so i’m sure you’ve all already read the original neo-geo.com thread about this, bt now there’s more information at mmcafe! a lot more information, including the circumstances of its creation and a whole bunch of game mechanics
it all sounds really interesting! the alignment system suggests that maybe it had some kind of guardian heroes-esque branching plot? and the way that ties into a day/night cycle is really cool too!
i wonder if the day/night cycle would carry on through multiple player’s credits
though the way alignments work would probably make it unfair for competitive play, unless vs mode only had neutral characters
and an inspiration for the game was the 1985 movie ladyhawke?! amazing
What I found illuminating is the way that the character sprites were roughly blocked out. Vague outlines and flat colors, and so on, that presumably they kept building up until they had finished characters.
I’ve seen this technique used in a number of games. The various pre-release builds of indie fighter Yatagarasu were full of art like this. It looks pretty neat on its own!
Yeah, it’s super super common to prototype moves in action games with really rough, boxy splatters to make sure everything works the way it’s supposed to. It’s a good way of prototyping visual cues before actually having to make decisions about them, in addition to being able to tell when something Doesn’t Work very early and efficiently.
A lot of games have dummied out moves with those kinds of prototype frames, too! Stuff that just didn’t make the cut.
I mean. I have my own methodologies that are very similar. It’s kind of validating to see the same thing pop up in what would have been a professional, very polished arcade game.