/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.10199687]

Why were famicom carts so soulfully designed?

And why are the arcade ports on the system so fun and soulful (even if they aren’t arcade perfect)?

[Anonymous No.10199705]

Nintendo allowed publishers to manufacturer their own carts back then. I really like the one they used for Salamander/Life Force

[Anonymous No.10199709]

A different, better time.
Now kids just collect, uh.... .apks?

[Anonymous No.10199747]

>>10199705
Japanese Jesus must have blessed this one, damn

[Anonymous No.10199813]

>>10199687
there's always this tradeoff in design: you could make everything standardized, but more sterile; or, you could have "anything goes" approach and allow creative freedom, but then every cart may look different and clash with others.
Famicom is an example of the latter.

[Anonymous No.10199848]

>>10199813
Is “clashing” really that much of an issue?

[Anonymous No.10199969]

>>10199848
depends on how you look at it. in the West, companies want a standardized look for their games, so that consumers would know it's for their console. and having all those different carts in your collection can look a bit messy. the publishers can also make crazy-looking carts sometimes, bigger / smaller and so on.
but it's hard to deny that standardized look destroys some soul.

[Anonymous No.10200090]

>>10199969
So it boils down to Americans having reduced mental faculties, which would explain their usually repulsive box art compared to the JP and even PAL releases often times

[Anonymous No.10200105]

>>10199687
I'm about to blow your mind: Famicom carts are YouTube thumbnails.

[Anonymous No.10200108]

>>10200105
….what? What did you mean by this

[Anonymous No.10200128]

>>10200108
Look at how they're designed. Same composition techniques.

[Anonymous No.10200157]

>>10200128
It doesn't have a balding mid 30s man with his mouth agape pointing though

[Anonymous No.10200165]

>>10199687
I hate how hard is to open them

[Anonymous No.10200198]

>>10200157
Mega Man 1 is pretty close to that. As are most Mario games. The YouTube algorithm seems to drive that thumbnail design because it's what people click on but some channels are backing off of it lately since thankfully there's been enough of a pushback. They still put their faces in the shot but expressions are now a lot less punchable.

[Anonymous No.10200356]

>>10200157
>agAPE
I got you.

[Anonymous No.10200401]

>>10200165
Yeah, some styles are very hard to open. I've been able to open some of the big Jaleco ones fairly easy and without damage, but I've had some of the smaller more traditional ones have a clip break off when trying to open. I've heard that the black Namcot ones are borderline impossible to open without something breaking, and given how rigid that plastic is, I'm inclined to believe it.

[Anonymous No.10200460]

>>10200401
I opened that one with my hands only, it is a bootleg
I think I will add new solder to the points which look bad

[Anonymous No.10200469]

>>10200165
>>10200401
>>10200460
Voultar recommended these to squeeze them open, seems good

[Anonymous No.10200494]

>>10200105
Nah, Famicom cart aint grotesque or misleading

[Anonymous No.10200508]

>>10199705
> clear case

Ew.

Game is god-tier though

[Anonymous No.10200513]

>>10200469
I looked at the thumbnail and thought some American was talking about buying guns on /vr/

[Anonymous No.10200519]

>>10199687
> make Spelunker cartridge
> add light to the top which looks like miner's hard hat light
> piss Nintendo off with that

Based IREM

[Anonymous No.10200520]

>>10200513
They make good pretend guns, like caulk guns

[Anonymous No.10200680]

>>10199687
>And why are the arcade ports on the system so fun and soulful

they aren't

[Anonymous No.10200694]

>>10200680

[Anonymous No.10200703]

>>10200694
>calls someone a sneed for preferring ports on genesis and pce, rather than the nes where the tech is so wildly different the ports are just outright worse

[Anonymous No.10200743]

>>10200694
Why did you post the jew wojak?

[Anonymous No.10201763]

>>10199813
Cool hot take brolet
>>10199969
>in the West
Always a red flag. Any broad generalizations are, but this in particular, especially here.

[Anonymous No.10202362]

>>10201763
Its true though? They constantly butchered art trying to bring it to America, everything had to look extra cool and gritty or le kids wouldn’t like it

[Anonymous No.10202565]

>>10202362
>They constantly butchered art trying to bring it to America
I'd ask for examples, but you couldn't come up with any. Just art done differently that doesn't fit your weeb tastes. I don't even have to like burger versions of art to know you're a weeb faggot. Of course they made art to appeal to their customer base. Their objective was to sell games, not placate some yet unborn child with a hentai fetish.

[Anonymous No.10203858]

>>10202565
One thing people fail to consider is that back in the day the marketing departments weren't just considering the kids playing the games but also the parents who were actually buying them. Making everything look like Frank Frazetta's Conan stuff, 1980s era comic book art, or other styles that'd be familiar to a boomer who themselves didn't play video games but was buying something for their kid just made more sense. Because if you had these cartoony, big eyed anime characters on the box the parents might wrongly think that they game is targeting VERY young children or worse...girls. And assume their 9 year old son wouldn't like it.

[Anonymous No.10204275]

>>10203858
Most people on /vr fail to consider anything other than the voices in their head. There were many factors involved in the art used. If all it needed to do was appeal to tween boys they could have just put lots of boobies on the box.

[Anonymous No.10205037]

>>10201763
I see my point went above your head.
I just mean that in the West in general, picrel is what is considered "good design" by designers. Minimalistic uniform design with same format. Design textbooks taught for years that this was "good design".
Master System covers took this concept too far. But even if you look at later systems, their game covers still generally were looking about similar to each other. Japanese covers were usually redrawn in the same generic paintbrush art style, so they lost their unique styles. This was also before anime became more or less known to general public in US, which didn't help.
They just turned everything into "safe" designs people understood and recognized, much like what >>10203858
said.

[Anonymous No.10205065]

>>10205037
to add. this is an example of what creative freedom results in. you can see SFC covers used both vertical and horizontal formats. there was a lot of different styles too. cartoon, anime, SD, watercolor, Frazetta-style, sometimes pre-rendered 3D. some used standard BGs, Square notoriously used white BGs, and some covers were just unorthodox like that wooden look Kirby Super Star cover. or you could remember other cool ones, like Seiken Densetsu 2 with that huge painting of a forest.
in the West, most of it would be heavily cropped or redrawn as samey paintbrush art.

[Anonymous No.10205154]

>>10205065
Westaboos brutally mogged by this diversity of color and box style, currently choking up cheeseburgers and corn syrup while attempting to write a retort about why black on black with muscled out bodybuilders is the correct color scheme

[Anonymous No.10205291]

>>10205037
The uniformity had it's benefits. I'm not sure how it is in Japan but in the states it wasn't uncommon for games to be behind glass, on a wall behind the counter, or in some other way that wouldn't let you directly interact with the item. Clear uniform branding allowed people to know what exactly they were looking at from a distance. Being able to spot something as a Genesis game from 10 feet away was important from a sales perspective.

[Anonymous No.10205353]

>>10205037
>I see my point went above your head.
Nah. Your "point" was, is, ridiculous and no amount of copesplaining will change that.
>Design textbooks taught for years that this was "good design".
Great. Then you can surely post some links to these "Design textbooks" that totally exist and that you've totally studied.
>>10205065
>to further cope
Just embarrassing. But let's revisit that after we have a look at those "Design textbooks" that Nintendo didn't want to use in "the West" but were forced to use in "the West" by "the West" because rules made by "the West".
There are good reasons "the West" is a well known red flag. Selfloathing weebs are cancer.

[Anonymous No.10205476]

>>10205353
>Great. Then you can surely post some links to these "Design textbooks" that totally exist and that you've totally studied.
Yes, I read Meggs' History of Graphic Design which is a pretty comprehensive summary of how the thought on design has evolved. "minimalism & unifomity - good" really kicked off after Swiss modernism became popular in America. these same ideas are present in a few other books I read on typography and design.
>Selfloathing weebs are cancer.
again—woosh. my point went above your head.
the point was not "Japan good, West bad". the point was that the Western covers before PS simply didn't have much variety and creative freedom. they played it very safe to appeal to lowest common denominator.
I think the main issue was that in the West, video games were still largely considered to be "toys for kids", nothing more than that. no one really thought that these games could have some artistic merit. it was same as they thought about TV cartoons, pretty much—in the 80s they were just low brow entertainment made to sell toys.
but, if you take Western music album art or movie posters, those looked far more "artistic", simply because they allowed for interesting ideas and creativity.

[Anonymous No.10205508]

>>10205291
Yes, like I said, uniformity has both upsides and downsides. Being able to identify what platform a game is for is certainly an advantage. Though I guess no one will defend the huge red stripe on Genesis games.
Plus, after all, back in the 90s it was mostly kids and parents who picked games. In an era before the internet, sometimes kids just wanted to know what the game was about from the cover. And that was exactly what the artworks portrayed, most of time. Seeing some 2deep4u cover was the last thing you'd want if you were a 10yo.

[Anonymous No.10205619]

But the Famicom games also used minimalist uniform designs. You have to keep in mind that the western NES box art were pretty much made in the same time frame.

>>10205154
>>10205065
>>10205037
Most of these box art designs look pretty bad compared to the US/PAL versions. The only exception being the Bomber Man and Dragon Ball covers. But these look like VHS movies. You'd not be able to tell they're a video game from far away.

[Anonymous No.10205656]

To elaborate: SFC box art are too busy. Background and foreground art lacks contrast. Squint your eyes and try to make out what you're looking at. You can't.

Compare the basic blue Super Mario World box art with the Japanese one. Yes, Japan got more interesting artwork... but it's meant to sell a product. Even your parents will know "Yes, that's Mario". Same thing happened with NES Mario 3.

[Anonymous No.10205669]

>>10200356
tell me, let me hear of juju's densetsu

[Anonymous No.10205671]

>>10200519
did they do Deadly Towers (forget the JO name) as well? That game had a light on it that lit up during gameplay.

[Anonymous No.10205672]

>>10205508
I'm pretty sure there were a lot of marketing guys in rooms pouring over customer complaints. A random stack of Super Famicom boxes could look a lot like VHS tapes if you aren't paying close attention. And then I'm sure there were issues of parents buying games for the wrong system. Your average millennial probably had at least two or three instances of getting a game as a gift from someone for a system they didn't have, especially when the names of the systems can be confusing to a boomer who knew nothing about video games. We used to have to be very specific with adults when it came to the difference between Super Nintendo and "regular Nintendo" and that Genesis was an entirely different machine from either of them. It was a real issue back then when adults were conditioned to understand that a TV was a TV, a VCR was a VCR, etc. Introducing all these different brands into the mix where a thing wasn't just "a video game" had been a major sticking point. And obviously it was these adults who were spending the money, not the kids, so making sure they weren't getting pissed off was paramount.

[Anonymous No.10205673]

>>10205656
Not just more interesting. Japanese box art was better in every sense of the word, 90% of the time.

[Anonymous No.10205674]

>>10202362
>ending a declarative with a question mark
I'm Ron Burgundy?

[Anonymous No.10205730]

>>10205037
design uniformity just makes me think of my fuckhead typography Prof I had for a minor class once. Fuck the swedes and fuck industrial design. I've never seen such self-absorbed fart huffing fags as in an industrial design clique. Fuckheads want the whole world to look like their shower head. Also notch is swedish and a fucking lazy fatass, so fuck him too, Halloween update was a fail and even 13 years later I'll still remind him of it.

[Anonymous No.10205742]

>>10205619
games weren't kept in glass cases in Japan though, so you'd just pick them up and see them in your hand to know they were a game.

[Anonymous No.10205761]

They had to design more key art in general, especially for manual use. People's impression of the game would be solely off what they saw in-store. You had to make an attractive appeal for your game. Now there's no need. And there quickly became less of a need as magazines turned rampant (and marketing found better ways to fleece customers). FC started innocent, and hell, everyone had money during the bubble economy. Y4VN2K

[Anonymous No.10205956]

>>10205742
Yes, if you check the back of the box you could tell. But if you notice, Squaresoft designed their box art with the same philosophy as Western markets. High contrast, the characters, and horizontal orientation.

[Anonymous No.10206120]

>>10205956
It seems like in Japan the individual publishers had their own patterns and design aesthetic.
>>10205065
Like you can see that Squaresoft, Nintendo, and Capcom each had their respective stylistic elements. In the west the console manufacturers enforced those things instead for library-wide instead of just publisher-wide consistency. My guess is that what happened with the NES, with a bunch of unlicensed games with weird designs, stuck in Nintendo's craw. Even in Japan the Famicom wasn't quite as insanely strange as some of the things that were coming out on the NES like the Aladdin Deck Enhancer. Maybe it's the difference between Japanese and American cultures where they trusted Japanese companies to color within the lines more than American ones who were more inclined to push the envelope and so had to take a firmer stance?

[Anonymous No.10207491]

>>10205476
>Yes, I read Meggs' History of Graphic Design
Have you really? I mean as part of a course curriculum, not something you desperately googled. If so that could explain a lot. If your professors intended takeway from reading that was all that regurgitated weeb cope then it's no wonder you turned out the broken insufferable pseud weeb that you are.
>w-w-woosh
It's hilarious how pseuds always imagine everyone doesn't understand them, when in reality everyone does understand them. Do you really think anyone who's been here longer than a summer hasn't heard the garbage weeb tropes you're spewing before? You didn't read that shit in a textbook. You read it on reddit.

[Anonymous No.10207516]

>>10199747
>even Japanese Christianity is more interesting
how do they do it

[Anonymous No.10207526]

>>10205671
Yep. Released in US by Broderbund, which were buddies with IREM and helped them to sell games in West