Graphic design of NES games

A place for your artistic side. Discuss techniques and tools for pixel art on the NES, GBC, or similar platforms.

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Bregalad
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Post by Bregalad »

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.
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Celius
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Post by Celius »

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.
HJRodrigo
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Post by HJRodrigo »

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. :idea: 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 :P

But that is just a passing thought, the boss character still looks cool.
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Bregalad
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Post by Bregalad »

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).
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Celius
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Post by Celius »

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.
OtherQuestionPlease
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Re: Graphic design of NES games

Post by OtherQuestionPlease »

I know this thread is really old, but it is such a shame that the pictures are not available anymore, and it was archived too late. I suppose the author of the posts has no desire to update them ...
davidbrok5
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Re: Graphic design of NES games

Post by davidbrok5 »

Game play aside, though better graphics and better game play usually coincide, what are the best looking NES games out there? I'm looking for odder games that people might not have heard of. My list:

Kirby's Adventure

Batman

Bubble Bobble 2

Mendel Palace

Little Samson

The Mega Man series

The Adventures Of Lolo

Fire 'N' Ice

Moon Crystal

Any other games out there where the animation is smooth or the graphics/level design approach the technical limits of the NES?
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Gilbert
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Re: Graphic design of NES games

Post by Gilbert »

For smooth animation, I can think of:
Castelian

Reigen Doushi, which was based on a Hong Kong movie that was VERY popular in Japan. I think this game had a western release but I don't know its name. Checked and this was released as Phantom Fighter in the west.

There was also Fighting Road. a Street Fighter clone, which didn't look good and with crappy control but with very smooth a lot of animation frames (which was not very smooth though, contradicting my memory).

Batman and Eggerland/Adventure of Lolo series are also quite good in the animation department (just watch the player characters move), but you've already mentioned them.
calima
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Re: Graphic design of NES games

Post by calima »

That's a spambot...
tepples
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Re: Graphic design of NES games

Post by tepples »

Who is now b& for impersonating Vanderblade.
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Gilbert
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Re: Graphic design of NES games

Post by Gilbert »

:oops:
To my defense, though. His post did look suspicious to me at first, so I actually checked his posts and found that other thread, which seemed to be okay (as I didn't read past the post that the OP was called out for impersonation, and he's not even banned and could start a new post after more than a year).

Anyway, I think the discussion is still valid.

Never checked where they led to, but there are still links in his signature, probably in need of clean up.
sdm
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Re: Graphic design of NES games

Post by sdm »

Vice Project Doom (Gun-Dec) has a very interesting looking tropical forest.
For me, it is one of the most beautifully designed games.

Image
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strat
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Re: Graphic design of NES games

Post by strat »

Since we're revisiting this topic, here's another forest scene on the pile (Mitsume Ga Tooru). The trees up front are kinda meh, but the background silhouette is a nice touch. It looks like a forest while fitting the manga aesthetic.
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