest that I have yet to explore. :)

And speaking of parallax scrolling tricks, the shadowy background trees in the MM6 forest area just seems to scream for using that. Though I guess it would need CHR-ROM (and lots of it) for that to be practical. I've always wondered why the Megaman sequels kept switching back and forth between CHR-RAM to CHR-ROM, while the game engine itself didn't seem to change much.

by Disch on 2010-02-02 (#56106)

Thaddeus has amazing talent for sure (artist for that CV2 hack). I knew him on IRC way back when -- before we had a falling out due to personality conflicts.

The man is without a doubt the best pixel artist I've ever seen. He really should get into doing his work professionally.

by Celius on 2010-02-03 (#56129)

Disch wrote:
Thaddeus has amazing talent for sure (artist for that CV2 hack).

Well it's good to know that there's some proof that this is legitimate. If you know him, and you know he was working on this, I have faith that the video isn't fake.

Disch wrote:
The man is without a doubt the best pixel artist I've ever seen. He really should get into doing his work professionally.

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, really, I didn't believe at first that these were really NES graphics. It's funny too, because it's not like there's any parallax or special effects of any kind. It's simply the amount of detail that made me doubt this was real.

by Bregalad on 2010-02-03 (#56130)

Yeah same here, in fact, like Uncle Sporky explained I think the tiles themselves are normally detailed, but they are arranged in a way that adds detail to the level itself, which makes how incredible this video looks. I had to watch it a few times to figure out that I wasn't daydreaming, and I'm really relived to hear it's not a fake, I really can't wait to see it released !!

I also remember a hack of one of the Mega Man games (it was MM2 I think) which had beyond awesome graphics too.

by Disch on 2010-02-03 (#56134)

Celius wrote:
Well it's good to know that there's some proof that this is legitimate. If you know him, and you know he was working on this, I have faith that the video isn't fake.

Well I haven't spoken to him in about a year, so I can't in good faith say I know for a fact it's him. But:

1) The video said "from the makers of DXOII" (Primarily: Sliver-X and Thaddeus)

2) Thaddeus is a diehard retro Castlevania fan

3) The art is totally his style

4) I've seen some of his other works, and he really is that good

5) Sliver and Thadd have been talking about a CV2 remake since forever ago (years and years now)

So yeah. There's no doubt in MY mind that it's legit. But I don't have "proof" per se.

It's not just the forest backgrounds in that video that get me. Did you guys look at some of the ground tiles? The patches of rock on the forest floor, and the 16x16 blocks on the screen with the mountain background. Absolute beauty.

by CartCollector on 2010-02-03 (#56136)

UncleSporky, you forgot this one:

It's an OK forest in my opinion. Better than the DuckTales one at least.

by HJRodrigo on 2010-02-03 (#56137)

I posted the link of sliver x's "announcement" on romhacking.net of the project. I don't know why everybody is so concerned about it being fake. The concern should be of it not being released. I see way more projects being canceled/not released (usually due to "real life") than being fake.

by Bregalad on 2010-02-04 (#56141)

Yes you are completely right. When I says hopefully it's real, I was actually thinking hopefully it's real and will be released one day. My fault for not saying it correctly. There have been so many hack announcements that were eventually canceled, for a large palette of reasons. This is why I never put really faith in romhacking anymore, altough I've seen some good hacks, mostly Mega Man and Castlevania 1 hacks, and also that Breat of Fire II retranslation.

by Celius on 2010-02-04 (#56142)

Disch wrote:
It's not just the forest backgrounds in that video that get me. Did you guys look at some of the ground tiles? The patches of rock on the forest floor, and the 16x16 blocks on the screen with the mountain background. Absolute beauty.

Yeah, earlier I posted how I thought those were the best part of the background. It honestly reminds me of the underground cave areas in Symphony of the Night on PlayStation. The use of black in both the terrain and forest background really makes the whole thing look absolutely amazing. Like I said before, these are the kinds of graphics I dreamed of having in my game, but I didn't think they were possible. I am officially inspired.

And yeah, I think there's enough "evidence" that it isn't fake. It looks possible when looking at it up close, and with all the things you posted, I think it's safe to assume it's real.

I really want to see more of this! I think there's a lot they could do with the towns, making great details on the bricks and stuff. There's A LOT of room for improvement on areas with water. I always thought the water looked like garbage. I'm also curious to see what they would do with the sprites, if anything.

I was also wondering, is this supposed to be the day or night time forest? It seems really dark, but it seems like it could just be a dark/evil day or something.

by HJRodrigo on 2010-02-04 (#56158)

Celius, I bet you could do good graphics like those too. I like the work you did for your avatar. The only possible critic I have is maybe you can design that boss character in a way that allows you to use a different palette for the horns, especially if he is the big boss. I think it is okay for the common enemies to look monotone, but i think big bosses look better with more color. Maybe have a palette for the head that has orange and green in it, so his horns can be green and maybe his eyes too. Then you can do a neat effect of having his horns and eyes flash each time you hit him

But that is just a passing thought, the boss character still looks cool.

by Bregalad on 2010-02-04 (#56160)

No offence to him - but his avatar is just a rip off of Castlevania games, so it's not his work (he just reducted the numbers of colors of it I think). Altough the character attacking the boss is by him, and his portrait looks awesome (he posted it in another thread).

by Celius on 2010-02-04 (#56162)

I appreciate the compliments, thank you ! But it's true, I merely "Nintendoized" the image of Dracula from Symphony of the Night. It did take a lot of work though. I not only had to reduce the number of colors, I had to scale it down to fit exactly into a certain amount of tiles. If you look near the toes and the lower legs, you can see some pieces look like they may have ended abruptly. This is because needed to cut out some tiles to have it fit into $7F tiles. This is mainly so I can fit both the graphics of the boss facing left and right in one pattern table, as it's part of the BG. I feel like I could do a decent job of taking detailed images and scaling them down to work on the NES. So I guess if I had some good, detailed terrain samples to start with, I could Nintendoize them pretty well.

And actually, I did use a separate palette for the horns! I guess it looks like the same color scheme, and I seem to remember trying out different colors for it. It wasn't quite successful, however. But I agree; if bosses are going to be really big and the main focus, they should be detailed with more than one palette.

I did, however, straight-up make the character attacking the boss... Nothing spectacular, but I like it. The portrait Bregalad is talking about, I recently posted here:

http://nesdev.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=5931

Third post down from the top. You can also see the Nintendoization of another painting I did in that post. I have to confess, I think the Nintendoization is way better than the painting itself! These could both use some work, particularly in highlights. But otherwise, I think they look decent.