Starting Off: 2014

Well...since this is MY blog...I guess I'll put stuff up here that I myself do from time to time.

For today's entry this will be about a video game I've been wanting to do since High School. Xenohunter.

The premise was sort of a reverse Metroid. You would play as the Space Pirate, Xenohunter, who had come to a planet to find all sorts of treasure and it would play sort of like a mix of Earthworm Jim, Yoshi's Story, and Kirby the Great Cave Offensive. Along the way a bounty hunter by the name of Bounty Brain would be after you to collect money from your capture. The ultimate treasure however would be a legendary sword that had either beaten or sealed away the mythical Space Dragon, Klendauk, who would serve as the final boss of the game.

That premise has remained basically the same over the years with me adding in more and more details quite frequently. What was once a rather barren planet is now a lively cave system with villagers, a run-down galactic prison, an abandoned construction site, a clan of origami people at war with the villages of the planet, ancient ruins, a female cop now keeping an eye on Bounty Brain as he does his job, and plenty of other tidbits here and there.

As I said, Earthworm Jim was one of the inspirations. That's clear in the whipping motions that Xenohunter attacks with and such, but it goes deeper than that. You see to me Earthworm Jim is arguably the best game ever made. Not just because it was fun, but because it was alive. It was sooo much more animated than any other video game back then and it still holds pretty true today even with the advancements in technology. I knew from the start that I wanted Xenohunter, like all of my stuff, to be as animated as possible. I would stand for nothing less than cartoons. I wouldn't be wasting my time with crappy 8-bit pixel art or anything. No, I wanted to make a playable cartoon.

Of course back then I had not the skill nor dedication to take on such a task. Hell, I hadn't even made an animation back then. But over the years I grew and so did my abilities. I started drawing up 2D animations on paper after I'd finished High School in my free time with the first attempts being really uh...primitive. But even then it was a joy to see my characters actually alive. Eventually I tried Xenohunter...and completely messed him up. The animation was crap. I needed to get better and moving thick limbs and objects first. So I sorta...forgot about him for a while.

Then the best game in years showed up. Rayman Origins. I could not believe my eyes. It was THE game I had been waiting for. It's the kind of game that the industry should've been working towards throughout the past generations instead of abandoning 2D sidescrollers. With that game I'd decided it. It was possible to make cartoon video games! Even better graphically than Earthworm Jim! I got back to animating Xenohunter and in time I came up with a loose slumping walk cycle. But by now I'm pretty sure I've gotten his figure down. Every so often I'll accidentally draw him bigger for a few frames and have to go back and shrink him by redrawing the frames, but I'm now more dedicated than ever to make the thing look good.

But the details in visuals aren't the only things to have improved. A few months back I finally played a game that'd been out since 2004. Even though I'd always heard and seen it, I never played it. So I bought the best looking version for WiiWare and...my god...Cave Story has to be like my favorite game since when I was a kid. It showed me that I can have an actual plot going on alongside the exploration that the game is based around. That is what's been getting me thinking of a slew of new ideas for the game.

And it's not just a single game neither that I wanna make. Even though I'll be fine with just doing one Xenohunter game if that's all I ever get to do/complete, I do have a bit of a series thought out. Different planets and locales that his adventures would take him across. From mythical Space Dragons to ancient Weapons of Mass Destruction, Xenohunter would take on all sorts of galactic trials that threaten interstellar civilization and in the process collect all sorts of treasure in his quests.

As of right now I've got a slew of concepts and stuff in my Xenohunter folder on Deviant Art (which you can view here: http://warahi.deviantart.com/gallery/23905581 ), with this being the latest piece I finished. A painting that I'll be using as the background of the first area of the game:

And now that I've come across Pulseboy, an 8-Bit music-making program, I'm able to get the music tracks for the game put down in some form to listen to (though I'll definitely want actual instruments or at least a better sounding medium to make the actual tracks with), I'm closer than ever. This is the folder on my youtube account for Xenohunter's (8-Bit) Soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvPThgQknXcJ0r1m4CsQXNMSX5qgQTcTJ&feature=mh_lolz

I guess I'll paste updates here as I continue with the project =)

The 64-bit era was a changing time. And a downfall. You see, as revolutionary as the new dimension was, 3D essentially killed 2D gaming. Now most people didn't really care back then nor did they see the drawback. You see, as limiting as 2D was, it provided for an experience like no other. A much more complete style of gameplay when compared to the new ambitious 3D titles that could usually be broken open like a walnut by comparison with how buggy and inexperienced the field was at the time. 2D was also beautiful when 3D hit which is a real shame as, had 3D not gotten in the way, we could have gotten even more unfathomably eye-pleasing visuals for sidescrollers.

Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X4 were proof enough of that. But everyone wanted 3D, and so everyone unfortunately forgot about 2D gaming. Sure there were astounding sidescrollers in that era like Klonoa and Yoshi's Story, but those were so few and far between that the genre had practically died.

Now don't get me wrong, games like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie are incredible and I'd play them any day of the week. But they simply could not reach the level of visual quality that a 2D game at the time could. The hardware was not ready for that kind of strain. But even then, many games simply didn't try hard enough with visuals.

Now I know people will hate on me for this but...I like visuals to look good. That's part of why I always like Classic Sonic over NES Mario or Star Fox 64 3D (in many instances) over the original Star Fox 64. Like it or not, graphics ARE part of a game. They don't MAKE a game, but neither does gameplay. Everything put together makes a game, and if one of those qualities is lacking I'm going to like that quality in a game that does it better over the title I'm presented with. That's part of why I can't stand what they did with Mega Man 9 and 10. I'm sorry, but they look like **** compared to 7 and 8.

By this time we should be playing cartoons, not 8-bit sprites. It's fine to poke fun at the old stuff and all, but making entire games utilizing that for professional titles is just wasted ****ing potential. That's why I consider Rayman Origins one of the greatest sidescrollers in recent days. It actually progressed from what Rayman 1 was.

But that's neither here nor there. Point is, things did not look as good as they used to in the 2D era and people simply didn't put the effort forth to make them look as good as they could. That is why I usually remember the 16-bit era as well as I do and usually put it over the 64 one.

That's not to say that it all looked like crap though. Far from it. Many looked nice and molded their own style with the limitations they had. But it wasn't until a certain small gaming company starting in a garage took their stab at the genre that we got a game that brought back the liveliness of the gaming world. I am of course talking about Naughty Dog and their first true success and breakthrough in the video game industry: Crash Bandicoot.

Now Sony was just breaking into the gaming industry in those days. Playstation 1, their very first system to get back at Nintendo for screwing them over with the whole CD-I incident, was fresh on the market and they were bringing in a new light to gamers. With Sega preoccupied by their American division suiciding themselves, it (sadly) wasn't too hard for Sony to fill in their shoes for the time being. But Nintendo had something that Sony didn't. Mario. A mascot. Sony didn't seem that interested in really tackling the situation, but Naughty Dog didn't seem to care. When they were brought onboard to make a game they wanted to make something impactful. Something that could be recognized. An actual cartoon character in the 3D world. One that could compete against the popular plumber.

Naughty Dog wanted to make the best game they possibly could. And that's the real difference between classic gaming and modern gaming. Yes, games brought in money, but the people working on them back then, by and large, wanted to make actual good games. Now that's not to say that people don't still want to do that, but with the industry as bloated and overblown as it's become, it's inevitable (as with any form of medium when it gets popular) that mostly games are made simply to make money due to executives that have no business (or knowledge of gaming even) running things being in charge.

Back then there was a passion and drive for game-makers. It was a testing ground in that time period and pretty much anything was allowed with how new and ambitious the field was. A stark contrast to the marine-filled dark gritty blandness of things today.

No, Crash Bandicoot was lively and vibrant. A world full of color and art, the likes of which had not been seen in the 3D world until that point. Naughty Dog truly wanted to bring a cartoon to 3D, not just another game character. They made the world as detailed as possible and pushed the Playstation to its very limits with each new game they came out with.

To ensure that the characters themselves were able to be felt by the players Naughty Dog had actual cartoonists working in the making of the characters.

It went beyond the simpleness of Mario. The blocky chunkiness that focused more on making obstacles and paths to test how platforming operates in 3D. Crash Bandicoot stuck to a more simplified style of movement with just one path that you followed instead of a more opened world. It wasn't that they didn't pay attention to platforming, not by a long shot. But this more linear style of gameplay understandably lead to a better focus on designing the visuals and flow of the world and characters that Super Mario 64 simply had not the excess to leave room for.

I had seen 3D games before Crash Bandicoot, but the first time I saw him I was young. My dad worked at an animation company in Cincinnati, Ohio by the name of Lightborne and I came in there one day. I still remember the spinal cord-looking staircase they had to the second floor. And they had the biggest TV I had ever seen in my life next to it. And below that? A playstation. I turned it on and this played.

I could not believe what I was looking at. I thought it was some 3D animation project the crew was working on at first, but then I pressed the buttons and started playing the game. I'll never forget that experience. It was like no other. The character was actually alive. He stretched and squashed with his movements. His hops felt like they had actual weight to them. His eyes could get bigger and shrink and wobble. And the death scenes.