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Dec. 12th, 2015 06:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmxratedDiscovered this game called Freedom Planet on YouTube a few days ago. From what I gather on TV Tropes, that game was designed specifically to resemble a PSX or Saturn game and was originally conceived as a Sonic the Hedgehog fangame, just like I intend with my planned Lucky Star fangame and Earthbound clone Day of the Beehive.
Having spent more than a week now updating my game mechanics and story outline documents and creating several new files since day before we left, I had just spent yesterday adding a multi-paragraph piece at the end of the mechanics doc about this whole 32-bit retraux gimmick, which actually starts with something unrelated and also mentions the PC-FX alongside the other two systems and even having a (parenthesized) paragraph of its own. (Yes, for a system known particularly for dating sims and visual novels, something that could still support such games as Chip-chan Kick (an elimination platformer), Super God Trooper Zeroigar (a shoot-em-up), and Kishin Douji Zenki: Vajura Fight (a beat-em-up) could supposedly have been able to support an equally action-oriented Sonic clone, to say nothing of FP as it is pretending to be a Japanese game with its title logo.)
[I]t would be cool if a multi-lingual version could come to be, with everyone speaking their own language while most aliens speak something like Latin or Esperanto. Under this, most canon characters would maintain their Japanese voices. Rin, Junko, and Chitose, being respective expies of Lei Lei, Beginner, and Hanazono no Utahime from Mon Colle Knights, would assume the Japanese voices of those characters. However, Patricia would speak Japanese in her English-dub voice, while Desiré would speak English with a Mexican accent most of the time (or full Mexican-Spanish when visiting Mexico or other Spanish-speaking countries and speaking to the locals there), as opposed to English with the default accent. Getting so many new people from different countries to translate and speak everything would be a lot of work, though. (All text would remain the local language wherever the game itself is distributed.)
Other cool ideas I have, regarding aesthetics, would include possible covers based the Playstation, Sega Saturn, or the Japan-only PC-FX* (any region of choice for the first two). While seeking to allow gameplay on emulators probably isn't practical when you could present the game as a standalone program, and allowing the game to be burnt for console-based gameplay would risk obvious legal action, one other thing that comes to mind might be USB drives designed after the systems themselves (Keiji Inafune designed some of those after Famicom and NES cartridges during his Mighty No. 9 campaign, in homage to the origin of its spiritual predecessor Mega Man). Hoaxing gameplay on an actual system might also be viable, though making it look real for any actual videos (as opposed to still images) would be complicated.
About that last paragraph...
For the record, there is one other game I know of, Freedom Planet, that actively attempted to emulate the 32-bit aesthetic. However, I know nothing about its Kickstarter campaign, and while I did find a Saturn-based mock box art through Google Images, it wasn't likely by any of the same staff behind the actual game. While its retraux gimmick comes from live music and 2D sprite-based graphics, the former of those has remained a default even after the original Redbook format for compact disks (and CDs themselves, eventually) went obsolete, and 2D graphics, for what relatively little there is in the mainstream video game market nowadays, is pretty much the norm with indie games like Angry Birds, Rosenkreuzstilette, Braid, Super Meat Boy, Grief Syndrome, Castle Crashers, and Mighty Switch Force, all of which fulfill that while being more or less themselves (probably because they're simpler to design than anything 3D). That leaves me with just working with larger pixels than up-to-date (and maybe faux load times), but those are easier for me to work with anyway when I'm basing character sprites on a 256x512-resolution SNES game, and is also exactly what I can see with this screenshot of FP (which was actually programmed for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and the Nintendo Wii U)...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Freedom_Planet_Milla_screenshot.png
...than in this of Rayman Origins for various other 7th- and 8th-gen systems.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Rayman_Origins_gameplay_screenshot.jpg
But, to begin with, this whole thing was inspired from my YouTube discovery of the Rockman Complete Works series for the Playstation, some of its songs that I checked out, and some ensuing nostalgia involving a friend of mine who used to own a PSX, which in turn reminded me of its superiority in most aspects to the SNES. It has mainly to do with pulling stuff off that the Earthbound trilogy never even attempted while maintaining 2D graphics and simple field sprites and animations. 3D graphics were already planned for the ill-fated Earthbound 64, even though Ape/Creatures went back to 2D for its revival... which showcased more complex field animations than EB but otherwise equivalent graphics and inferior audio due to GBA hardware limitations. In contrast to that game, Knuckles Chaotix and SMW2: Yoshi's Island are the go-to examples of games that blatantly showed off much earlier on what the 16-bit Sega Genesis and Super NES could do graphically with a 32-bit add-on system and a specialized graphics chip respectively while staying in 2D. Both released in 1995 (same year as Earthbound, incidentally), they foreshadowed exactly what gamers could expect soon of the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation. (Too bad Nintendo wasn't keeping 2D around for much longer after showcasing such an enhanced graphical style and special effects as the Super FX chip helped the SNES pull off.)
Covered in more detail [on August 18] (bottom entry, though the top and preceding ones are also relevant to the project itself):
http://dmxrated.livejournal.com/2015/08/18/
(*While the game is hailed as a throwback to the "Playstation/Saturn" era, rather than the 32-bit era as a whole, one need not wonder about everything else of their time. Their most prominent competitor, the Nintendo 64, as just mentioned, made little use of 2D graphics in most of its games, and all other systems involved could only compete marginally in the console market. The NEC PC-FX was just one of those, and was never released outside Japan, but its heavy use of both 2D graphics and full-motion video in most of its games (something in common with the PSX and Saturn), along with my past personal experiences having played Makeruna! Makendou Z and Chip-chan Kick in particular, is exactly why I cited that along with those two of that era's core three. And to boot, there even were a few games that it shared with the Saturn, such as Angelique Special and Return to Zork.)
From all that, I actually intend to play the game on Windows at some point. Not right now, though, because I'm already expecting to play one of those games I bought two months ago once I receive that Playstation Portable for Christmas, I would like to get started on Minami's Starbound sidefic on Monday and focus on that for the two weeks remaining until then, and I'm also planning to write chapter 6 of the main fic (that I intend to adapt into game form as Day of the Beehive upon completion) once I complete whichever game I decide on. There are also characters planned for release in the future, which should make for an even more fulfilling experience when I get around to playing it, and I'm glad nothing has been distributed yet.
While I don't intend to watch any further than the first boss fight, one thing I like in particular is the song that plays up until said fight. It sounds very similar to the Grandia II track Have Faith in Yourself, which plays in Raul Hills and the Great Rift, and the respective setting is quite similar to Earthbound's Lost Underworld and Mother 3's Argilla Pass*. I sure wish there I could imagine it actually fitting somewhere within DotB, but while it could have worked well enough in Mother 3 due to a multi-frame running animation for each playable character, that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid here, and even if the party were to "rubberband", if you will, simply speeding up everyone's walking animations might still look awkward in tandem with it.
Here's the song in its canonical, super-fast-paced context, and honestly try to imagine it playing while Ness and co. either walk at such a slow pace as they do or move faster but still with a two-frame moving animation:
https://youtu.be/fksTJ_k1wLs?t=1m18s
(*What you can hear on Drago Plateau is understandable, especially considering Flint's situation when you go there much earlier on, but the song that plays here should remain in the abandoned Tazmily Village. It's not like anyone lived in Argilla to begin with (besides Ionia, at least), or in Sunshine Forest for that matter.)
In any case, whenever the time comes, I'll be sure to show this entry and any spritesheets I'll have complete to creator Stephen DiDuro and see if he's interested in my game. Ditto for Earthbound creator Shigesato Itoi, Lucky Star creator Kagami Yoshimizu, and those behind Mother 4, if they're all anywhere to be reached. (The presence of an equally monstrous main antagonist to Lord Arktivus Brevon, being yet one more thing in common, should also help.)
Having spent more than a week now updating my game mechanics and story outline documents and creating several new files since day before we left, I had just spent yesterday adding a multi-paragraph piece at the end of the mechanics doc about this whole 32-bit retraux gimmick, which actually starts with something unrelated and also mentions the PC-FX alongside the other two systems and even having a (parenthesized) paragraph of its own. (Yes, for a system known particularly for dating sims and visual novels, something that could still support such games as Chip-chan Kick (an elimination platformer), Super God Trooper Zeroigar (a shoot-em-up), and Kishin Douji Zenki: Vajura Fight (a beat-em-up) could supposedly have been able to support an equally action-oriented Sonic clone, to say nothing of FP as it is pretending to be a Japanese game with its title logo.)
[I]t would be cool if a multi-lingual version could come to be, with everyone speaking their own language while most aliens speak something like Latin or Esperanto. Under this, most canon characters would maintain their Japanese voices. Rin, Junko, and Chitose, being respective expies of Lei Lei, Beginner, and Hanazono no Utahime from Mon Colle Knights, would assume the Japanese voices of those characters. However, Patricia would speak Japanese in her English-dub voice, while Desiré would speak English with a Mexican accent most of the time (or full Mexican-Spanish when visiting Mexico or other Spanish-speaking countries and speaking to the locals there), as opposed to English with the default accent. Getting so many new people from different countries to translate and speak everything would be a lot of work, though. (All text would remain the local language wherever the game itself is distributed.)
Other cool ideas I have, regarding aesthetics, would include possible covers based the Playstation, Sega Saturn, or the Japan-only PC-FX* (any region of choice for the first two). While seeking to allow gameplay on emulators probably isn't practical when you could present the game as a standalone program, and allowing the game to be burnt for console-based gameplay would risk obvious legal action, one other thing that comes to mind might be USB drives designed after the systems themselves (Keiji Inafune designed some of those after Famicom and NES cartridges during his Mighty No. 9 campaign, in homage to the origin of its spiritual predecessor Mega Man). Hoaxing gameplay on an actual system might also be viable, though making it look real for any actual videos (as opposed to still images) would be complicated.
About that last paragraph...
For the record, there is one other game I know of, Freedom Planet, that actively attempted to emulate the 32-bit aesthetic. However, I know nothing about its Kickstarter campaign, and while I did find a Saturn-based mock box art through Google Images, it wasn't likely by any of the same staff behind the actual game. While its retraux gimmick comes from live music and 2D sprite-based graphics, the former of those has remained a default even after the original Redbook format for compact disks (and CDs themselves, eventually) went obsolete, and 2D graphics, for what relatively little there is in the mainstream video game market nowadays, is pretty much the norm with indie games like Angry Birds, Rosenkreuzstilette, Braid, Super Meat Boy, Grief Syndrome, Castle Crashers, and Mighty Switch Force, all of which fulfill that while being more or less themselves (probably because they're simpler to design than anything 3D). That leaves me with just working with larger pixels than up-to-date (and maybe faux load times), but those are easier for me to work with anyway when I'm basing character sprites on a 256x512-resolution SNES game, and is also exactly what I can see with this screenshot of FP (which was actually programmed for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and the Nintendo Wii U)...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Freedom_Planet_Milla_screenshot.png
...than in this of Rayman Origins for various other 7th- and 8th-gen systems.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Rayman_Origins_gameplay_screenshot.jpg
But, to begin with, this whole thing was inspired from my YouTube discovery of the Rockman Complete Works series for the Playstation, some of its songs that I checked out, and some ensuing nostalgia involving a friend of mine who used to own a PSX, which in turn reminded me of its superiority in most aspects to the SNES. It has mainly to do with pulling stuff off that the Earthbound trilogy never even attempted while maintaining 2D graphics and simple field sprites and animations. 3D graphics were already planned for the ill-fated Earthbound 64, even though Ape/Creatures went back to 2D for its revival... which showcased more complex field animations than EB but otherwise equivalent graphics and inferior audio due to GBA hardware limitations. In contrast to that game, Knuckles Chaotix and SMW2: Yoshi's Island are the go-to examples of games that blatantly showed off much earlier on what the 16-bit Sega Genesis and Super NES could do graphically with a 32-bit add-on system and a specialized graphics chip respectively while staying in 2D. Both released in 1995 (same year as Earthbound, incidentally), they foreshadowed exactly what gamers could expect soon of the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation. (Too bad Nintendo wasn't keeping 2D around for much longer after showcasing such an enhanced graphical style and special effects as the Super FX chip helped the SNES pull off.)
Covered in more detail [on August 18] (bottom entry, though the top and preceding ones are also relevant to the project itself):
http://dmxrated.livejournal.com/2015/08/18/
(*While the game is hailed as a throwback to the "Playstation/Saturn" era, rather than the 32-bit era as a whole, one need not wonder about everything else of their time. Their most prominent competitor, the Nintendo 64, as just mentioned, made little use of 2D graphics in most of its games, and all other systems involved could only compete marginally in the console market. The NEC PC-FX was just one of those, and was never released outside Japan, but its heavy use of both 2D graphics and full-motion video in most of its games (something in common with the PSX and Saturn), along with my past personal experiences having played Makeruna! Makendou Z and Chip-chan Kick in particular, is exactly why I cited that along with those two of that era's core three. And to boot, there even were a few games that it shared with the Saturn, such as Angelique Special and Return to Zork.)
From all that, I actually intend to play the game on Windows at some point. Not right now, though, because I'm already expecting to play one of those games I bought two months ago once I receive that Playstation Portable for Christmas, I would like to get started on Minami's Starbound sidefic on Monday and focus on that for the two weeks remaining until then, and I'm also planning to write chapter 6 of the main fic (that I intend to adapt into game form as Day of the Beehive upon completion) once I complete whichever game I decide on. There are also characters planned for release in the future, which should make for an even more fulfilling experience when I get around to playing it, and I'm glad nothing has been distributed yet.
While I don't intend to watch any further than the first boss fight, one thing I like in particular is the song that plays up until said fight. It sounds very similar to the Grandia II track Have Faith in Yourself, which plays in Raul Hills and the Great Rift, and the respective setting is quite similar to Earthbound's Lost Underworld and Mother 3's Argilla Pass*. I sure wish there I could imagine it actually fitting somewhere within DotB, but while it could have worked well enough in Mother 3 due to a multi-frame running animation for each playable character, that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid here, and even if the party were to "rubberband", if you will, simply speeding up everyone's walking animations might still look awkward in tandem with it.
Here's the song in its canonical, super-fast-paced context, and honestly try to imagine it playing while Ness and co. either walk at such a slow pace as they do or move faster but still with a two-frame moving animation:
https://youtu.be/fksTJ_k1wLs?t=1m18s
(*What you can hear on Drago Plateau is understandable, especially considering Flint's situation when you go there much earlier on, but the song that plays here should remain in the abandoned Tazmily Village. It's not like anyone lived in Argilla to begin with (besides Ionia, at least), or in Sunshine Forest for that matter.)
In any case, whenever the time comes, I'll be sure to show this entry and any spritesheets I'll have complete to creator Stephen DiDuro and see if he's interested in my game. Ditto for Earthbound creator Shigesato Itoi, Lucky Star creator Kagami Yoshimizu, and those behind Mother 4, if they're all anywhere to be reached. (The presence of an equally monstrous main antagonist to Lord Arktivus Brevon, being yet one more thing in common, should also help.)
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Date: 2015-12-12 10:59 pm (UTC)