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Killer Queens

12.22.2015

There's nothing like a little fan art to wrap up the year. I present two Killer Queen sprites, drawn in a style intended to evoke Capcom's arcade beat 'em ups.

Early Winter Gift/tbt

12.17.2015

A surprise package arrived at the compound a few days ago. After it passed the security screening protocol, I was surprised to discover it contained a game I had worked on six years ago. Not only did Watermelon ship two physical copies of the game (Dreamcast and PC versions), but also they included a variety of merch and a hardcover, full-color strategy guide.

A spread featuring one of the bosses I made for Pier Solar.

Inspired, I cracked open the vault and dug through project archives for more images to showcase from the game.

This environment serves as a backdrop for battle scenes. While you observe a jungle, I only see a jungle of graphical restrictions.

Because the game was originally created as a Sega Genesis cart, I was limited to a 16-color palette (the pink designates transparency) with a 3-bits-per-RBG-channel color depth.

In addition, the background had to be built from 2 layers of 8x8 pixel tiles with a maximum of 255 tiles per layer. Fortunately, I was able to mirror individual tiles, which allowed me to get more mileage out of them and conserve the total tile count.

Layer 1 and its tile palette

Layer 2 and its tile palette

As a bonus, enjoy another battle background that my friend and former coworker, Andrew Bado, crafted for the game.