Why did SNES Japan-only games have much better graphics than localized games?

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Oziphantom
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Re: Why did SNES Japan-only games have much better graphics than localized games?

Post by Oziphantom »

strat wrote: Mon Nov 09, 2020 2:37 pm
FF4 has a "we made this as a NES game, but the NES market was dead so we did a SNES port halfway through development and didn't have the time or money to upgrade our computers and tools" look to it. FFV doesn't look that much better to be honest.
Really? FF5 seems like a pretty drastic improvement over 4, which does mostly have an NES-style, blocky grid. 5 has more detailed shading with ornamental tiles while 4 has just enough to illustrate the concept. 6 took what they learned on 5 and upped the ante with an even larger tileset.
This is probably a locality of reference problem. If one plays FFIII and puts in FFIV "WOW" then FFV "WOW" but when you get FFIV and FFV after Mana, Illusion of Time, Terranigma and FFVI, its FFIV "this looks like a NES". FFV "Well its like a NES only they figured out that have more colours not just better ones".

How we have this far and nobody has mentioned Tales of Phantasia of the real poster child "Star Ocean" for best graphics for Japan only is amazing.
turboxray
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Re: Why did SNES Japan-only games have much better graphics than localized games?

Post by turboxray »

Oziphantom wrote: Tue Nov 10, 2020 12:29 am
strat wrote: Mon Nov 09, 2020 2:37 pm
FF4 has a "we made this as a NES game, but the NES market was dead so we did a SNES port halfway through development and didn't have the time or money to upgrade our computers and tools" look to it. FFV doesn't look that much better to be honest.
Really? FF5 seems like a pretty drastic improvement over 4, which does mostly have an NES-style, blocky grid. 5 has more detailed shading with ornamental tiles while 4 has just enough to illustrate the concept. 6 took what they learned on 5 and upped the ante with an even larger tileset.
This is probably a locality of reference problem. If one plays FFIII and puts in FFIV "WOW" then FFV "WOW" but when you get FFIV and FFV after Mana, Illusion of Time, Terranigma and FFVI, its FFIV "this looks like a NES". FFV "Well its like a NES only they figured out that have more colours not just better ones".

How we have this far and nobody has mentioned Tales of Phantasia of the real poster child "Star Ocean" for best graphics for Japan only is amazing.
^This.

When FF2US (FFIV) came out, is was still incredible. RPGs didn't really advance too much, and FFIV did NOT look like an NES game. The music, the story, the transparency, scaling/rotation, enemy graphics and background, etc. Even coming from something like Phantasy Star 2, which doesn't have that 16x16 chibi-ish look.
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Re: Why did SNES Japan-only games have much better graphics than localized games?

Post by Bregalad »

Also, they probably designed the game so that it starts on an airship totally on purpose, in order to blow away people's eyes.
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Re: Why did SNES Japan-only games have much better graphics than localized games?

Post by krzysiobal »

I always wondered the same.
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Wanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World vs Panic Restaurant
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In my opinion all Japanese games have much more childish (in positive sense) sprites used for players
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Re: Why did SNES Japan-only games have much better graphics than localized games?

Post by Pokun »

That's not what the topic is about (I think), but I agree with you. The reason is because us westerners have bad taste so making the game look ugly is part of the localizing process or we wouldn't buy the games. We love ugly.

Seriously though, I think that Wanpaku Kokkun is a bad example because it's still drawn tastefully. Changing a young quite neutral looking hero to an old fat but still neutral looking hero is still a very strange decision though. The Langrisser to Warsong localization is a good example of a visual downgrade.
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Picto
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Re: Why did SNES Japan-only games have much better graphics than localized games?

Post by Picto »

Responding to the original point, I think it's partly confirmation bias with ignoring the games we did get that looked great.
But another factor of Japan-only games seemingly having better visuals is the tendency to not localize late-era games, which pushed what the SFC was capable of.
Chaos Seed, Energy Breaker, Rudras, and Treasure Hunter G come to mind. (They all came out in '96 when the PS1 and N64 were already out after all)
Even though the SFC kept getting releases until around 2000, as far as we were concerned in the West, it was all about the next-gen.
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Re: Why did SNES Japan-only games have much better graphics than localized games?

Post by Oziphantom »

krzysiobal wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:31 am I always wondered the same.
Doki Doki Yuuenchi vs Trolls in Crazyland
Trolls is a MASSIVE license and would have greatly increased the games sales.
krzysiobal wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:31 amWanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World vs Panic Restaurant
The Gourmet world is just more of a western chef cliche.
krzysiobal wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:31 amTecmo Cup - Soccer Game vs Captain Tsubasa
Not really seeing the difference, the hair is different but it could just be another character rather than a newly redrawn sprite.
Oziphantom
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Re: Why did SNES Japan-only games have much better graphics than localized games?

Post by Oziphantom »

Pokun wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 10:17 am That's not what the topic is about (I think), but I agree with you. The reason is because us westerners have bad taste so making the game look ugly is part of the localizing process or we wouldn't buy the games. We love ugly.

Seriously though, I think that Wanpaku Kokkun is a bad example because it's still drawn tastefully. Changing a young quite neutral looking hero to an old fat but still neutral looking hero is still a very strange decision though. The Langrisser to Warsong localization is a good example of a visual downgrade.
It could just be getting Japanese artist who are trained in the Japanese art style to draw western style. Rather than getting artists in the west to make the conversion. Japan is also somewhat lucky that technology hit them when their art style still had a lot of abstract blocks of colour so the low res, low colour style fits their art styles more. While the west we had been pushing for more and more photo realism in our art and then suddenly had to make it fit in 4 colours.
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Re: Why did SNES Japan-only games have much better graphics than localized games?

Post by Nikku4211 »

Oziphantom wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 10:57 pm
krzysiobal wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:31 amTecmo Cup - Soccer Game vs Captain Tsubasa
Not really seeing the difference, the hair is different but it could just be another character rather than a newly redrawn sprite.
The Japan version is based on a Japanese comic called Captain Tsubasa. When the game was being localised, they had to remove the Captain Tsubasa references since nobody knew what Captain Tsubasa was outside of Japan at the time.
tepples wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 9:11 am
Oziphantom wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 12:28 am FF4 has a "we made this as a NES game, but the NES market was dead so we did a SNES port halfway through development and didn't have the time or money to upgrade our computers and tools" look to it.
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Sydney Hunter on SNES doesn't even look like an NES game to me, honestly. The sprites are still well detailed and colourful. I don't care what some dumb guy on Reddit says.
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