Hey, so I've been working on this game idea, and actually started some pixel work and composition work on it, I'm wondering if anyone thinks this game sounds like an interesting idea or not? What I want to do, is to create an rpg/tactic game with NES music/graphics (original of course), but with immersive dialogue and an engaging story. I always miss playing my old nes rpg games, and when I actually get the chance to play them on rom, I always wish they were actually well written with a decently developed story. I was thinking it would be fun to create a semi-complex tactic game, complete with some kind of job class system and all that harking back to the old days of the NES. I dunno, am I the only one who would want to take on a project like this? Obviously I am going to finish minimally 70% of the pixel work before looking for a programmer or getting anyone else involved (unless someone happens to come along sooner). So whatcha guys think?

I guess there are many programmers who want people like you to do the art.

When you play games you often think the story is botched, but making "immersive dialogue and an engaging story" is much more difficult than you might think. But, if you are confident in your skills, great go for it.

The tactic rpg style is great, lot of people are looking for complex games in this genre and they are rare.

Problem is, why do you want to reproduce something using old technologies? You could do the exact same thing with high resolution, antialiasing and more. Limiting to low-res pixel art gives a bad impression and discourage potential gamers when they see screenshots.

[Edited by - Dunge on May 2, 2009 3:23:02 AM]

Quote: Original post by Dunge
Problem is, why do you want to reproduce something using old technologies?

On one hand, there's something to this. The developers back in the NES days didn't make it all pixelated because they wanted to (ok, maybe some of them wanted to) but because it was "pushing performance to the limit" at that time.

On the other hand, if tangent would like to play a game like this, maybe there are other people who also would? I know I would like to give it a go :)

Thanks for the varied replies, I've posted this same topic on some other forums and it seems I'm getting a similar varriance of responces. A lot of people are seeing it as pointless to make a game using old technology, so maybe I may move away from that if no one will want to play it. I dunno, some of the old NES games though were brilliantly designed given the medium's limitations. I was also considering mixing snes style sprites with some 3d aspects, but still making it look somewhat like an snes universe.

And I do understand convincing dialogue and immersive stories are not easily created, but I do have a bit of a writing background so, hopefully I'll be able to pull something off.

There are a lot of people out there hacking existing ROMs to get this kind of effect. You might try looking into that first, if only to get a sense of the specific technical requirements on art.

From what my rather skilled artist friend tells me, good pixel artists are something of a rarity these days BTW :)

I don't think it's crazy at all to have a retro look. I think in pretty much any medium, there has been work that's purposefully retro or lo-fi, and it sometimes works really well. There is something really charming about NES-era graphics and sounds. One, a lot of people have a strong nostalgia effect. Two, it's a little more interesting when you're able to do something cool under the restriction of being lo-fi. Like, people still find it interesting when a painter is able to create a photo-realistic painting, even though we all know that the guy could have just used a camera.

Anyway when you start looking for programmers, give me a holler, it sounds like an interesting project and I might be able to help.