Super Syobon!

[Scuba Steve]

I haven't done any pixel art in a long time and I had an itch today to start some stuff.  I have been playing this stupid minigame called Syobon Action!... if you haven't played it, prepared to get raped.  The game is stupid difficult, but it has some clever ways to kill you.  More to the point, the game is pretty ugly.  I opened the resource folder and learned that the game just loads the artwork from png files... so I began doing some minor edits to make the game a bit more appealing.  I have been doing these mini edits for the last day and am hooked... it's been fun trying to see how I can re-imagine the game.  Below are a few images of the work I've been fooling around with.  Critques of the work are welcome... and one thing I want to know what people think... does the main character and objects look better with a double thick outline or a single line?

Also... if the bug bites you... feel free to post your edits of tiles and sprites in here.












Hopefully... it won't be too difficult for you guys to pick out which tiles I've done and which are the originals

[ndrake]

the castle reminds me on alex kidd on sega mastersystem.
Good work!

[.TakaM]

oh awesome, I spent a few mins prettying up that game when I played it a while ago, very nice so far

it's just a shame stuff like the warp pipes are not editable (as far as I know)

[Lee N]

Syobon? The logo says しょほん (Shohon)

edit: I'm guessing the logo is supposed to say しょぼん (Shobon - it means "disheartened" or "dejected").  Notice the difference between ほ (ho) and ぼ (bo).

[ptoing]

SYO is Konishiki and SHO is Hepburn transcription. Basically the Konishiki one just takes the consonant and then adds the ya/yo/yu to it and also does not have stuff like SHI, but SHI. Where it gets really confusing is stuff like TYA which would he CHA. </offtopic>

[Lee N]

SYO is Konishiki and SHO is Hepburn transcription. Basically the Konishiki one just takes the consonant and then adds the ya/yo/yu to it and also does not have stuff like SHI, but SHI. Where it gets really confusing is stuff like TYA which would he CHA. </offtopic>

That wasn't the part I was referring to though.. it's the HO/BO mixup, it's missing the tenten in the logo.

oh, and not really.  チ and ち can also be read as TI, so "TYA" makes perfect sense in Kunrei-shiki Romanization.

[Ben2theEdge]

Your take on the main character is wonderful; Personally I hate double-thick outlines with every fiber of my being, so I vote for thin lines

[Scuba Steve]

Usually I am not a fan of double thick borders... but the game runs in a window and it suffers from another thing I hate... pixeled games running in a high res in a small window.  The original RPGMaker95 suffered from this... I hated the small tiles and high resolution.  When RPGMaker2000 came out and ran in a perspective that doubled the size of the pixels, it was much more aesthetically pleasing to me.  The sprites get the same effect... look at them unzoomed, then zoom in once to double them.  I find them much more appealing at twice the size.  Doubling the border KIND OF gave it a thicker look that looked OK at the smaller scale... so I tried it out.

Am I making any sense?

[Feron]

Can you post some screen shots of your version, us mac users can't run that game!

[Scuba Steve]

I uploaded all the old material with some more illustrations.  Man, it has been fun doing pixeling again... I'd love to get some feedback since I feel a bit rusty.

Sorry, no screenshots... but you're not missing much... the game is still pretty ugly even with my changes.  I'd love to do some backgrounds and foreground stuff... but without being able to put them in the game... it seems futile.