Pastel Horrors

Alien Syndrome is an Arcade game born in 1987. It's a top-down run and gun game based on the Alien movie. The game itself isn't much to hang in the Yule-tree, but it does have one thing going for it. The art style clashes with the scary alien theme in a humorous way. All the aliens are drawn with happy pastel colors and don't look very scary at all. Unfortunately all the sequels and ports have completely ignored this defining aspect of the game and went for a more serious gritty look instead. What a pity.

The gameplay consists of searching for comrades (other humans) who have been stranded on various space ships. Each spaceship is like a little maze, and you have to find a number of comrades and reach the exit. When you pick up a comrade (by touching) they will just disappear. Maybe they're beamed off the ship. They're also immune to the mean aliens while the player is not. The player can not leave the ship until a number of comrades have been saved. There's a time limit which stresses the player to move along. The aliens just teleport in, and although only a certain number of them can appear on screen at once, there's no shortage of supply.

Certainly, the game is not meant to be realistic. The use of abstractions can be handy when trying to deliver an arcade experience. However when devising an simplified rules of something that is realistic, it's easy to start accumulating exception rules to patch things up. In the case of Alien Syndrome you have infinitely respawning aliens, and the player has infinite ammo. This creates a scoring problem. The player could just stand and accumulate easy points all day (and hog the arcade machine). To patch this problem a timer was introduced (a self-destruct, time bomb or whatever).

Robotron aside, I don't really care for highscores, and a timer not only stresses me, it kills immersion too. It's like something outside of the game is counting and checking up on me. It's a bit like not being able to put on high level boots in an RPG because I'm low level and using the boots too early would break the (poorly devised) game.

If Alien Syndrome had been for a modern PC, a lot of fun stuff could be made. Finite ammo, health and pickups could keep the player moving about looking for loot. If the alien reproduction is integrated into the gameplay then various tactical situations could emerge, such as destroying the queen, food supplies, blocking off paths, etc. The larvae could develop into different things depending on what food they find. Maybe the aliens use smell trails like ants do, and the player could manipulate those. The Comrades could barricade themselves in, engaging in firefights with the aliens, holding until the player arrives. The missions could vary in nature and the solutions could be improvised.

Yeah, well, enough feature creep and brain farts for today. I might post some other stuff soon...

Sontaran

I wanted to see what a Sontaran would look like in the exo-muscle system I came up with for my Cylon redesign a few years ago (which I suspect the Crysis guys drew inspiration from). Anyways, I thought the stripy nature of it would fit the Sontarans.



I wonder if the upcoming DrWho episode will have any Rutans since they're the main antagonist of the Sontarans.

Also, with the Dalek out of the picture (more or less), what are the Movellans up to?

The Tower of Druaga

Recently there have been some games which makes a point to be really, really hard on purpose. I wanna be the guy and Syobon are just some examples. I'm not sure if any of these games come close to The Tower of Druaga though.

The game was released by Namco in 1984 for arcade and was soon ported to a bunch of other platforms. You play as a knight who traverse a 60 floor tower while stabbing enemies and finding hidden treasures. Treasure chests will only appear if you do certain rather obscure things, different for each floor. We're not talking bomb the crack in the wall like in Zelda 3 here. You won't get any hints of what to do. Maybe you need to stand on that tile over there, draw your sword, and count to ten, or kill a red enemy after you've killed a blue, or use a certain item. Making matters worse, many of the treasures are mandatory to complete the game, and you won't really find out until you reach the end. Making matters even worse, you can easily lose treasures, and there's also evil treasures which may cripple you permanently. Also, you can get 'Zapped' back from the last levels to the beginning.

Mind, this game was released before the internet and before 'save states'. It very much relied on several people collaborating and chatting among themselves, because I can't see how one person could beat this game alone.

Wait, why am I talking about this game? Well, it's interesting because it seems to be some kind of Proto-Zelda. Many of the enemies are the same, and the hero has the sword-shield mechanic as well as grid aligned movement. I think some of the music is similar too. Playing Zelda right after Druaga really does feel like you've just made a 'next-gen' jump. Zelda has aged a lot less than Druaga and is still highly playable.


Trivia:

• There's a fun Druaga anime which the authors have released on YouTube and a bunch of other video sites.
• Ugetsu Hakua did the character design for the anime. It's an artist I've been keeping an eye on for quite a while, although his site haven't had much on it in recent years. Anyways, the knight designs are really cool.
• A lot of people who make brief contact with The Tower of Druaga complain that the hero is slow... this because they did not find the speed boots on floor 2. Without them the hero will have to crawl through the game.

Also, new project:

Tower of Kana Edutainment

Star Control

Allright, here's a little Star Control fan-art page I've compiled from various posts here and there. It's not polished or finished, but there's some stuff for you to look at at least.

Star Control Project Revisited

Yeah, I have another server. I registered a firm name, Android Arts ANJ. Had to tack on ANJ on the end, which kinda sucks. In Sweden we can't have - crap, I can't even translate the word - 'nurture-activity-descriptive' names for firms. Electronic Arts wouldn't be allowed for example, not under the present rules anyways. I guess this is also why we see a lot of stupid Web2.0 names like Quambo Jambax Liveblogzap.

I'm working on a logo of some sort.

Bionic Commando Roughs

Just playing around here with some quick rough concepts. Bit of a sci-fi take on the details, but the general shape and color placements are (with exceptions) somewhat close.

Star Control

It is time to revise my Star Control stuff again. The older stuff I had made was needlessly unfaithful. With enough revisions it's possible to get a redesign close to the source without sacrificing much likeness.

In the case of the Thraddash, the communications image contradicted the smaller melee pilot image. There's also dialog information and music to consider when shaping a redesign. I don't care for the voices, so the music works as a voice for me when I read the dialog.

The Thraddash are brutes, like an anthropomorphic rhino/boar/hippo. I suspect they were based on the G'nunk from Starflight since they respect combat prowess. The Melnorme has the following to say about the Thraddash:

"To make a Thraddash your friend, kill him -- but then of course, he's dead so what's the point?"

At first I wanted to combine some brute looking animal with both the Comm and melee image to make something new, but then someone suggested that the melee image is actually a pilot or combat suit of some kind. I think this solution was much better. Doing an in-between design is like... having people in antarctic and egypt dress the same based on the average temperature... or like democracy.

It seems my site died btw. I got another server I can use though, so we'll see what happens.

Source:



Redesign progress:

Megaman

I never liked the covers of the Megaman games, so I made an attempt myself. I think it failed at the composition stage and it totally lacks an idea. It started out as a cover idea which looked interesting as a thumbnail, but as I worked on it I realized more and more that it didn't work. Maybe I approached it wrong too. Realizing that, I turned it into a white background pinup instead. Now it does nothing more than present a few drawings without any finesse.

Head-scale feels a bit on the fence. It's not like the sprite (2 heads) and not comic scale (5-7 heads) either. I think mine is 2.8 heads or something. On the sprite, his head is between his shoulders, so I lose similarity points there too.

I don't like the cone-feet which became so pronounced in the SNES games, so I put the masses more towards the center of the legs. Not sure how that worked out though. I do like how MMZ tackled the legs and costume designs. Actually I think he has cone-like limbs in a few of the intro/equip screens from the NES games too, but in MM2 he mostly look tubby/trunky.

Megaman's face is actually close to white in the first game. This was because they used a bright yellow skin tone, and large white eyes. I think this works better with the idea that he's a robot. Borg, and all that. They actually changed his skintone to flesh in MM3. In MM4 we learn that Rock was a household robot which was converted into a fighting robot. He does have a flesh colored face in the MM2 equip screens though.

Megaman has always been a silent lethal assassin to me. He got in there and did the job without bla bla bla teen angst. His mouth is just a neutral line most of the time, and the first games didn't really have any lines/speech for him.

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So, where to go? Here's a few things I wanna do. A 'true to the game' MM1 cover, with the same amount of fun as the SMB1 EU cover. These are the original Megaman covers (they're missing the Famicon one which was kind of fun).

Maybe it would also be neat to make some illustrations like the Kid Icarus instruction booklet had. Also, I wanna continue my Mega... uh, -maiden(?) project which is like 6-7 heads, and that would require some larger enemies and higher detail resolution, which could be a fun elaboration.

The cuter 'Super Deformed' scales are fun too in a way, but (at least when it comes to robots) I tend to lose interest when there are no details to explore or they are exhausted too quickly by the eye. With too much simplification and focus on narration and gesture, designs can be a bit like... a 4 note jingle; Catchy and easy to get, but not quite satisfying on an intellectual level.