cathoderaydude
patreon
Video: The Sprite Tape Mystery
🕑 Added 2022-03-27 21:48:29 +0000 UTChttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q6SXzmcqPY
Hi everyone. I have once again put more effort into a video than the topic necessarily deserved, hopefully to your benefit.
Note: For some reason, this video will not convert to 4K. Since the majority of my viewers are vocally uninterested in 4K, I'll probably just release it like this. Youtube claims it will "eventually" finish and become available at full res, but I'm not holding my breath and wanted to get at least a few hours of early access.
I received these tapes from a viewer (thanks f15sim! I will finally return these to you this week! sorry it took so long!) and was immediately captivated by their contents - for about an hour, at which point I'd pretty much figured out everything they were about, except what they were for, which turned out to be a much more protracted and unsatisfying deep dive, which didn't quite turn up the hard facts I'd hoped for.
It took me a while to figure out how to make a video about it, because all I really have are the tapes - which contain about two hours of footage, only about two minutes of which is interesting enough to show on screen - and very tenuous connections to possible projects, none of which were documented enough to present outright. Literally, I think I found three articles, total, on the "game" that I believe these were used for; no screenshots.
With so little data available, I eventually decided that the best way to cover it would be to talk about the way that games like this one were made, and what the context of its creation would probably have looked like. That ended up being curiously tedious.
It turns out that the "digitized sprites" era of videogames was shorter than I thought. I was only really able to dig up a few games - mostly fighters - that used the actual photographic technique. Of those, only a couple used human actors, others used clay or models, and lots of games that people apply the term to arguably don't count.
I didn't want to rant about it in the video, but I don't understand what makes Donkey Kong Country or Killer Instinct "digitized." Their sprites are pixels created on a computer, and the only difference is whether they were created by hand or with a 3D renderer. "Digitized" means you took something analog and made it digital - that kinda has to be a photograph, so if you're coming from a 3D render, what are you "digitizing?" Weird!
I also found out that of the few actual photographic-digitized games I could come up with, only about two of them (Mortal Kombat and Gabriel Knight 2) have any sprite rips or behind the scenes footage available. The only other examples I could think of were things like first person adventure games e.g. Lost In Time, which didn't really have any sprites, and were more like "still FMV" if you will, and none of them have making-of videos.
Anyway, that's why I sprite-ified myself. Made it a lot easier to illustrate my points. I did a lot more poses that aren't in the video; keep an eye out for a sprite sheet if I ever decide to make it.
Comments
MuscleFan90210
This is my fave video by far. I can't wait for what you've got up your sleeve next. I honestly can't get enough of these.
Tyler Kurth
This sort of ephemera is among the stuff I love the most. All this work and effort would have been completely lost to time had you not taken the time to make this video
Jim Hooke
I'm only 7 minutes in as I type this but wow, a video Snappy! I had one or more of these!
Brielle Garcia
As someone who works in VR/AR right now (and who is sick of "metaverse" hype), this video was absolutely incredible. Cyber Park sounds exactly like so many pitches that I hear every day. I did some digging around and I came across the names Rusty Dawe, Amy Jo Kim, and Chris Donahue and said they all worked on Cyberpark. https://archive.org/stream/computergamedeve1998unse/computergamedeve1998unse_djvu.txt Thanks for the great video!
Cathode Ray Dude
Thanks so much! For this video, I pushed my presentation table way forward so I could put more space between me and the wall - it's not usually practical to move the table over and over, but since this was going to be a "non-technical" video (meaning, one where I'm not doing anything with my hands or any actual objects), I decided to do it all standing and get the desk out of the way.
Holy smokes, this is your best video yet, the production values especially. Did you film the expository bits against a green screen and composite in the background wall with its usual sconce? There’s no shadow!
Cathode Ray Dude
because he is! toe to tip!
wow that person you used as an example of 3D character customisation looks just like bart
Spencer Moore
I was given a stack of large sized Beta SP tapes when I was an AE. I forgot the name of the technique, but I think I "blanked" them. Basically preparing the TC, bars and tone, and putting black-burst on the rest of the tape. The idea was when you were laying back to tape you'd set the TC to trigger at a certain point, and lay down program. like at 01:00:00;00. Or something sorry this took me back.
You're welcome! Don't forget you've got a studio camera sitting here waiting for you. :) I was surprised you didn't bring up Seventh Guest.
I remember building little machines with the tiles they offered. What a time to be alive; it felt like stealing when they were giving it away for free. Back when you could be reasonably sure that anybody who was spamming at least had the courtesy to be a human being.
Cathode Ray Dude
Well, it was predated by Journeyman Project, and I think a few others - but it was probably one of the earlier highly successful titles to integrate FMV, although it's only a percent or two of the content.
I kept waiting for Myst to be mentioned as the OG of gratuitous FMV stuff.
Burley
Excellent video! I was not prepaired for the Furcadia reference... remember wings cost extra and can go on any species!
