Community Project: Super Tempo

[Kramlack]

Howdy Spriters Resource users, I'd like to pitch a community project to rip Super Tempo for the Sega Saturn, a title I'm sure many of us are familiar with.

Super Tempo is a beautiful platformer and the third entry in the short lived Tempo series, following Tempo on the Sega 32X, and Tempo Jr. for the Game Gear. Developed by RED Entertainment (known today for the Sakura Wars and Record of Agarest War series), this entry wouldn't see a release outside of Japan and has become something of an obscure title.

I'm asking for the community's help on this one because while I prefer to manage projects on my own, this title has continued to be pushed back by other projects I've worked on. It's a game that's a great resource to pixel artists and animators alike, and I feel it deserves some focus. To that end, I've submitted a couple of sheets both large and small which should prove my own interest in seeing this game ripped. I'm more than happy to provide setup and help for anyone interested in working on this, and I've even gone so far as to complete the game and compile a master list of save state data for all the stages and bosses (more on that later).

Getting to the actual ripping, the Sega Saturn is fairly easy to work with, although seasoned sprite rippers can expect the usual tedium that comes with compiling sprites. The Yabause emulator features a series of built-in tools for viewing both sprite (VDP1) and background (VDP2) data.

  

Using VDP1 for example will allow you to cycle through all the displayed sprites on-screen, and save them individually as .bmp image files. 

From there you'll have to compile them into the on-screen image manually. PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SCREENSHOT RIP THIS GAME. Aside from being an amateur ripping technique, the game has subtle issues with displaying the graphics at the wrong resolution, causing misalignment and other errors. The screen should only ever be used as a reference if you're having difficulties compiling sprites.

  

Compiling sprites is often easy, but occasionally Super Tempo will feature sprites that layer into other sections to save on graphical space. In the example below, you can see how Super Tempo's hand, knee, and foot sprites share some of the data that's already found in other sprites.

  

Yabause also presents a small issue with ripping in that it only includes a Frame Pause function, and not a Frame Advance function like most emulators. Normally this means you'd have to be quick on hitting the Pause and Play buttons, but this issue is mitigated to some degree by Super Tempo's incredible pause feature that works in almost the entire game, cutscenes included! It's not the perfect solution but hitting start on the frames you need is vastly easier than gliding your hand on the mouse around the window and praying you're quick enough.

Discussing what I mentioned earlier, if anyone is looking for help either setting up or ripping from this title, don't hesitate to fire me a PM. As mentioned before, I've completed the game and created a list of save data that can be found here. It should be easy to figure out where everything goes, but I've thrown together a small readme in case anyone has trouble.

I'm looking forward to seeing who's interested in working on this project!

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-PROJECT STATUS-

Playable Characters:
[IN-PROGRESS] Tempo
[COMPLETE] Katy

Enemies:
[COMPLETE] Tadpole
[COMPLETE] Frog
[IN-PROGRESS] Bat
[COMPLETE] Mecha-Tempo

Bosses:
[COMPLETE] Red Riding Hood

Miscellaneous:
[COMPLETE] Ghost Donkey
[COMPLETE] Items