/vr/ - Retro Games

Having an additional screen on his desk proved to be very useful when developing arcade or console games, but it also was convenient for computer games since the size of the screens was pretty small by today’s stantards (around 14) and the screen itself was quickly filled with windows. As with the other kinds of machine, the second screen gave the designer a global vision of the graphical element he was working on.

3) Scanner
Having a scanner was pretty much optional in the 80s. Hard disk drives were sold at an exorbitant price and their limited capacity meant that you couldn’t stock everything in them; the rendering of the scanned picture was poor due to the low resolution and the limited number of colors the machine could handle. A few companies equipped themselves with scanners though, but the digitized picture couldn’t be used as it and had to be touched up and even colorized with a graphic tool.
Yoshimiru used this device when he worked on the Famicom game Metal Slader Glory (1991): ”Before drawing the graphics, before even laying down the basic outline (on computer) I’d always put it down on paper like this (see below). Then I’d take this drawing and although they aren’t as high resolution as the scanners of today, we had something called a Digitiser which you would feed it into. It was a pretty terrible recreation but it would be displayed in the drawing tool so I could use it as a base to draw the pixel art.“