Jeremy Parish
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Good Nintentions Episode #004
🕑 Added 2016-01-11 17:00:02 +0000 UTC Alright! At least something has gone right lately: I managed to put together the fourth episode of Good Nintentions. As usual, the length of the episode may seem incongruous in light of the simplicity of the game, but there's a lot of broader history going on here. And as usual, that meant this episode was quite complex and took a long time to assemble. But I think the effort paid off, because I sincerely feel this is a top-class retrospective... despite my unusually clumsy narration. No idea what was up with that. Hopefully you'll be able to enjoy it regardless?Also, I will be adjusting Patreon tiers by the end of the week. I still need to do some cost analyses on the books, but the levels should come in pretty close to where my post a while back predicted.
Comments
Jeremy Parish
I'm pretty sure they're sprites. Punch-Out!! used an advanced chip with bank switching (which didn't exist when Wild Gunman was made—NROM games only have a single memory bank), and MM2 only pulled off its tricks by putting its background-tile enemies on black. You can see the enemies between background layers in the Gang Mode (they appear through the slats of the railings on the balcony if you look carefully), so I'm guessing sprites. The big limitation on NES sprites had to do with how many were lined up horizontally, and I think WG's characters fit within that limitation even when you had two enemies on screen.
Aaron Schafer
A technical question you may or may not know the answer to, regarding those really big sprites you referred to. Do you know if those are single sprites, or did the games utilise background tiles to form the characters, the way Punch Out did for its huge boxers, or Mega Man 2 created the Guts Dozer and Dragon bosses? I've always found those kinds of workarounds fascinating, and I'm curious if even at this early stage of the Famicom/NES's lifespan game designers were employing such creative trickery to make the system do things it wasn't really meant to.
Jeremy Parish
Not necessarily. Look for the Atari Lynx "bathroom break" commercial and you will totally recognize an 11-year-old Tobey Maguire.
Aaron Schafer
Side note: does it creep anyone else out how easily recognisable Elijah Wood is even as a six year old or whatever he was there? Don't people usually change more as they grow up?
Aaron Schafer
Footage looks fantastic, Jeremy, and this as a whole is definitely top-notch stuff. Awesome job.
