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CUPHEAD: 1930s video game

PS. How good a time is it to be alive for shmuppy games?

Assault Android Cactus (PC/Vita/WiiU/PS4):
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Resogun (PS4):
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Cuphead (PC...?):
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SaggyMonkey said:
Amazing art style, I can't wait to explore the world!

Oh, it's a fighter. Never mind.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's a fighter, at least not in the traditional sense. Details seem to be limited at the moment though, but I guess it's a "run 'n gun" + 1 vs. 1 fighting game?

It will apparently have a playable world map, and should have lots of hidden secrets, but maybe that won't be enough exploration to suit your tastes.
 
I want this. Now.

Especially with the inspirations that they've listed.

The official “About” page on Studio MDHR’s website cites a wide range of classic titles that served as inspiration for Cuphead, including Contra, Ikaruga, Super Mario Bros. 3, Gunstar Heroes, and Mega Man.
Click to expand...
 
Metal-Geo said:
Very interesting and beautiful. Though I wonder if the VHS / scanline effect was the right decision, instead of film grain and hairs.

Would love to see some more gameplay footage!
Click to expand...

Scanlines effect I'm with you, but maybe they're shooting for how you would play that on a coin-op or something, lol. Dunno why they'd go with that interlaced effect. As far as what you call "VHS", I see that more as a telecine from the early days of color cinema, with the shaky brightness telecine and not aligned/not properly converted (RGB) tri-tubes. Seems a bit of a mash up from various eras ahah

Either way, it looks incredible and the animations are mind-blowing.
Hopefully the gameplay is up to par
 
studioMDHR said:
It will be on PC for sure and we are currently pursuing console platforms. We will release details as we know/make decisions.
Click to expand...
Your game is looking sooo good. Have you done a kickstarter yet? or is it not necessary. Would love to see the game on consoles. Also the scanlines look great imo.
 
EdibleKnife said:
I'm sure they won't miss out on making that a filter option
Click to expand...

Oddly enough, we didn't have that on our checklist...but I think it might need to be a "must add" feature if it worked well across the game. Thanks for the GamePro Tip!

Here's a sample of what it would look like:
Cuphead_Black-White_Desaturation.jpg
 
Game looks absolutely fantastic! For how long have you worked on it and how confident are you that you'll be able to get it out in 2014?
 
studioMDHR said:
Oddly enough, we didn't have that on our checklist...but I think it might need to be a "must add" feature if it worked well across the game. Thanks for the GamePro Tip!

Here's a sample of what it would look like:
Cuphead_Black-White_Desaturation.jpg
Click to expand...

Looks good! But you may need to check the luminosity of your designs if the game is to be playable in B/W.
 
studioMDHR said:
Hey hey, Chad of StudioMDHR here. We have our reasons for the effects. Let me explain:

1) We do have film grain/dust/scratches and hair f/x. Video compression has destroyed a lot of it (in-game is looks a lot better). We are still playing with the contrast and opacity of these effects, so everyone should be happy with the final result.

2 a)The chromatic aberration is put there to emulate bad film transfer effects (and not just VHS). It's a choice that, we think, really makes the visuals stand out and nicely matches part of the 1930s cartoon atmosphere we grew up watching.
b) This aberration also gives a nod to the color bleeding that CRT's give off (phosphor glow?), and since we are merging 30s cartoons & video games, we feel this effect also gives a nod to playing video games(arcades too) in the golden era.

3) Lastly the scanlines - this is again tied to playing video games on CRT's. The scanlines added such fine details to pixel art and we find it does some of the same things and more to Cuphead. Again, it's hard to perfectly see all the effects on the video and we hope that our end result will make everybody shake hands.
Click to expand...
You're entirely right. Looking at the videos more carefully, there's indeed a good presence of hairs and dust. My apologies! There's even a bit of flickering (and jittering?) Good attention to detail!

Are you guys also emulating old cel animation special effects? Like paper foil for reflecting materials.
 
This is amazing! I'm surprised it took so long for someone to make something like this

Edit:I mean I'm surprised no one has tried this kind of thing before. I'm hyped
 
looks incredible, but i dont think it would be my cup of tea. still, i'd likely pick it up if the price is reasonable just for the art
 
I think the vhs-style filtering is great and fits well, a lot of us have experienced those movies on those super cheap vhs compilations back in the '80 and early '90 that featured comics from that era. the video quality was always terrible and the sound quality had a very low bitrate.

I am VERY interested in this game.
 
studioMDHR said:
Oddly enough, we didn't have that on our checklist...but I think it might need to be a "must add" feature if it worked well across the game. Thanks for the GamePro Tip!

Here's a sample of what it would look like:
Cuphead_Black-White_Desaturation.jpg
Click to expand...

Damn that blurriness / chromatic abberations is killing my eyes :/ (especially on the black and white one)

Please make the visual effects options that you can individually turn off. I tend to play my old-school 2D games on a real CRT, I don't need more scanlines :)

b) This aberration also gives a nod to the color bleeding that CRT's give off (phosphor glow?), and since we are merging 30s cartoons & video games, we feel this effect also gives a nod to playing video games(arcades too) in the golden era.
Click to expand...

Color bleeding is NTSC bane. Phosphor glow (the size of the phosphore spot) depends on the brightness and colour. By connecting the dots it and can make a coloured area feel full (yellows) or dithered (blues), but it never bleeds on the adjacent area, unless your monitor is badly calibrated or you are watching telly with an NTSC receiver.
 
I must have this game. I find it a tragedy that I found this game by accident, needs more hype. I can't stop reading and seeing more and more of this game. The Captain Silver Boss Trailer and music has me excited for this one.
 
Dang, I was hoping the thread bump meant some new info on the game. Can't wait for this one, one of my most anticipated games next year.
 
ComputerMKII said:
I'm not sure I feel comfortable with taking inspiration on 30s-era cartoons. Weren't many of these cartoons racist?
Click to expand...
The 30s in general were racist and sexist to a much stronger degree than we are today (we still are as a collective, I would say, but at least there's been a lot of steps forward, some steps back), but there's nothing wrong with taking a classic cartoon style, the animated, sort of jump-y postures and strange unrealistic movement these characters had and bring it to a stylistic choice for the game. A lot of things from history have some terrible and less than pleasant elements to them that people pull from. Basically if any game pulls from a past era, there's all sorts of messed up shit that was going on during that time that is disgusting to is today, but at the same time, that's part of history and it's important to embrace and learn from these times than it is to condemn it. And roots of art forms that have evolved are important and nice to embrace, even if they have some darker sides to them.

Basicaly, though some cartoons were racist, that doesn't mean the style itself is racist, and nothing in the game shown so far seems racist to me. It's a product of it's time, something that is stylistically interesting for a game in it's own right, and I'm pretty sure the developer or most consumers who play it will think the style or game are racist just because it's based off of a 1930s style, which had some racist cartoons thanks to a further barrier between people who were too focused on physical differences.
 
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