Mega Man 9: Official Thread

[cigsthecat]

BTW just to clarify there was never any animosity here for Frog and I respect him as well. We just have some serious fundamental disagreements on design. Also I was never claiming that all sprites should have black outlines, even though I could point out some that look great (beyond 8bit). Obviously SF3 is an amazing piece of work.

I'm glad this fight came up because I've been having a great time lately studying MM sprites. Hopefully I'm learning something I'll be able to translate into my work.

...I kind of feel like starting another brawl over MM7 and 8 but I'm going to restrain myself.

Anyway I'll be excited to see the MM9 bosses and large enemies. I wonder if they can still find anyone to do that stuff properly anymore.

[Daitokuji]

Review of Megaman 1 and 3 for pc lol

[rama]

Anyway I'll be excited to see the MM9 bosses and large enemies. I wonder if they can still find anyone to do that stuff properly anymore.

what do you mean by properly? is replicating the look of an 8 bit sprite hard to do?

[Frogacuda]

Yeah, there are 16 bit sprites with solid black outlines that I'd put in the top tier but they're very rare. Metal Slug actually uses a lot of black outlines (though not 100%, there are other dark shades in there if you look closely), but it also uses an incredibly layered shading technique that I can't even begin to imitate, and it's anything but simple. A lot of quality European 16-bit sprites use no outlines at all.

There isn't a right way or a wrong way and I shouldn't have acted like there was, but there is good and bad, and I'd put much off MM7's work in the "bad" pile because the technique doesn't come off to me as very thoughtful or confident. There isn't much apparent technique. Just a line art and then jam as many shades in as will fit and that's it.

what do you mean by properly? is replicating the look of an 8 bit sprite hard to do?

I'm sure some would argue with me, but the smaller a sprite is and the lower the palette, the easier it is to imitate. A lot of times game programmers and designers doubled up as sprite artists back then because it was so easy to do.

But large enemies like cigs is talking about are obviously harder. Though considering Mega Man's original sprite artist is still involved with this project I don't see the cause for concern.

[A Robot Bit Me]

There's no reason why an advanced robot from 200X can't fire in eight directions.

Sentences like these remind me that videogames will never be art.

[cigsthecat]

what do you mean by properly? is replicating the look of an 8 bit sprite hard to do?

It's not as easy as it looks. And most of the original MM bosses and enemies have really cool designs. As long as they know what made the original sprites so great, it should look wonderful. But now that I know Inafune is doing it I'm even more interested.

Though considering Mega Man's original sprite artist is still involved with this project I don't see the cause for concern.

Didn't know that, that's pretty amazing. Although it is 20 years later, we'll see if he's still got it.

Sentences like these remind me that videogames will never be art.

This post reminds me why you're an idiot.

[Frogacuda]

Didn't know that, that's pretty amazing. Although it is 20 years later, we'll see if he's still got it.

Well he (Keiji Inafune) is pretty much considered the father of mega man and has been involved with most of the games outside of the X series. A lot of people just don't realize he was the sprite artist for like all the MM games before 8. Sometimes the programmers are the ones in creative control, but in MM's case it's always been him. He's also the character designer, so yeah.

[rama]

did they do a boss character design contest for this one? i believe they'd even been keeping that up through the battle network series for the bosses that weren't redesigned from the old series. the contest is going on for starforce 3 so i guess it's still a regular thing.

[bVork]

There's no reason why an advanced robot from 200X can't fire in eight directions.

[crithit5000]

First footage. I wonder how long it took for Capcom to jumpstart the old machine that used to crap out new NES Megaman games every six months.