The two 8-bit games that I chose to research are Sonic the Hedgehog (8-bit) on the Sega Master System in 1991 developed by Ancient and designed by Ayano Koshiro and Takefuni Yunoue and Prince of Persia on the Apple II in 1989 developed by Brøderbund and designed by Jordan Mechner .
Character Concept Art
With the Sonic character concept art, it shows more effort is being put into the design of character. E.g facial expressions and details. This makes a more complex character design. Whereas the Prince of Persia character design is more about the movement and combat of the character with less design detail put into the character. A reason for this may be the two year gap between Prince of Persia and Sonic being made, so Prince of Persia may have had less powerful hardware and software to develop the game. *The Technique that Mechner used to get the movements of the Prince onto the computer is called rotoscoping an animation technique in which animators trace over footage, frame by frame. Most of the software used for the development environment and for moving and drawing pixels on the screen Mechner had to code himself as this software did not exist yet.
Environment Concept Art and Pictures
These pictures and concepts are of the environments, With the Sonic environments the colours used are much brighter and vibrant to give a more visually colourful environment, so the target audience is likely to be younger than Prince of Persia. However when you compare it to the environments of Prince of Persia the colours used are much darker and more gloomy to give a more tense environment, a factor for this may be because Prince of Persia was probably for an older target audience.
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