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I found a version of Frogger I've never seen at the flea market

October 21, 2013, 12:38 pm
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I often go to the local flea market in search of retro videogames, as many of you probably do. Of course, living in the swamps of south Texas you'd be surprised to know that I rarely find anything interesting!

However, this weekend I dropped by and not only found an NES racing game I'd been looking for (Al Unser Jr's Turbo Racing) and a $2 copy of El Viento for Genesis (of all things), I picked up the one of the stranger gaming related things I've seen there.


 And it was only 50 cents! Judging by that $1.98 Kmart sticker I got a hell of a deal.


And it's complete too! Wasn't even expecting that--I figured 50 cents was worth it just for the box.


Speaking of the box, it raises the question: What exactly are the guidelines for official Frogger art? I mean, that's a fairly realistic frog currently pissing itself up there. Here's the original arcade art:

AKA my favorite arcade art ever
But to be fair, there are more renditions (and releases) of Frogger than there are stars in the sky. At least the puzzle doesn't feature the character design they eventually settled on.


Looks like a Garanimal.
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New Leaf inspired Famicom cart: Suniekos Scramble

October 28, 2013, 2:41 am
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Hot on the heels of SWEATPANTS FOR EVERYONE is my second "Your Mayor Here" Animal Crossing: New Leaf inspired Famicom cartridge! This one was a giveaway prize for someone on Tumblr. Her favorite animal is Punchy and she asked that I work her town's name "Suniekos" into it somewhere, so I came up with a track-and-field style racing game where you have to beat the other villagers to the town's new snack bar.
 

 I made some New Leaf inspired stationery that I unfortunately didn't take any good photos of...maybe another time. I'd have liked to have shown the mayor's face on the cartridge, but I asked for a screenshot of her favorite outfit so scary jester mask it is!


Bonus Famicom action shot. Let's see what's being played on the TV shall we?


I guess Punchy ran out of Stamina or something? I'm testing the waters on Tumblr to see if anyone would be interested in commissioning me for one of these--wish me luck.
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Flower Crown (1991, Famicom)

October 29, 2013, 9:19 pm
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Flower Crown, developed in 1991 by Ribbon Black.


A more horror themed semi-sequel to I’m Afraid of the Sun. Psychological graphic adventure in the spirit of Uninvited, Ripple Island, Shadowgate etc. The player takes the role of a young woman who gradually withdraws from the real world until she becomes trapped in a dream world she cannot awaken from.


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Steven Universe: Crystal Gems series (Famicom)

November 26, 2013, 12:38 am
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I’ll admit I was stubborn about watching Steven Universe at first because I’m a dick when it comes to new things, but it won me over big time. Excellent music, beautiful art direction and character designs, and the characterizations themselves really surprised me! If we can get more female showrunners it’ll be interesting to see what cartoons are like in the future.


AMETHYST: ENDLESS COMBO MELEE
"Never stop attacking!!"
Use Amethyst's crystal Whip to battle a seemingly endless wave of enemies in this blindingly fast sidescrolling brawler. Keep your multiplier up by whipping em quickly. Attack, attack and attack forever!


GARNET: METEOR SMASHER
"End it in one punch!"
How hard can you hit in this arcade style collection of minigames? Collect powerups to boost your gem Gauntlets and blow them all away in one shot!


PEARL: GLITTERING RESCUE
"No one can do it all alone!"
Use Pearl’s gem spear to defend Steven as he barrels carelessly through 8 perilous worlds! Can you handle the pressure of protecting a boy with no concept of self-preservation?



More photos at my Tumblr.

Hey, I've now got more posts on this blog than I did on my old blog before I moved over here. About 35,000 less pageviews than that one, but we'll get there.
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Pixel Junk

December 2, 2013, 10:45 am
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Just a dump of some animation/pixel art stuff you may have not seen if you don't follow my tumblr.















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Flash & Batman (Famicom, bootleg)

December 3, 2013, 4:06 am
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Well...Flash & Batman. I found this at the local flea market (and overpaid too; most single-game bootlegs are kind of value-less and worth only what you wanna pay for em) but decided it was finally time to get some pirate Famicom carts just for laughs. I love Batman's face on the label there--his "OH SHIT" look really inspires confidence. Flash on the other hand looks absolutely sinister.


So, what were you thinking Flash & Batman would be? Were you expecting a rom hack of Monster In My Pocket? Neither was I. As you can see, these are emulator screenshots, so the cartridge unfortunately isn't some undiscovered bootleg gem. I decided to play as Flash (AKA Frankenstein's monster in the original game).
 

 I'm actually surprised they changed the character sprites for the intro cutscene. It isn't explained where Batman & Flash got that giant TV though.


 Stage 1: Batman      In My House

 .....





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Mario and Breakfast

December 4, 2013, 6:00 am
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Just having some fun. I took a photo of the empty frame and overlaid the Mario sprites in photoshop to make a gif. It's too bad the camera didn't pick up the steam from the coffee mug!
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I've finally made my own holiday cards

December 9, 2013, 5:24 am
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It's Beau from Animal Crossing: New Leaf! I've yet to get him in my own town, but he's one of my girlfriend's "lifers"; no moving out under any circumstances, haha. Kind of like how Jay was for me. And then the son of a bitch moved out behind my back.


Now all I need are friends to send them to! If nothing else, it makes a cute fanart. Anyone else out there make their own cards? It would be a fun project for a bunch of artists to have an exchange.

If I had thought of it earlier, maybe I could've set something up on Tumblr...
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The Elusive Mr. Splash

December 11, 2013, 6:32 am
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Mr. Splash!Developed by Hiroshi Inukai aka Polygon (2007, Famicom)

I finally made a reproduction cart of the elusive homebrew game Mr. Splash! I love it. Rather than using the official art (which I couldn't find a good copy of) I designed my own label, going for a Game and Watch aesthetic. What do you think?



Mr. Splash is a 2-player only competition game created for a project called Game Generation X - Soul of 8-bit. However, the developer Polygon didn't seem to want the game to be widespread--those who preordered the Game Generation X DVD box set got the materials to solder their own Mr. Splash Famicom cart, and these were apparently limited to 101 pieces.


Some time later a run of 50 was produced for the NES in France, but a ROM of the game was impossible to find until 2011. Even now there don't seem to be a ton of them floating around but you can find it easily enough if you search.

So let's talk about the game! It's sort of like hockey, but in a swimming pool. Your Mr. Splash must pick up rocks that spawn along the sides of the arena and hurl them into the water. The waves you make with your rock will move the floating balls in the water toward your opponent's goal area.

Sometimes the game mixes up the arena with patches of land that the balls will roll over

What really impresses me about the game is the use of physics when it comes to how you move the floating balls. Chuck a rock right into the center of the ball and watch it go deep underwater and spring straight up; however, hit the ball off center and you can steer it toward the goal. Depending on how long you hold the throw button down, Mr. Splash will power up and throw it harder, altering the ball's trajectory in a variety of ways.

 

You don't have to hit the ball at all, though! Plunk your stone down near a ball and the motion of the water will nudge it instead of launching it. Nudging a ball into your opponent's goal will earn you one point while launching it into the proper area will net you 3 points. A long shot can get you up to 6 points! It's a simple game, but the amount of work put into the play mechanics is impeccable. Turn the number of onscreen balls up to 5 and enjoy the chaos!
 
There are also many versions of the game, apparently with edited arenas. The screenshots shown above are from the emulated "Columbia Version", though my cartridge is the vanilla Mr. Splash.
I got most of my info on the history of Mr. Splash from this article at RetroCollect. Give it a look if you wanna know more.


 

 Has anyone played Mr. Splash yet? What did you think about this homebrew gem?
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Here's to 2014!

December 31, 2013, 9:36 pm
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Happy New Year from Jay and Julian (Animal Crossing New Leaf)! I haven't been able to do anything productive since my Mr. Splash post, but I wanted to do up something quick before the year ends.

This year was okay. I made some cool blogger friends, including a few people I had been following/reading for a long time! On the art front I didn't accomplish anything approaching the success of my Adventure Time famicom cartridge project, but that's okay--I had a lot of fun and success with comics, particularly "This Week In Town", my Animal Crossing series. This year I hope to make a lot more comics, organize a zine, get way better at illustration and pixel art, and lose weight/get better at running. I'll start with cleaning the bathroom...later.

Good luck to everyone in 2014.

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Constellation, pg. 1 (animated pixel art comic)

February 21, 2014, 1:07 am
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Hi! Long time no see. After the year began, I lost all motivation to make new stuff for a long time. However, I am now making new stuff again.

Here's a comic done entirely in pixel art--I thought to myself, "I want to draw a story, but how can I make it 10 times more difficult and tedious for myself?" Here's page 1.



The comic is about Exie, a "gem witch" that I'm using in some other projects that I'll talk about here later. Mostly this comic is a way to practice with pixel art, varying image resolution (either having a larger canvas to work with such as the last frame here, or a very small work area like the first frame) and especially a way to pack in some fun video game references/sprite designs. Hope you like; the next page will be up in a few days!
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Nebulous Bee (1981, arcade) branding project

February 24, 2014, 12:54 am
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Let's play Nebulous Bee! What, you've never played Nebulous Bee? Have you played Galaga?


Then you've played Nebulous Bee.

Fellow blogger VGJUNK brought the SHAMELESS Galaga bootleg to my attention on Twitter sometime last year--its wonderfully odd name captured my imagination so much that I was sad to see there was no official logo for it. I got a kick out of the idea of putting more effort into Nebulous Bee than the distributors of the game did, so I went ahead and made one.


I'm also a sucker for yellow/black color schemes and hexagon motifs. After the logo was finished I wanted to do it one better and make some "official art" for the game.


I think it'd work well rearranged into a marquee illustration. Lastly, I took the illustration and made a horrible cheesy 80s/90s arcade flyer for the game:


Blast off and fight the evils!
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Constellation, page 2

February 24, 2014, 9:39 am
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Exie continues deeper into the ground, coming across a cozy looking house and a lizard man who doesn't want to be bothered.
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Constellation, page 3

February 26, 2014, 6:05 am
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Who's house was it? Why was the treasure chest trapped? What is that lizardman reading? None of these questions will be answered.
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Constellation, page 4

March 1, 2014, 2:17 pm
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It's a star, doofus! I've been wanting to explode someone
Megaman style since I first started the comic.
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Constellation, page 5

March 4, 2014, 3:52 pm
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This area probably came from all the King's Field / Shadow Tower I've been playing lately. I wanted to have a sort of inhospitable area that looks like it was once inhabited.

I'm having fun with the different wavy effects for the poison fog! I also kind of love the idea of Poison status giving you a runny nose. Exie needs to get out of there soon though, she's already exploded once.
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Constellation, page 6

March 7, 2014, 5:26 pm
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Just pretend she took out all the ghosts--I originally had them all in the last panel but it was too busy.

Now that the gem clasp is gone how will she blow everyone up? And what will keep her red shawl on?? IT WAS TYING THE WHOLE OUTFIT TOGETHER
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Constellation, page 7

March 9, 2014, 1:49 pm
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Exie you have gotta get out of the poison dungeon, it's making you potato-headed!

There are more words in this page than the rest of the comic combined.
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A look at Exie's evolution in sprite form (Witch)

April 18, 2014, 5:31 pm
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It's Exie!

So you may or may not know that I’m working on graphics for a simple shootemup called Witch, featuring the character from my pixel art comic, Constellation. Having never done graphics for a game that would have to actually be playable, I’ve gone through several redesigns of the player character’s sprite.

LET’S TAKE A LOOK!! (process chat and lots of pixel art behind the cut)




First design; it's pretty assy. I was going for a much lower-res look at first, but found that it made things difficult when it came to getting across the amount of character I wanted to. Some folks have managed a lot more with a lot less resolution, but I’m still really green when it comes to pixel art so I decided a higher-res approach was the way to go. Also the colors are totally wack and the whole thing kind of looks like shit so

WHOA THERE GUY! I doubled the resolution of the the graphics starting here, and ended up with a much larger sprite as a result. Way too large, actually. However, there was lots more detail and an actual facial expression, plus I liked the extra volume I was able to achieve with the highlighting/shading, making Exie's pose look nicer. The actual art is very rough, though—it was a matter of having more space to play with than I could actually handle.

Just a small improvement to the dress and color. Man, the faces on these two are busted.

This is much better. I ditched the side-saddle pose for something a little more dynamic and traditional—in trying to keep the character’s form factor as compact as possible I didn’t lengthen the broom as much as I should’ve, making it look pretty weird. The hair isn’t as much a mess and her face is much cuter, but…that chin…

Now we're getting somewhere! It’s a full head shorter than the previous one while still having some nice detail. The glowing outline will help to make the character stand out against a busy background or when surrounded by bullets. Plus it’s cute as a button and will play better off of the enemy sprites; previous Exies were kind of dwarfing the poor guys. The pose isn't quite as active in some ways (she isn't leaning forward as much), but I think the forward facing legs make it look more zippy and maneuverable on screen.


Finally, here’s a comparison of their sizes. I’m glad I kept refining it, since you’ll be seeing her more than anything else in the game!
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Best Burger

April 22, 2014, 1:35 am
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Best Burger! It’s a simple quick-reflexes cooking game where you press the proper combination of keystrokes to fill the customer’s order.


As the difficulty rises, word recognition turns to pattern recognition when you have deal with customers that speak in hieroglyphics (Egyptian mummy level) and alien pictograms (outer space level).


Not really. These are just mockups I made for a game idea I thought up. Honestly it's pretty much a ripoff of the lunch minigame from The Misadventures of Tron Bonne but I wasn't thinking of that when I had the idea! I had a lot of fun with the extra-low-res graphics. Who knows, maybe when we're done with Witch my brother can help me turn this into an actual project.
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