Rebelstar Raiders

Here's some research I did on Rebelstar Raiders . One thing which I really like about the Rebelstar games is that the moonbases and other installation appears functional. It's not just random mazes and rooms with crates. The first game had 8*8 px characters, and if the maps use tiles it doesn't show at all. The later games (Rebelstar 1 & 2) moved to 16*16 px characters, and then Laser Squad introduced character rotation and an angled perspective (not isometric though). X-Com inherited a lot of combat mechanics fom these older games, an in some ways it was inferior in that department. I think the machinegun fire and aim control works better in Laser Squad. You can spray X number of bullets between two arbitrary points. It feels really Rambo.

Roughs

Here are a few sheets with unfinished redesigns. The character proportions and head scale are about the same as in the Xexyz stuff.

X-Com
Rygar
Metroid

As for X-Com, I think I'm going to have to revisit my Rebel Squad project and revise the designs. I think these kind of proportions with more curves is more dynamic, and I've changed my mind about real time vs turn based. One of X-Com's biggest strengths is character development, and in a turn based game you can maximize the player's exposure to the characters. I think, even if you design a real time system with multiple monitoring windows (for scattered characters), the player will have a constant nagging feeling of having to be everywhere at the same time with his eyes. It's not enjoyable to constantly be reminded that you might be missing important action pertaining to your characters. Being able to effectively deliver tasty little bits for the player to build his game spanning macro story with takes priority.

As for the cute cartoon style, I don't believe it would make the game less scary or involving. Horror is mostly music and build-up. Benny Hill music will make almost anything funny, and if you just walk into a grimdark scary movie it's not scary at all because you missed the build-up.

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'.)

Remember Robo Warrior?

Robo Warrior was one of those games which had a fun first level, but it just got monotous after that. Kind of like the first slices of blood pudding. I always wished there was something more to the game each time I returned to it. I never knew that Robo Warrior actually was titled Bomber King and took place in the Bomberman universe somehow. I also didn't know that there was an interesting sequel for the Gameboy. Too bad, I might have enjoyed that one.

Anyways, here's another of them pages: Bomber Queen

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.