/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9601049]

Is it possible for a skilled (perhaps extremely skilled) artist to take an archaic sprite and actually upscale the detail while making it still look exactly the same character as what people's imaginations filled in for them back in the day? A.I. completely fails at this. Game companies outsource their remakes to Malaysia and give us globohomo art versions instead. But I still feel like there is a theoretical remastering process out there which is an authentic 1:1 recreation of what we saw in the original sprite, that could be achieved with the right talent, enough revisions and feedback, and perhaps even a touch of the genius

[Anonymous No.9601056]

>>9601049
yeah i think so
problem is ya gotta find someone to do it

[Anonymous No.9601058]

>we
go back to your colony

[Anonymous No.9601063]

>>9601058
actual autism
learn context clues, he didn't say "we" as in 4chan he said "we" as in the people who played the game in general
i'm not arguing over this don't try to start an argument, i'm going to bed actually it's 3am and i went way too late last night

[Anonymous No.9601068]

>>9601049
OP, you see in this sprite exactly what everyone sees. Everything else you add to it is basically making shit up. You can either do it worse or better. A perfect remaster would look into game's concept art and recreate it from there. Not only that, you need to completely emulate the game's style, which arguably only the original artist can do. But even then people might consider it "imperfect", because the end product is a product of pixel grid, where your imagination filled in the blanks.
You're asking for some CSI shit when they zoom in into a screw on a car and see a reflection of a guy so they zoom in some more into his sunglasses and see a reflection of a car 100 miles away so they zoom in again and see the face of a killer.

[Anonymous No.9601089]

>>9601049
A good sprite artist could capture the spirit of old sprites at a higher resolution. Such people are better off working on thier own original projects though. No one needs upscaled this or remastered that. Old sprites are already good.

[Anonymous No.9601110]

Remaking the image with a higher number of pixels, while keeping the basic design intact? I don't see why that wouldn't be possible, and easy enough. Like Ryu in Street Fighter 3, vs Street Fighter 2.

[Anonymous No.9601146]

>>9601063
goodnight :)

[Anonymous No.9601151]

>>9601110
depends. if you want 1 to 1 look, it's gonna be hard. rest depends on number of sprites VS budget.
>Like Ryu in Street Fighter 3, vs Street Fighter 2.
same res, different style.

[Anonymous No.9601197]

>>9601049
No. "Back in the day" people actually had imaginations, so each individual might imagine it differently. The only way to get a consensus on how something is imagined is with globohomo art versions for zoombies whose imagination has been replaced by tittok groupthink.

[Anonymous No.9601203]

>>9601197
>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.9601257]

>>9601049
Back in the day we were looking at these pixels through CRT monitors though. So what we saw back in the day(assuming 30 yo boomer or older) wouldn’t even be the same as just looking at the raw pixels on a modern display.

>>9601197
Some of us were children then, further complicating things.

>>9601203
Some of us grew up to be /pol/acks too. Like me and the guy behind Grahfmetal games for example are on opposite sides of the political spectrum but grew up on some of the same games. Reality is stranger then fiction sometimes.

[Anonymous No.9601279]

>>9601197
Best post, leaving aside the buzzwords. Everyone would fill in their opinions differently when using an unrealistic sprite from back then.
You would have to use the original concept artwork, which would again be horrible for a lot of people as it would not fir what their imagination had made of the ancient sprite.

[Anonymous No.9601305]

Just to give it a quick try, here's the kind of thing you can do with double the amount of pixels. I'm no real kind of artist though,

[Anonymous No.9601310]

>>9601049
No, because everyone had different mental interpretations of the sprite work. This is exactly why people always get upset over movie adaptations of novels.

[Anonymous No.9601312]

>>9601257
>Back in the day we were looking at these pixels through CRT monitors though. So what we saw back in the day(assuming 30 yo boomer or older) wouldn’t even be the same as just looking at the raw pixels on a modern display.

seems like it would just be another part of the challenge. I'm definitely one to believe that the crt is the authentic look. the shadowy and almost 3d-creating effect of the CRT is part of what would need to be recreated

[Anonymous No.9601313]

>>9601257
>Some of us were children then, further complicating things.
Indeed. Luckily I was old enough to drink when that game came out so didn't have to deal with a childs vivid imagination.

>>9601279
I can't recall a single piece of original concept artwork that I didn't wish I could unsee.

[Anonymous No.9601317]

>>9601305

I think you are missing the point with the eyes as he is clearly looking at the camera. The lower face should also be more oval. However the hair is very interesting. Maybe proving that it is possible is really a case of small steps, take small features and gradually increasing the pixels and perhaps there is a certain matrix of increased pixels which almost everyone agrees is one-to-one

you could even imaging an automated version doing it, just with a huge amount of user feedback guiding it at each iteration

[Anonymous No.9601325]

>>9601049
Yes, but it's a long process, of restoring original concept art or re-creating the art style. System shock remake devs simply hired the original artist.
Nobody is doing it because it's time and money-consuming, it's always easier to pay small money for slaves abroad who have no clue what they are doing

[Anonymous No.9601327]

>>9601317
See, that's where interpretation comes into the picture. Maybe the eyes are supposed to be black black dots. Or maybe they're supposed to be more detailed, but they didn't have the space to depict that. What you should probably do at this point, is refer to the original concept art.
You could also do it like this, I guess, though that kind of makes him look angrier.

[Anonymous No.9601362]

>>9601305

[Anonymous No.9601371]

If you give him purple irises, and round off the face a little to try to match the higher res stills in the original game, you get this, which I don't think is too bad actually. Added shading to the nose too.

[Anonymous No.9601376]

>>9601371

[Anonymous No.9601704]

I believe you can get close enough, and there are multiple ways to do so, it's not like there's only one way to interpret the game's artstyle. But then, there are some games that are so primitive that the sprites won't really feel right in any other way.

I tend to interpret most retro japanese games as having a cel-shaded anime artstyle if I were to think of them in HD. Even games with lots of programmer art like Super Mario World.

Unfortunately, not only are new sprite interpretations never going to beat the originals, period, but also it's very hard to align with everyone else's imaginations. For instance, I think the Sonic 2 HD remake, while impressive, still feels a bit off, may be the jaggy movements and the excessive details. Sonic Mania did a better job reimagining the sprites in my opinion.

[Anonymous No.9601708]

>>9601362
lul

[Anonymous No.9601720]

>>9601257
>Back in the day we were looking at these pixels through CRT monitors though. So what we saw back in the day(assuming 30 yo boomer or older) wouldn’t even be the same as just looking at the raw pixels on a modern display.
Motherfucker are you blind? Even old as fuck PC Carts had crisp and sharp displays at the resolution MI ran at. You saw exactly fucking that. Fucking /crtl general is rotting people's minds

[Anonymous No.9601775]

>>9601720
Oh I remember seeing the pixels, but they were softened compared to a modern monitor. I’d say the CRT fanatics have a point, that style of technology does seem to add its own flavour to a degree. Especially when we’re dealing with early mid 90s budget consumer CRTs rather then high end ones.

[Anonymous No.9601842]

>>9601720
>how can HD be real if our eyes arent real?

[Anonymous No.9601912]

>>9601775
No they fucking didn't. I spent some time toying with a late 80s VGA CRT just last year and it was every bit as sharp as a modern fucking display let alone a contemporary 90s display with low res pixilated graphics. Fuck your flavour

[Anonymous No.9601989]

>>9601049
https://youtu.be/5gcTtcztDKg
This guy does that kind of stuff. I think.

[Anonymous No.9602151]

Something like this?

[Anonymous No.9602859]

>>9601720

1990 is a long time ago. The reference photos I have suggests they were a lot more blurry even compared to typical crt filters today

And even so, the crt adds a lot more than blurryness. it changes the colors and gives everything a certain texture. plus it's the space in between the pixels that it affects subtlety

[Anonymous No.9602870]

>>9601912

probably wasn't consumer level then. the cheaper ones had blurriness. you sound like one of those trinitronfags

[Anonymous No.9602884]

>>9601720
>Fucking /crtl general is rotting people's minds
yup. eventually the trend will die and only a few obsessed weirdos will continue to flood every thread to insist their screen is the true way of experiencing it, like audiophiles and their setups.

[Anonymous No.9603346]

>>9602151
whoa, man~!

[Anonymous No.9603521]

>>9602870
lol no, it was some junk-ass 9 inch Samsung with serious brightness issues. It was still sharp. You people have fucking deluded yourselves

[Anonymous No.9603710]

>>9603521
Maybe tvs are sharper in the berenstein universe? I mean I did get to try out a 20 year old 21” Sanyo crt a couple years ago on composite running ps2 and Wii and I didn’t see any sharp pixels. It was nothing like the LCD faux retro we have today with those bright chunky garish pixels. There were pixels but they were more rounded and blended even up close. In my reality composite CRT tvs can’t do sharp pixels I guess.

[Anonymous No.9603761]

>>9603710
Who the fuck played Monkey Island on a TV?

[Anonymous No.9603921]

>>9603761
CRT over VGA is indeed much sharper but some anons seem to think even composite TVs are sharp. And I was like nigga wut?

[Anonymous No.9603924]

>>9603921
>CRT over VGA
What the hell are you talking about?

[Anonymous No.9603937]

>>9603924
I mean a CRT monitor with a 15 pin VGA connector like everyone used until the mid 2000s. For some reason we got talking about CRT TVs lol.

[Anonymous No.9603951]

>>9603937
Literally no one played Monkey Island on a set through composite video.

[Anonymous No.9603952]

>>9603761
Wasn't it released on Sega CD? Not a big audience, mind.

[Anonymous No.9603971]

>>9603952
Actually that's a fair point; I'd completely forgotten that port existed. That said, the original point was that CRT monitors made "blurry pixels" which is nevertheless nonsense.

[Anonymous No.9603981]

>>9603521

if it has brightness issues that might explain it. I think pixel bleeding increases with brightness, and people typically ran them bright

I have a strong suspicion for example that the moonlit water on the melee island dock is designed to bleed and glow

[Anonymous No.9604128]

>>9602151
That's a pretty different art style though, which is maybe missing the point of what OP was saying(I think). It doesn't look like an "upscaled" version.

[Anonymous No.9604130]

>>9603951
No absolutely not. I think we just got lost in the weeds except…

>>9603952
lol i forgot about that one I even saw my older bro playing it back in the day. Ok crazy now I’m remembering I didn’t play it on my own at home pc until like ‘95 or ‘86 something like that.

>>9603971
They definitely don’t have blurry pixels but they’re different then on an LCD monitor. CRT monitors seem to do “things” to the image but to a lesser degree then a CRT TV does. I faintly remember a subtle blendedness even with low res 320x200 games but it’s been like 15 years since I’ve used a CRT monitor so maybe I’ve forgotten what they’re like.