It's rare that I start a thread without a clear premise and accompanying long-winded OP, but this time around I'm just gonna get to the heart of the matter.
There should be a thread dedicated to gushing over Vanillaware's unique brand of 2D games.
I get the sense that Vanillaware is appreciated by a sizable demographic here on GAF, but with the wait times between releases stretching upwards of five years at a time discussion of their output often fades away until new marketing material surfaces for their upcoming project.
While Vanillaware's games have been oft-criticized for reusing environments, enemies, and bosses too liberally, there is no doubt that each game is a labor of love from a very small, unique, and talented team. Thanks to Kamitani's unique art style, everyone knows a Vanillaware game when they see one. While pixel art has come back into style in recent years via the indie scene, hand-painted 2D games like Odin Sphere, Muramasa, and Dragon's Crown are exceedingly rare.
People tend to associate 2D games that forgo pixel art with that chintzy "Flash" style of tweened animation. It's common for mobile and browser games to use vector art 2D assets with simple puppetry-esque skeletal animation these days, and the end result looks distinctly cheap. Vanillaware games, while they do make use of some Flash-inspired techniques, represent a much higher level of craft with their 2D presentation. The quality of the hand-drawn artwork is in a league of its own, and the games' use of abundant parallax layers, flashy effects work, huge bosses, and key-framed character animation put them at the peak of the current small crop of 2D games from a graphical standpoint. There are a select few games that feature such a high level of craft in their 2D presentation (e.g. Skullgirls, Ori and the Blind Forest, Rayman Legends, Cuphead).
While I'm focusing mainly on Vanillaware's art achievements in this opening post, I hope we also delve into how their games have steadily improved in terms of gameplay depth and fluidity with each successive release. Just play Odin Sphere Leifthrasir in Classic Mode and then compare it to the likes of Dragon's Crown and Leifthrasir's main mode to see how far Vanillaware has come in terms of designing fun combat mechanics that feel great to control.
Also, a shout out to Atlus for always bringing their A game with Vanillaware releases outside of Japan. Their localizations are always top-notch, and the inclusion of art books with standard releases is excessively generous.
Looks like I ended up with a long-winded OP after all.
There should be a thread dedicated to gushing over Vanillaware's unique brand of 2D games.
I get the sense that Vanillaware is appreciated by a sizable demographic here on GAF, but with the wait times between releases stretching upwards of five years at a time discussion of their output often fades away until new marketing material surfaces for their upcoming project.
While Vanillaware's games have been oft-criticized for reusing environments, enemies, and bosses too liberally, there is no doubt that each game is a labor of love from a very small, unique, and talented team. Thanks to Kamitani's unique art style, everyone knows a Vanillaware game when they see one. While pixel art has come back into style in recent years via the indie scene, hand-painted 2D games like Odin Sphere, Muramasa, and Dragon's Crown are exceedingly rare.
People tend to associate 2D games that forgo pixel art with that chintzy "Flash" style of tweened animation. It's common for mobile and browser games to use vector art 2D assets with simple puppetry-esque skeletal animation these days, and the end result looks distinctly cheap. Vanillaware games, while they do make use of some Flash-inspired techniques, represent a much higher level of craft with their 2D presentation. The quality of the hand-drawn artwork is in a league of its own, and the games' use of abundant parallax layers, flashy effects work, huge bosses, and key-framed character animation put them at the peak of the current small crop of 2D games from a graphical standpoint. There are a select few games that feature such a high level of craft in their 2D presentation (e.g. Skullgirls, Ori and the Blind Forest, Rayman Legends, Cuphead).
While I'm focusing mainly on Vanillaware's art achievements in this opening post, I hope we also delve into how their games have steadily improved in terms of gameplay depth and fluidity with each successive release. Just play Odin Sphere Leifthrasir in Classic Mode and then compare it to the likes of Dragon's Crown and Leifthrasir's main mode to see how far Vanillaware has come in terms of designing fun combat mechanics that feel great to control.
Also, a shout out to Atlus for always bringing their A game with Vanillaware releases outside of Japan. Their localizations are always top-notch, and the inclusion of art books with standard releases is excessively generous.
Looks like I ended up with a long-winded OP after all.