Zelda 2 roughs

I'm mostly doing pencil and Photoshop roughs these days. The wrists get a little better each week, overall, but there are ups and downs because I insist on trying to work or surf.

Here's a few Zelda 2 redesigns that I've been noodling on the last few days. I'm not sure what to think of the game. As a kid I thought it was a bit strange, but I played it anyways. It felt like a chore to play through, because it was more linear, but the combat was sometimes enjoyable.

A top down game like Zelda 1 has a symmetry to the up-down and left-right directions, but in a sidescroller you have gravity linked to up-down so combat and navigation is quite different. The Darknuts... sorry, Ironknuckles were both fun and frustrating to fight.

Anyways, I decided to draw some Zelda 2 creatures because I hadn't done that in years. A lot of the monsters are sort of based on the ones in Zelda 1, and since I like that game more, I used the designs from it where possible. The Zelda games change the story, style and monster designs a lot in every game (and the manuals have their own style too), so I decided to just use the sprites from the original games as a base.

The story never sat well with me, so I decided to rewrite it. Hyrule almost has a garden-like terrain in the first game, and there are these strange rocks and statues standing around in formations. The dungeons feel technological and otherworldly with their smooth clean walls, though that was changed in BS Zelda and later games. I hadn't heard of Lovecraft in the 80's, but that's sort of the feel that I got. What strange ancient race had built the dungeons, and perhaps even the overworld? The Great Race of Yith? The Elder things? The... Like-Likes (whom have since then regressed)? Something I'd like to play around with.

As for the gameplay, I always wanted to make an isometric "topdown" version of Zelda 1, but since this is a Zelda 2 project, It'd have to be a sidescroller with a topdown worldmap. I wonder how that would play if combined with Roguelike? It's sort of unusual to see, and I like unusual.

So, a random world map, with palaces/dungeons, towns and NPCs who generate quests (e.g. a fetch quest NPC would create a cave/dungeon on the world map and toss a kidnapped kid into it). The dungeons should probably be generated from finished rooms though, to ensure enemy placement is fun and suitably challenging.

The weapons, armour, spells and items could be random, and before you drink that potion, you might want to identify it...

And then there's permadeath.

Concepts:
Sheet 1
Sheet 2

Starflight

I've been making some progress on my Starflight project. I had some old art and text material which I copy-pasted together and made a page out of. It is haphazard and not as finished as my other unfinished stuff.

Starflight project page

To the right: I'm dabbling with programming again (BlitzMax). I'm doing a so called "Immediate Mode GUI". The technique has both advantages and drawbacks, but overall I like it. Coming up with the crew was the most fun part of Starflight, and I couldn't resist feature creeping it. Each crew person actually has the same stats and stuff as in the original game, but I'm just showing a short form here to fit the entire crew roster on one page. The officers (red) gets a bonus from having a well versed captain and good subordinates. The 'Grey Shirts' will die first on missions, and can be used as meat shields. Yeah, that might sound familiar.

Oh yes, I almost forgot, I've also updated the Master of Orion 1 project.

Megaman Legends

It may be no big surprise that I prefer the first two NES Megaman games over the later incarnations. However, there is another game in the franchise which I'm fond of: Megaman Legends. This game was so unlike the original Megaman that I could accept it for what it was. In fact, I bought all three MML games for the PS1 back when they came out, and I think I like the first one the best... (surprise).

Megaman Legends Project

4X

Master of Orion 1 is a nice little game which I never had the chance to play until recently. I started on a redesign project a while ago, but decided to go my own way halfway in. I sketched up my own aliens and game mechanics to avoid infringement.

I got distracted as usual and went off to work on something else, so I'm not sure in which state I left this.

MoO1 / Space Conquest

Xexyz / 亀の恩返し ウラシマ伝説

The X-Com genre is terribly neglected, is it not? I was working on this Xexyz (a side view jump and shoot game) redesign project when I totally derailed and turned it into a topdown X-Com game instead. My universe design approach is getting kind of worn. I'm always using the "giant spacewar - defend a base" setup. So, yeah, well, here's another game which will never see the light of day. I'm not sure who sits on the Xexyz licence. It's probably Hudson Soft or Atlus.

Turtle game (Edit: Made another 'screenshot'.)

Gradius!

Gradius redesign project, It's a bit fragmentary at the moment, because I rushed it. It would be cool to do a painted 2D version, but a lot of work covering all the angles * animation of stuff. There's a remake called Gradius Rebirth coming soon, but so far I think Treasure's version looks the most interesting.

Second iteration

I gave the Bionic Commando redesigns another shot. These new ones are more true to the source sprites (ref). The placement of colors and masses is important for achieving likeness, but I took the liberty of varying the colors a bit to liven things up. I kept the extra colors close to the main colors, e.g., purple and brown, skin tone and white, and sky blue and light gray.

There's a little specular light pixel on the boots of the sprite characters, but I made it into a gray detail instead. If my redesigns had gloss boots and were rendered in a game engine then the specular might move around or disappear, thus reducing likeness. I'm trying to think of the sprites in a nonfigurative way and more like a collection of color blobs. It's less important what the pixels portray. The type of likeness I'm after is more on a 'corner of the eye' or 'flashing by' level. In video games that kind of rapid identification is very common.

Edit: Threw a render layer on the 'copter trooper. The details are still mostly nonsense, as are the lines on the suit.