#sprite comparison

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 New Age of Heroes: Recolored Rogue

In their video game adaptations, Capcom's developers based the X-Men's appearance on the then-contemporary designs of the 90's. As such, Rogue looked like this when she first appeared in a Capcom produced fighting game, X-Men vs. Street Fighter.

But for one reason or another, Rogue's sprites from X-Men vs. Street Fighter were recolored for her appearance in Marvel vs. Capcom 2. (Interestingly, it appears that they never originally intended to change her design for MvC2.)

To my knowledge, no one at Capcom has ever stated why this change was made, but I have one theory. When Rogue first joined the X-Men, she wore a costume where the primary colors were green and white/silver. It's also worth noting that all of Rogue's MvC2 sprites and palettes use a smaller amount colors, since her jacket is no longer colored differently from the rest of her attire.

I'm pretty sure it's just an error since most of the pregame sprites have little differences like that. I guess they modeled the pregame sprites after an earlier version of their normal sprites, then decided to redo parts of the normal sprites?

Honestly I thought that too, cos that makes a lot of sense, but the more I looked at the sprites the stranger it seemed.

After messing with the sprites (minus Keebo cos of technical difficulties), cos this was making me question my sanity, I’ve found that there are three people who have notably different features;

Both Kaede and Rantaro’s eyes and nose slightly change shape and Kaede’s brow is different. In comparison Tsumugi’s biggest change is her eyes, not only does the colour change but her pupil is unusually big for the art style before changing to the norm, there’s also the eyelashes being thickened. Rantaro also has a change in pupil size but the difference is minuscule in comparison. Her entire face is shifted down a little but that is common in some of the other sprites.

The rest are near replicas with the exception of a few slight alterations in expression, shade and their faces moving slightly up or down but structurally the same. Here;

So, I’d have to agree that there is a high likelihood that it is due to some sprites not being updated, but the fact that Tsumugi of all people has the most changes between sprites just strikes me as a little suspicious and thus makes me want to theorise.

The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match: Nameless SNK flew a little too close to the sun when they created K9999, a legally dubious character based upon Tetsuo from Akira. Despite K9999's appearances in KOF '01 & '02, Kodansha (the IP owners of Akira) never publicly pursued legal action against SNK.

So when SNK was developing a revision of The King of Fighters 2002, they decided to avoid any potential legal controversies and removed K9999 from this new version's roster.

Not happy to just remove a character and leave a roster spot empty, SNK replaced K9999 with "Nameless". Namless is the only character to feature wholly new sprites in The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match.

Toy Story Tamagotchi: Full Color Sprites

The King of Fighters AFK: Sprite Similarities

Late last year, SNK released another King of Fighters mobile game. And while I don't have much interest in gacha gaming, this most title caught my attention due to it's peculiar sprite work.

If you played any of the SNK developed fighting games for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, than you'll instantly recognize the visual similarities they share with this new title.

Most of the characters in KOF AFK appear to use edited sprites from those old NGPC games, but reanimated in somewhat unpleasant manner. Instead of being one solid element, the character sprites appear to be chopped up and then reassembled, so to be animated in a new manner.

While I'm being a bit harsh on KOF AFK's visuals, I am happy to see the NGPC style make such an unexpected return in late 2024. Furthermore, it looks like we'll be seeing some characters rendered in this style for the first time ever.

Nintendo Entertainment System: Paper Craft Pixels

I never noticed this until recently, but video game historian Frank Cifaldi once remarked on how sprites were recreated for NES box art.

Something people almost always get wrong when trying to replicate the classic NES "black box" aesthetic is that the sprites are almost always off-model, and are obviously assembled by hand out of cut paper (look how crooked his right pupil is). Look at his nipples too. Study his nipples. Think deeply about Donkey Kong's nipples. Soon you will notice that they are at a different pixel aspect ratio than most of the rest of his body.

( Frank Cifaldi, Video Game History Foundation )

As you can see, these recreations often take liberties. Sometimes the sprites are simplified or given additional details. The quality of these recreations also vary. Sometimes you can clearly see some crooked pixels, while others look quite precise.

For whatever reason, Mario's jumping sprite from Super Mario Bros. got recreated three times for box art, even though that sprite wasn't used in two of those games.

Ms. Pac-Man / Pepper Pac-Man / Pac-Mom