(no subject)

So, I'd say I already have things figured out by now (having modified Konata and Miyuki's heights by one pixel each), but since I already stated one of four things in question yesterday, I suppose I might as well elaborate on everything else so as not to leave anyone hanging who might be interested.

What I'm trying to balance out are as follows:

1) Homage to the Earthbound trilogy, which will include similar graphics and super-deformed character sprites.

2) Emphasizing height differences among characters.

3) Enabling most of the female characters to wear bikinis without them being mistakable for larger two-piece swimsuits. (Note the difference between Konata's and Minami's in this pic, for example.)

4) Homage to the 32-bit era.

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So, that first thing has mainly to do with nostalgia. I first played Earthbound early in 1996, shortly after turning ten, barely a year after it got released here. Even though it was much later on that I would first try out Earthbound Zero (in 2010), the similarities between the two games gave EB0 some kind of nostalgic qualities, even though I wasn't into video games back in 1990 (it's scheduled-then-cancelled U.S. release date).

Mother 3, somehow, did not carry the same feeling as its prequels had, but part of that obviously has to do with its very different setting from them for most of the game, among other differences. Not only that, but the character sprites also had a different feel to them. For one thing, many character animations are more intricate than what Earthbound had to offer (including walking, which utilized a total of three sprites instead of two in any given direction, to say nothing of running).

On the other hand, that game did utilize its own renditions of Earthbound's generic NPCs, and having had a look at these of the first two games' mains, they actually are still similar. The only real differences is that the characters' feet remain side-by-side when facing forward (instead of having one foot forward all the time), and their arms are vertical instead of diagonal. I think the sprites might've seemed "bulkier" (or something) than those of its prequels. One might chalk that up to the Game Boy Advance itself being much tinier than a TV or computer screen, resulting in bloated pixels on an emulator, although it is true that the first two games were re-released for the same system in 2003, three years before M3.

Then again, Mother 3 was originally conceived as a 3D game for the Nintendo 64, meaning that it would've been a lot more animated by default had that gone through. Analoguously, though, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time did manage to maintain the same general feel of previous Zelda games despite being a 3D game instead of 2D, while Majora's Mask didn't, so maybe it isn't so much about graphics as about the setting. Maybe?

But then, analoguously to the EB trilogy and my plans for a clone, we have the Mega Man series and Rosenkreuzstilette. Even though Mega Man and RKS are nothing alike in setting, it is true that the latter does employ super-deformed sprites with four-framed walking animations as part of its homage to the former (which only had that for the NES and Game Boy games) while utilizing its own, more up-to-date graphics and audio.

Well, I already asked myself before what the deal is with the Zelda franchise in general, and here I am asking what it is about Mother 3 compared to its two prequels.

In any case, from what I've seen on the website, Mother 4 does seem to be returning to the original type of setting as the first two games while basing its graphics on M3. Already planning to give that game a try once it's out, though I still plan for most of Day of the Beehive's graphics to resemble Earthbound's, which I consider the core game between EB0, M3, and by extension, the Halloween hack and Arn's Winter Quest.

That whole thing does tie in with #4, and I'll be sure to delve into that tomorrow.

Well, let's finish this up...

Last thing I've yet to tie up, is that deal with the 32-bit era.

To start with, I had originally planned on creating something that would resemble just Earthbound for the Super NES, be it a ROMhack or from scratch. If you compare that pic I tied in with my completion of the Earthbound trilogy and chapter 1 of Starbound (here it is if you missed it before), to those on my swimwear sheet, you'll notice that the skin and hair tones are somewhat more vibrant in the latter. That's because I copied the former from various existing EB sprites, and the latter directly from screenshots of the anime (a format that doesn't have color limitations like old video game systems).

(Having just mentioned that, yeah, I just have tried copying them from the site onto my new computer (which I didn't have when I made my first sheet), and it looks blurry. I've already started a GIMP image of 6144x3072 (512x256 multiplied by twelve) for the sake of better viewing, but considering certain revisions I've made thus far to my existing sheets, that might have to wait until I can be really sure that no further edits will be in order. Might host all the enlarged versions on both deviantArt and the Lucky Star forum's Media Share section (the latter for completion, since dA doesn't allow nude depictions of anyone canonically under 18) once I have Starbound all finished up, if mainly to promote my Kickstarter campaign for Day of the Beehive.)

I had changed my mind upon discovering the remastered soundtracks of the Rockman Complete Works series, a Japan-only line of semi-updated PSX re-releases of Rockman 1 through 7, on YouTube. Listening to various songs from those games had reminded me of the games Matthew and I used to play on his Playstation in our early teens and how much more elegant they sounded compared to what Brian and I had for our SNES and Nintendo 64 (something I noticed only subconsciously back then). Napalm Man's theme was the first song I checked out, my actual favorite was (and still is) Shadow Man's theme, and I realized how poorly either of those or anything else that spectacular would blend in with Earthbound's modest 16-bit soundtrack.

Granted, most SNES games each have their own instrumental tones that wouldn't blend into other SNES games. Even within the same franchise, try comparing Kirby's Dream Course to Kirby Super Star. I'm not even talking about actual songs due to different atmospheres. However, while the system is capable of orchestrated music, only a handful of games can hope to compete with most CD-based games (barring use of the fan-made MSU-1 chip).

I actually read something recently about that, which covers everything from "8-bit" pulse code modulation to the CD-based Redbook:

http://www.1up.com/features/the-magic-of-fm-synth

Given the impression such spectacular songs as what the Complete Works OSTs consisted of left on me, I figured it would be interesting to see what an Earthbound-style game could have looked like in 32-bit. Earthbound Zero was designed for the 8-bit NES (gen 3), Earthbound was designed for the 16-bit Super NES (gen 4), and Mother 3 was first conceived as the trilogy's 3D game for the Nintendo 64 (gen 5), known then as Earthbound 64, before facing cancellation and only seeing the light of day much later on, as yet another 2D game, for the Game Boy Advance (a 6th-gen, handheld system with equivalent graphical capabilities to the SNES) instead of being recycled and upgraded for the GameCube (Nintendo's next home system after the N64). A 3D game had already been conceived (cancelled or not), and the N64 never supported nearly as many 2D games as the Playstation or their other most prominent competitor, the Sega Saturn. True, Ape/Creatures is a Nintendo-owned 2nd-party developer, unlike Capcom (with Mega Man) or Konami (with Castlevania). However, Day of the Beehive technically isn't an Earthbound game, and is going to be an independent project altogether.

That then begs the question, why don't I just let the graphics pan out as they will, like [erka:es] did with its Mega Man clone Rosenkreuzstilette for Microsoft Windows? I suppose because sprites are one of the few forms of artwork that I'm actually capable of, I need to create those myself in order to prove that I'm capable of creating anything for the project (if I'm to raise funds for it and recruit people to work on other parts of the game), and working with larger pixels than smaller makes things easier for me. Also because of the issues I described about Mother 3's graphics compared to Earthbound's and EB0's, which, like I said, I'm not sure if that's what it is about that game that makes me favor it less than the other two. And, there's also the fact that Mother 3, being a GBA game, had lower sound quality than Earthbound due to hardware limitations, while PSX and Saturn games were all CD-based and just had their audio recorded right in (along with having palettes of over 16.7 million colors, matching that of GIMP).

I recently have learned from Jake about this fangame called Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: The 7th Stand User, which was created with RPGMaker but styled specifically after the original Game Boy as a clone of the original SaGa/Final Fantasy Legend trilogy. That, of course, was three games for one system before the series continued through the Playstation. The Earthbound trilogy is three games (four if you count M3's 3D prototype) for different individual systems, and Day of the Beehive should individuate itself in certain ways while remaining true to its roots in others.

Finally, if you'd like to know, I do plan for the prequel, The Original Story, to have the same aesthetic as the Sega Genesis and the TurboGrafx-16, so there's that at least for retreaux gaming in general.