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How were pixel perfect strategy guides created?


amorri40

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This is something I have been pondering over since reading through these old PlayStation solutions magazines. Back in the day strategy guides for 2D games published amazing pixel-perfect whole level images stitched together. Does anyone know how they actually did this? 

Did they get these images from the game companies or did they have special hardware to take screenshots and manually had to edit them together (removing player sprites etc).

 

Here is one example of what i'm talking about, but I remember much better ones especially for the Mega Drive:

page-080.jpg

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You could make a map like that one of two ways.

 

The hard way was the one Nintendo went with for many of its pixel-perfect maps in early issues of Nintendo Power, where the console was hooked up to a frame capture device that sent graphical information to a computer programmed to take a new screenshot every time the scene shifted a certain number of pixels in a given direction. Then it was the artist's job to stitch those images together in Photoshop or another editing program. This often resulted in player and enemy sprites being visible and 'lines' where the stitch work wasn't 100% accurate (look at the maps for, say, Double Dragon in the very first issue of Nintendo Power, or the maps for Goonies II in Nintendo Fun Club and you'll see this used). Unofficial strategy guides had to rely on this method for their pixel-perfect maps, because they weren't working with the developers. The only alternative was to have someone hand-draw the maps, which was cheaper but far less useful and informative. :)

 

The easier way was for companies who had access to the level data on the development computers to supply the image information to the magazine or guide maker, who could then put it together and lay it out in whatever way they needed. From what I understand, some companies were more friendly about handing this information out to publications than others. :)

 

*huggles*
Areala

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I've listened to podcasts like the Player One Podcast with former EGM editors where they had a screenshot capture device hooked up to a PC where you would have to press a key to capture a screenshot. Which sometimes would be a pain in the ass in the middle of play. Arealea's answer is pretty thorough. But you can see that sometimes when scanning these old issues, at the zoomed in level you can see the seems where they stitched stuff together. Some games have debug modes where you can scroll the whole level. Older magazines actually hand drew art to look like screenshots. Talking Atari 2600 era. And ya photoshopping them together. Not hard to remove a character out. Especially with the nature of game art with repeating texture data and tiles.

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Wow thank you to both of you for the insight, really appreciate it :) It was something I have wondered about for a while as I absolutely love the massive pixel perfect maps that were in many of the old game magazines, to me it's a work of pure art.

You could make a map like that one of two ways.

 

The hard way was the one Nintendo went with for many of its pixel-perfect maps in early issues of Nintendo Power, where the console was hooked up to a frame capture device that sent graphical information to a computer programmed to take a new screenshot every time the scene shifted a certain number of pixels in a given direction. Then it was the artist's job to stitch those images together in Photoshop or another editing program. This often resulted in player and enemy sprites being visible and 'lines' where the stitch work wasn't 100% accurate (look at the maps for, say, Double Dragon in the very first issue of Nintendo Power, or the maps for Goonies II in Nintendo Fun Club and you'll see this used). Unofficial strategy guides had to rely on this method for their pixel-perfect maps, because they weren't working with the developers. The only alternative was to have someone hand-draw the maps, which was cheaper but far less useful and informative. :)

 

The easier way was for companies who had access to the level data on the development computers to supply the image information to the magazine or guide maker, who could then put it together and lay it out in whatever way they needed. From what I understand, some companies were more friendly about handing this information out to publications than others. :)

 

*huggles*
Areala

Do you happen to know any additional information about the frame capture devices? They sound like a really interesting piece of hardware!

I downloaded Nintendo Power issue 1 and see exactly what you mean when I look really closely I can see the stitch lines you mentioned on Double Dragon and even Mario:

d2589e1cb3.png

I'm guessing the later issue started to use the hardware or developer contacts to get the images as they seem a bit cleaner :)

I've listened to podcasts like the Player One Podcast with former EGM editors where they had a screenshot capture device hooked up to a PC where you would have to press a key to capture a screenshot. Which sometimes would be a pain in the ass in the middle of play. Arealea's answer is pretty thorough. But you can see that sometimes when scanning these old issues, at the zoomed in level you can see the seems where they stitched stuff together. Some games have debug modes where you can scroll the whole level. Older magazines actually hand drew art to look like screenshots. Talking Atari 2600 era. And ya photoshopping them together. Not hard to remove a character out. Especially with the nature of game art with repeating texture data and tiles.

I'll look for that Player One Podcast with the former EGM editors thanks for letting me know.

I didn't realise some games had a debug mode where you could scroll the whole level, do you happen to know which games they were?

That's a very good point about the repeating texture/tile data it would be easier than I initially thought because they can find out where the tiles line up and edit accordingly.

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Player One podcast is all former EGM editors as the hosts. Phil Theobald also did a stint at Nintendo Power till the end when they stopped publishing. They occasionally share acedotes about those days. You can try and tweet them a question and they may answer it on the show.

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Do you happen to know any additional information about the frame capture devices? They sound like a really interesting piece of hardware!

 

As a matter of fact... *grin*

 

It took some digging, but I found an interview with Martin Alessi, who was EGM's graphics guru from their launch in the 80's through the early 90's. In the book entitled "Memoirs of a Virtual Caveman", he talks with author Rob Strangman about the hardware they used to get screenshots:

 

"Martin: We used state of the art Macintosh IIfx machines equipped with RasterOps video capture boards that cost around $2000 each! I can't recall the exact application that shipped with the board. We used Photoshop to enhance the color of the images and rarely upscaled anything at the image level. We let QuarkXpress zoom in on the images and got pretty good results."

 

^_^

 

*huggles*

Areala

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