Kasumi Ninja Boxart and Title Screen Question

[Jag64]

Who was the artist that did the box art for Kasumi Ninja? Never really understood why the characters looked so different from those in the game. The ninjas' colors were not even right.

 

Who tf is the ninja in black hovering over  everyone - is it supposed to be Gyaku? I don't blame the artist, obviously. Anyone that's heard my broken record knows I blame Sam, lol.

 

The title screen is really nice looking. And honestly, the box art is really well done too. Just curious why it's so far off from the characters in the game. We're not talking about a 1984 arcade game or NES title where the boxart has to convey some imagination; we're talking about a game that used photo-realistic, digitized images.

 

By the way, Pakawa's and Danja's "stories" .... holy crap, lol. I guess "it was a different time," as they say. But does anyone know who did the art and why it didn't match the game? Was the artist told to add more personality or life to the characters?

[sirlynxalot]

Do the games credits have this information?

[Zerosquare]

Are you expecting actual art direction from a company that released Trevor Mc Fur?

[Leonard Smith]

I never thought I'd see this much excitement over Kasumi Ninja.

What's next?  Videos and box art mockups for Club Drive, lol?

[Jag64]

10 minutes ago, Leonard Smith said:

I never thought I'd see this much excitement over Kasumi Ninja.

What's next?  Videos and box art mockups for Club Drive, lol?

That could take upwards of an hour. You want me to put more work into a mockup than Atari did on the entire retail release?

 

(Feel for the teams that made some of these games and had them shoved out the door incomplete. You know they would have loved to finish them. It was rarely the designers' fault the time frames were so tight.)

[agradeneu]

The boxart is fine, although it does not match the in game gfx 100%. Same with Iron Soldier, the mech looks different than the title screen artwork.

However, I think this was quite common in the 90's. 

 

Personally, for new releases I prefer the box art to match the in game gfx artwork style. We did that with GM.

[agradeneu]

40 minutes ago, Leonard Smith said:

I never thought I'd see this much excitement over Kasumi Ninja.

What's next?  Videos and box art mockups for Club Drive, lol?

Smokes and mirrors lol. 

[Leonard Smith]

37 minutes ago, Jag64 said:

That could take upwards of an hour. You want me to put more work into a mockup than Atari did on the entire retail release?

 

(Feel for the teams that made some of these games and had them shoved out the door incomplete. You know they would have loved to finish them. It was rarely the designers' fault the time frames were so tight.)

You do what you feel is right.

Just saying that Kasumi is not a great game and it's amusing to find someone so passionate about it to create so much content for it.

 

Then again, I did just do a painstaking comparison of Realsports Baseball variants, so no judgement intended.

[82-T/A]

1 hour ago, Leonard Smith said:

I never thought I'd see this much excitement over Kasumi Ninja.

What's next?  Videos and box art mockups for Club Drive, lol?

 

This is all to distract us from the New World Order!!!

 

 

[Jag64]

37 minutes ago, Leonard Smith said:

You do what you feel is right.

Just saying that Kasumi is not a great game and it's amusing to find someone so passionate about it to create so much content for it.

 

Then again, I did just do a painstaking comparison of Realsports Baseball variants, so no judgement intended.

I should note that I consider it to be one of the worst games in the history of not just the genre, but the industry. BUT! And this is a Kardashian-sized caboose, brother ... it was the first fighter for the first 64-bit video game console. I think that's pretty cool. The game itself is a mix of bad controls and racist stereotypes combined with three of the same character color-swapped. But the hisssstttoorrrryyyy. lol

[Jag64]

1 hour ago, 82-T/A said:

 

This is all to distract us from the New World Order!!!

 

 

Hey. Ignore the NWO and look over here.

[sirlynxalot]

2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

The boxart is fine, although it does not match the in game gfx 100%. Same with Iron Soldier, the mech looks different than the title screen artwork.

However, I think this was quite common in the 90's. 

Boy is this ever true. Especially when graphics were cruder the box art helped give you something to imagine while playing the game, or to understand if the graphics were so rudimentary that you didn't know what something was supposed to represent (eg many atari 2600 games).  Something clearly went wrong with MegaMan on NES though.

Edited July 13, 2022 by sirlynxalot

[Jag64]

13 hours ago, sirlynxalot said:

Boy is this ever true. Especially when graphics were cruder the box art helped give you something to imagine while playing the game, or to understand if the graphics were so rudimentary that you didn't know what something was supposed to represent (eg many atari 2600 games).  Something clearly went wrong with MegaMan on NES though.

And sure, that makes sense with 2600 games, NES games, those that require more imagination. But common sense (so uncommon anymore) would suggest that the digitized characters are easy to represent in art, because well - they're not 4 blocks; they're actually fully-realized characters. This might just be another case of the boot licking lemmings that enjoyed paying the Tramiels to spit in their faces. I dunno.

 

Why, lmao, why in the fck would anyone rely on early 80's style "imagination-inspiring" art when the characters are done? How incredibly moronic is it to say, "Here are the characters, fully viewable and real. But we're gonna draw different ones on the box art to help your imagination." lmao. I swear, lol. I get to read some of the wildest sht on here, lol. Thank you guys for that.

Edited July 14, 2022 by Jag64

[roots.genoa]

Since it's also on the title screen, though, it was probably made by an artist from Hand Made.

[sirlynxalot]

3 hours ago, Jag64 said:

And sure, that makes sense with 2600 games, NES games, those that require more imagination. But common sense (so uncommon anymore) would suggest that the digitized characters are easy to represent in art, because well - they're not 4 blocks; they're actually fully-realized characters. This might just be another case of the boot licking lemmings that enjoyed paying the Tramiels to spit in their faces. I dunno.

 

Why, lmao, why in the fck would anyone rely on early 80's style "imagination-inspiring" art when the characters are done? How incredibly moronic is it to say, "Here are the characters, fully viewable and real. But we're gonna draw different ones on the box art to help your imagination." lmao. I swear, lol. I get to read some of the wildest sht on here, lol. Thank you guys for that.

I've read that often packaging and art like this gets developed when the game is early in development. It could be that the artist was told what the game was going to look like, prior to the dev team getting the actors and costumes and doing the motion capture.  Or maybe this was concept art and when they were getting the costumes together the dev team just said "close enough"and called it A day.

[Jag64]

20 minutes ago, sirlynxalot said:

I've read that often packaging and art like this gets developed when the game is early in development. It could be that the artist was told what the game was going to look like, prior to the dev team getting the actors and costumes and doing the motion capture.  Or maybe this was concept art and when they were getting the costumes together the dev team just said "close enough"and called it A day.

100% That's kind of what I'm wondering - was it a time table thing, miscommunication, maybe someone didn't care, or the artist used concepts for the title, etc. I threw the original question up here, because this group is the best possible place to get a definitive answer. _{(eyyy, as close to definitive as we can ~30 years removed from when things happened)} I know some industry vets, Atari and otherwise, swing by here; so I figured it was possible one of the people involved would see it. Or more likely, one of the diehards here would know. Not every member is a walking encyclopedia, lol, but a lot of you cats are the most reliable source for this kind of thing.