SMRPG NES Bootleg Thing

[Jermungandr]

Well here's the thing about the color schemes. The NES allows for four 3-color sprite paletes to be on screen at a time. For most games this would be used as something like one hero palette, two enemy palettes, and one remaining for special effects. There are some games that have found ways around these default limitations, but I'm trying my best to restrict myself to the most default rules the best I can.

That said, there are five playable characters, which brings up all kinds of complications. Especially if you want to actually utilize animated enemy sprites and not just use static images, or you want NPCs or some other object that uses a color scheme that differs from any of the main characters.

Ideally in an RPG with multiple player characters on screen you want to reduce the number of palettes those characters will be hogging to themselves as much as possible, especially in a situation where you don't know which of the player characters will be on screen at any given time, as it would cause enemies to appear to change colors at random for no good reason. For a good example, consider the very first Final Fantasy game, in which there are six classes you can choose from, but all the available classes combined only utilize two of the available sprite palettes. This allows them to utilize the other two sprite palettes for visual effects.

So basically the best plan is for the hero characters to share palettes between them as much as they can. Peach and Mallow are easy to make share a palette as we can easily use a pink/yellow color scheme for both of them. But even then we are still left with all four palettes being hogged by the player characters.

I was perplexed for a long time for how the heck I could reduce the number of character-used palettes further. Making Geno green like Bowser would make him look too much like Link. Would I have to give Bowser a blue shell? But Bowser and Geno don't have nearly matching skintones either.

Then as I was looking up references for 8-bit Bowsers, I came across this sheet here:

http://www.spriters-resource.com/game_bo...eet/12775/

And I was like, oh! That's actually a pretty clever solution! I could make Bowser's green bits look black and shadowy, and then utilize Mario's palette for the rest of him. That would leave us with at least one free sprite palette for NPCs, enemies, and other random crap.

It'd be even better if I could reduce it down even further, but something feels sacrilegious about putting the princess in a red dress ...

Anyways, that was my logic.

Have some walkies:


         

[DragonDePlatino]

Nice job so far! I'm really liking how this is turning out so far. Very well-drawn, but it also feels like a bona-fide bootleg.  I would add some 1-pixel bob to Mario's walk animation, though. Here's how most NES games do that without using up more 8x8 minitiles:



Like in your animation, the top 16x8 of Mario's head doesn't change. However, his bottom half is a little shorter. In-engine Mario's entire sprite would bob down a pixel every other frame. Another suggestion: If you wanted to be reaaally stingy with your palettes and nail that bootleg feel, the party could work in just two palettes. Black/blue/yellow for Geno and Black/Hot Pink/Beige for the other characters. Since the 2nd palette is not quite red and not quite pink, you can imagine it as either if you stretch your imagination enough.

[Jermungandr]

I was actually experimenting with that very idea just after making that last post.

[BaronVonCreeper]

So I was super bored the other night and ended up doodling these.

They're supposed to look as if someone had made a bootleg version of SMRPG for the NES.



The Mario ones on the left were my first attempt where I was trying to make them look more like the sprites from the original game. Then I changed the hat to look more like traditional Mario 'cuz I thought it looked better.

Anyways, what do you think? I'll probably make some full sheets if people are interested.

Honestly if people were interested I wouldn't mind making this a group project to do every character/enemy from the game (in which case I call dibs on finishing these three). Dunno if there would be enough interest for that though.

You should add it on the spriters-resource, cause' honestly I think they look great!