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the sprites on nes black box games were made of cardboard

doof_warrior

doof_warrior

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,443
NJ
source on this revelation is frank cifaldi's twitter



but holy shit how did i never notice this? it makes sense now, cuz obviously they weren't using computers to make those boxarts


so many different sized "pixels", and crooked ones, and not even straight sided ones

hogans-alley.jpg
 
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WieDerrickWie

WieDerrickWie

Member
Jul 4, 2018
650
Ah yes, the South Park school of animation techniques!

Its always fascinating reading some of the ways developers had to come up solutions for problems back then.
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
Member
Oct 25, 2017
50,134
I'm proud to say that I've already thought a whole lot about Donkey Kong's nipples.

There's a version where Donkey Kong is all in one colour and has no nipples, which somehow makes him look more naked than normal.
 
Kapryov

Kapryov

"This guy are sick"
Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,169
Australia
Persona collaboration with Venom.
Cardboard gorilla nipples.

RDR2 broke the forum or something? These the first 2 topics I see today.
 

MoonlitBow

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,900
I always assumed they were painted in some capacity since they clearly weren't direct screenshots (SMB. 1 is a good example as it has shading that isn't possible), but finding out they're actually cardboard cutouts is cool to discover.
 
Soupbones

Soupbones

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,278
I swear I read something about NOA saying the used the large sprites for the covers to market the graphical power of the NES at launch.

It was all a sham!
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Oct 26, 2017
15,580
I knew they were some kind of artist rendering but i never thought of separate pieces. Neat.
 
Wulfric

Wulfric

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,974
TheChrisGlass said:
I wonder if there's a storage archive where the originals are preserved?
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Unless some intrepid graphic designer took them home, I doubt it. Consider how many physical office moves and bankruptcies that have happened over the years, only the biggest companies like Nintendo and Blizzard have dedicated archives.

Dungeons and Dragons paintings used to get thrown in the trash when they were still based in Wisconsin. Scary stuff.
 
No Audible Release

No Audible Release

Member
Jan 25, 2018
146
That's amazing...

But I don't really get why they didn't just create those cover illustrations in a more traditional medium. Wouldn't that be much easier? Making those pixel mosaics must have been insanely fiddly!
 
KtSlime

KtSlime

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,910
Tokyo
Wulfric said:
Unless some intrepid graphic designer took them home, I doubt it. Consider how many physical office moves and bankruptcies that have happened over the years, only the biggest companies like Nintendo and Blizzard have dedicated archives.

Dungeons and Dragons paintings used to get thrown in the trash when they were still based in Wisconsin. Scary stuff.
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Click to shrink...

All black box games are Nintendo titles to my understanding. I bet they are somewhere in Washington, Nintendo and NoA have always had a tendency to hoard.
 
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