Now we begin the voyage into original content.

I’ve noticed that I tend to have this fatal combination of attention-deficit and tunnel-vision that dooms most old projects whenever I get an idea for a new one.

Well, I have an idea for a new project. Thus, I thought I’d empty some of the stuff from old projects just so I don’t forget about them entirely. Also, I’ll probably be recycling some of these concepts back into the new ones. Heck, some of these characters were actually recycled from old add-on story zaniness.


Thus, here are some sprites. Both of these rows are characters from the "Spacehunter Protojive" game project. The top row comes from cut-scene sprites from the RPG Maker 2000 iteration of the game. The bottom row comes from the Game Maker version. I’m fairly certain that all of these were originals that were not based on existing video game sprites. That was a rare thing for me to attempt up to this point. That said, the eyes on the bottom row were definitely influenced by Cave Story / Doukutsu Monogatari.

Anyway, the original SHP idea was to do NES-era homage/reference silliness in order to keep it simple. Thus, each of the little sprites attempted to use only four colors. I let myself have a little more leeway with the top ones. Some of the stuff in the top row looks kinda 'bleh' in retrospect . . . like Sophie's hands . . . but I'll post it anyway, just since I spent way too much time on all this silliness.


But who or what are these sprites of? Should you care? Do you? Probably not. Am I going to tell you anyway? YES.


Let’s take the bottom row and run from left to right.


First we have the title and player character, as seen in the scraps section. He’s overly enthusiastic for space justice. I also have some renders of him with a beam-sword and a blue energy-pistol, both of which were among the weapons fully implemented in all three versions of the game.

Next is a Kera variant that I never came up with a last name for. She’s the princess of the island resort planet upon which the game occurs. She’s normally pretty pleasant, but she’s become burned-out and cynical towards epic clashes between good and evil. She was planned to challenge you to a mid-boss fight before she’d let Protojive rescue her. She has that weird FFX-2 half-dress since she has a very acrobatic dance-danceity swordfighting style brought on by too much Soul Calibur.

Next is Melody Bunzinger and her fluffy pants. She’s an Absent-minded scientist support character. She sort of has a Lucca + Roll Casket + ADHD thing going on. She’s also a big Char Aznable fangirl. In the RM2K version, you could call her up using a Metal Gear reference communicator. Her family is named in homage to 'Bunzinger-Z' from the RPGMaker game 'LeGend Unabridged', which I believe was the first complete RPG Maker game that I played to completion.

Next we have Xavier Michael Dark III. He was the leader of the XD Space Pirate Gang. He has a little zoom-lens patch shamelessly ripped from Skies of Arcadia. In theory, he has a beam-sword duel with Protojive at some point. Like all HSD-variants, he drops vending machines onto those who oppose him, and he’s generally evil, but in an amusing sort of way.

Next is Sophia Dark. She can be seen here both in her lab coat and in her mech pilot / military command / Baroness cosplay getup. She builds various killer robots and such to serve as cannon-fodder enemies and mid-bosses. At some point, she and Melody were supposed to fight in giant robot suits. In my head, the theme music for her piloted giant robot suits has always been ‘You Have Nowhere to Go’ (Vol Opt Part 2) from Phantasy Star Online. She may or may not be named in homage to the Tank from Blaster Master.

Next is Gilbert Dark, which is a convoluted FF4 / Cowboy Bebop reference. He’s the youngest of the three and more chaotic-silly than villainous. He programmed the AI for Sophie’s deadly army of robot penguins. He also has electromagnetic roller skates for some reason. I’m not sure how I planned to work that into the game.

Finally, we have a generic XD Trooper. The space pirates were forced to form a more organized military structure during the great hidden war between the space pirates and space ninjas. After the war’s end, some of the pirates retained this more disciplined approach to combat even after reverting to many of their old habits, such as space looting and space pillaging and consuming vast quantities of space rum. This sprite is up here since it's the only enemy I programmed in all three versions of SHP. The guys would actually try to dodge the player's shots and then counter with their missile launcher.


All right, that's more than enough rambling for now. It's time to get back to work on more of that original content I mentioned earlier.