Megaman (4,5,6,7,8,9,GB) 16-bits custom sprites

[Del]

Hello, hmm I don't know how to introduce myself, well, I'm part of the community developing the fan game "Mushroom Kingdom Fusion", a huge crossover game of epic proportions featuring playable characters from many of our loved old school characters, like Mario, Luigi, Sonic, Tails, Simon Belmont, Ryu Hayabusa, Link, Kirby, Samus, Protoman, etc., playing through custom made levels based on their own franchises, and others such as Doom, Halo, Contra, Metal Slug, etc.

Perhaps some of you already know the game, if you don't and you're interested, visit us at http://mkfusion.ipbfree.com ; if you want to know about the game, here there are 3 quick videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JJNXL65X2k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp7Y_d636YI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRD7kSTGt8Q

Okay, back to business.

I'm a spriter, and a game like this needs TONS of custom made sprites. One of the game's worlds is based on the Megaman franchise; we decided to use the 16-bits style from the Genesis game The Wily Wars, but that game only had artwork from Megaman's first 3 games, so, a lot of work was needed to get elements from the rest of the Classic Megaman Era games to the 16-bits style.

We have worked for so much time, a lot, the game isn't close to completion yet, but we have gathered many custom works that we'd like to submit to known sprite sites like this one. Our sprites were reshaded with the Wily Wars style and colors, they have been revised multiple times to get the highest quality possible, using the correct form of shading, color palette and putting in as many details as we could after viewing the official artwork of every single enemy and Robot Master from the Megaman series. This is a work of many months.

I have gathered all my and my friends' works in a few sprite sheets, even that took a while since we had so many spreaded all over our forums, and this is what I want to submit. The sprite sheets are ordered by game, and the credits are in each sheet too. More sprites are going to be added most likely, but they won't have a big update in a while, and here they are:

Megaman 4



Megaman 5



Megaman 6



Megaman 7



Megaman 8 / Megaman & Bass



Megaman 9



Megaman GB series



I am a newb in these forums, so I don't know much about how this is done or much about the rules, but I'd like to point a few notes on these works:

The Megaman 7 and Megaman 8 sprites, why are we remaking those if the originals already were 16-bits? Because the original games' sprites had a bigger scale. So, there were these other fan games, Rockman7 and Rockman8 FC, 8-bits remakes. A few of the sprites in these sheets are custom made by us, but most of them were edited from the 8-bits sprites made by that community. We tried to contact them dozens of times, but their site is all in japanese and we just couldn't do it, even with translators we couldn't find a single e-mail address; we have been using these edited sprites since then, they are so highly edited the only thing remaining from the originals are the outlines, or not even that, so, as a spriter, I wouldn't call that "stealing"; this game is quite popular and I think they didn't mind about sharing them, so I'm posting our custom works here too.

(oh on a side note, the icons..., I still have to see how to make them, and think for a name for these, I guess Mega Man # 16-bits works?, also, tell me if I have to edit anything on the sprite sheets, like the credits, room, etc. I felt it was better to separate them by author, but keeping them in the same sheet so people can browse them by game, I don't think it wouldn't bother anyone if I do it that way, the sprites are there anyway.. just organization, but who knows)

About the credits, the other forumers are glad of sharing their sprites here too.

Alright, that's all from me.

Thank you!

[NO Body]

good idea, i was gonna submit my sheets my self but i never got around to it.
so its good that they are finaly up, do add a more clear "give credit" tag on my section though.

i prolly have tons more in MKF that i need to submit.

[GrooveMan.exe]

Some of these look pretty good~ Others have rather pillowed shading, and it's vaguely obvious that the majority have been recoloured from the 8-bit incarnations with no other changes.

So I'm not sure how to deal with this one...

[MoneyMan]

oh hey del
also you forgot this one for MM9:
and mr3urious reshaded the triceratops mostly IIRC, you just fixed the colors, might wanna edit the credits tag for that

[Ton]

I love this project. I've been following it on Youtube for a while.
As for the sprites, most of them are awesome. Like Grooveman said, a few of them are a bit pillow shaded, but overall it's a pretty solid job.

[Del]

Some of these look pretty good~ Others have rather pillowed shading, and it's vaguely obvious that the majority have been recoloured from the 8-bit incarnations with no other changes.

So I'm not sure how to deal with this one...

I've dealt with this "its just NES recolors" stuff before, so I even have a sprite sheet showing the differences between them I've used in our own forums a couple times too. Let me explain you the Wily Wars shading style.

Look at this image comparing a few of the sprites:



These sprites, in most of them, the only thing remaining from the 8-bits ones are the outlines. Mostly, when we edit them, we literally *delete* all the colors from the sprites, all the NES shades, and start over from scratch using the Wily Wars shading style and color palette, while watching the official artwork.

This style has 4 shades. Dark, normal, light, and white. Look at the dinosaur foot under the snail, that one is a good example. This style uses mostly an "all around" shading that almost takes the shape of the outlines, starting from the darkest one, and then, once you're done with that, you add a last white shade ON the "normal color" shade. The white touches directly the darkest one, but leaves at least 1 pixel between the normal color and the lightest one. That's for large enemies mostly, small enemies usually use the white just on the lightest part. If you don't believe me you can go and see the official artwork in the original Genesis' Wily Wars game.

The NES sprites only use 2 colors over all the sprite and white, with "white lines" on the metalic parts.

The Robot Masters are similar, but mostly don't use white at all and just focus mostly on the artwork detail.

The tiles use an all around shading too, but totally different from the NES one.

Please watch the sprites closely, do you really think most of them are NES incarnations or recolors? There are hundreds of sprites here we have put a lot of work in, trying to use the correct shading style from the Genesis Wily Wars and adding as many details from the official artwork as possible. Like I said, the only thing remaining from the NES sprites here are the outlines. We had to keep the scale. Not to say many sprites like NO Body's and a few others were 100% custom made.

If you don't know what to do with these, well, we just want to share them with people that are looking for Megaman sprites so they can use them in their games, animations or whatever. If this explanation changed your mind about them being just lame recolors, I'd suggest putting them in the custom/edits section named as "Mega Man # 16-bits", separated by game. If you agree and accept them I'll reorganize the sheets to eliminate all that free space and make the icons.

A lot of good quality work has been done with these. Sorry if I sound harsh but I found that quite offensive, like if you didn't even bother watching the sprites closely


Edit: to Moneyman: yeah, sorry I couldn't find that Sniper Joe anywhere, I'll put it in. As for the triceratops, no, mr3urious basically recolored the NES sprites and added 1 shade. I basically remade it from scratch using the Wily Wars shading style.

[Ton]

Seems like a good argument to me, haha. But are larger sprites still pillow shaded in WW style? Look at the Blue Whale, for example.

[Del]

Seems like a good argument to me, haha. But are larger sprites still pillow shaded in WW style? Look at the Blue Whale, for example.

Well, a few of the large sprites in WW have different styles, but only very few of them. Look at this:



That cat follows the shading style I explained above, its basically 3 shades with white on the middle one. But that fish is just all different, like not even the Wily Wars spriters decided on what style to go. We decided to go for the cat's one mostly, but the guy that made the whale, perhaps that wasn't his best work. Yeah I agree it ended looking pillow shaded, but even a few in the WW style looked like that in a few parts; I think it's not so bad, since the rest of the Whale's parts and details are there compared to the NES one, but you're the expert!

Quick edit: I forgot, here's the pic to compare them.



I think it looks like that mostly because of the colors he picked for the blue parts, that and he didn't use the shades to give it shape, thus, pillow shaded, I dunno, there weren't many super large sprites in the WW sprite sheets like the Whale and the TRex, and since we only used 3 shades for those too, I think that's why they look like that, a large sprite like that should use more shades imo, but we sticked to the same style. Look at the Pumpkin from Megaman7 as a reference.

Hmm that whale sprite might not be perfect, but still works for the game in my opinion; don't let that darken the rest of the works please

[Teddy The Elite]

OMFG, these are amazing. Great job.

[Del]

OMFG, these are amazing. Great job.

Thank you!

Also, ack.. I can't believe I forgot this.

I didn't put Proto Man in the Mega Man 9 sprite sheet. My bad! He's there now, edited the sheet, sorry!



He got a Break Man suit too.

[Cobalt Blue]

Seems like a good argument to me, haha. But are larger sprites still pillow shaded in WW style? Look at the Blue Whale, for example.

just noticed that basically all the pillowshaded sprites were done by rockman.

i'd really hate to say, but i've always hated willy wars as most of the stuff from that game looks horrible.

[Del]

haha yeah, a lot of the artwork from the original Wily Wars is fugly, I specially hate most Robot Masters, and Megaman himself is awkward, but I have to say, at least most of the common enemies look great, they have nice details and cool shading style, same with the tilesets; we had to pick this artwork for Mushroom Kingdom Fusion for the scale and because it was 16-bits, and most Robot Masters we use, even from 1-3 like Bomb Man, Top Man, Metal Man, Magnet Man, etc., were reshaded by us from the NES sprites too, but I'm not posting those here since its a small detail and people already got the WW ones if they want to work with 16-bits stuff.

[Del]

Bumping this topic just to post the submissions' icons:















Also, I edited all the sprite sheets in the first post to remove as much empty space as I could, so.. yeah... that's our submission. I hope you guys like it/accept it. Thanks.

[Ton]

In support of this project I think I'm going to go ahead and accept these. Sound good to everyone?

I just watched the Crossroads video. Pretty excellent.

[Cobalt Blue]

a lot of the stuff is badly pillowshaded but well, who cares