VIPER Collection Photos

[JG]

And now, the motherlode. This actually came as four different shipments over the course of the last 2 or 3 weeks, but I'm taking photos of it as if it were a single shipment. In fact it's so much stuff I couldn't get it all into one picture. (This is all the unique stuff - new duplicates I'm putting up for sale aren't in any of these pictures.)

VIPER Collection Photos

HORY CLAP!!  That's alot of PC98 and FM-TOWNS games (and an X68000 one in there too.)
From left-to-right, top-to-bottom, that's Animahjong V3 (3.5"), Animahjong X (5"), Animahjong X Perfect File (5"), VIPER-V6 (3.5"), VIPER-V6 RS (3.5" and 5"), VIPER-V6 Turbo (X68000), VIPER-V6 Turbo RS (FM-TOWNS), VIPER-V8 (3.5" and 5"), VIPER-V8 RS (5"), VIPER-V8 Turbo RS (FM-TOWNS), VIPER-V10 RS (3.5" and 5"), VIPER-V10 Turbo RS (FM-TOWNS), VIPER-GTS (3.5" and 5"), VIPER-GTS RS (3.5"), VIPER-V12 (3.5" and 5"), VIPER-V12 (FM-TOWNS), and VIPER-V16 (5" and 3.5")

VIPER Collection Photos

* Double-sided Sogna store bag. I had the vinyl, now I've got the paper & rope, too.  It's got VIPER-GT1 on the opposite side.
* VIPER-GTS mouse pad
* VIPER-F40 demo
* VIPER-GTB/Osaka Pro-Wrestling fan
* VIPER-V8 Twin Turbo manual (the V6 Turbo came with its own instruction manual plus this one.  I guess a previous owner misplaced this.)
* Sogna Information Vol. 2.  I also got in copies of 3 and 6 but I put them in with their respective games (VIPER-CTR and V16) which were missing them.
* VIPER Evolution III
* A pair of inexpensive VIPER doujinshi - DEAD END and Drastic Mermaid.
* VIPER-GTS OVA DVD Box Set



And becuase you guys would never forgive me if I didn't try it, just this once:



I am not doing this again becuase it was extremely dangerous, due both to the compressive forces on the boxes at the bottom and the teetering effect at the top.  Needless to say, I made it all the way to the top of the 8 foot (2.44 m) ceiling in my office, and still had the anniversary coffee mug left. If I had a taller ceiling (and a step stool) this would reach a fraction of an inch above 100" (2.54 m)

[MMX]

The games were done partially by hand. An ink or pencil drawing is developed, which is input to a computer by either a primitive scanner or plotter, producing a low color (probably just 2) image.  The colors are then added digitally, usually in great big fill patterns.

It would take much, much too long to develop a game entirely digitally.  This method is faster, produces better quality, and still doesn't show signs of pixelation unless it was intended to create the impression of more color depth.  Sogna didin't pixelate becuase it would greatly increase the size of thier ANM files, but most other companies did.

How the hell do you learn something like that?  Is it in one of those many art books you've collected?

[JG]

I've seen enough game art books to tell that this is how its done.  My Lakers and Harlem Blade books are the best examples as they show pencil drawings, psuedo-colored drawings, and early digital pictures which can be compared to the final game pictures.

[MMX]

So ultimately you're guessing and/or doing a clean-room examination of the input and the output huh?

So no one has explicitly informed you of this but there is enough evidence to support your hypothesis?

Indeed... *ponders*

[JG]

Evidence? You got it.  Why don't you be the judge:

From the Harlem Blade art book. The original hand-colored image is on the right and the game image is on the left. Note that some details, such as the streaks in the mirror reflection, were added digitally but the majority of the image is a perfect reproduction reduced to 16 colors.



And here is the actual game image. Load it into your image editor and you'll see it's 16 colors. (FYI, game was released April 1996.)



Note the level of detail, especially evident in the mirror frame and the translucent parts of Russe's dress. Most of the digital work done was to half-tone areas where shading was needed, not to do the complete drawing or coloring.


Now you tell me. Was this completely digitally reproduced or hard-drawn, scanned in and touched up digitally like I said?

[Moge]

I'd like to know the process behind reproducing those images in 16-bit. 

Shame no ones give a flip anymore of doing things the old way. 

[JG]

I beleive you mean 8-bit.  16-bit images don't have a palette, they just downscale the channels to 5 bits for red and blue and 6 for green (human eyes are most sensitive to changes in green which is why it gets the extra bit) or when transparency is needed, 1 bit for alpha and 5 each for the three color channels.

But 8-bit images usually have a palette, which is a lookup table of colors. The colors themselves may be more than 8 bits in color depth.  For example, a bitmap stored as 8-bit can have 256 colors, but those colors may be any in the spectrum, as they're stored as 24 bit colors (3 channels of 8 bits each.)  So the challenge is to get from your true color image (such as one scanned in) to 256 colors (or less) without losing alot of that color depth.

Step 1 is reducing the palette to N colors:
* You could pick N predefined colors.  MS Paint does this and that's why it produces such crappy looking reductions when you save something to GIF. Grayscale also works in this manner but tends to work very well except when N is very small.
* You could pick the N most common colors.  This generally works best when you have large swathes of the same color.
* You could pick the N most differentiating colors, ie the colors most unlike any other colors.  This tends to be the best for reducing true color to a small colors, but the colors chosen may not be colors used in the actual image, or are used very infrequently so some hues may be off.
* Use a combination of most common and most different. It really depends on the image, but at least 75% of the colors should come from the most different algorihtm for best results (unless there's many large areas of different colors, upwards of 100% differenciating works best.) If you're creating several images in an animation, you need to make sure the algorithm takes into account all images in the series or you get minute color changes in one frame to the next.

Step 2 is applying that palette to the image by translating your old colors into new colors.
* You could translate colors in a nearest match algorithm. This is usually how its done as it produces smaller images (due to compression factors) and has better looking large patches but sacrifices some of the "blending" that occurs at edges or over the course of a gradient.
* You could half-tone the area. This looks bad in large areas of the same color, as they adopt the "polkadot" pattern, but does a good job giving the appearence of blending from one color to another. This method doesn't compress as well though as the "polkadots" interfere with runs of solid color. This also works poorly in animations as the half-toning may occur at different spots and may present the "dancing dots" phenomenon.
* Use a combination. Advanced algorithms can locate areas of similar colors for nearest match, and areas of dissimilar colors for half-toning.

Depending on the game, different algorithms from above may be used. But if you want my opinion on how I think they did really old games like Harlem Blade and made them look decent at only 16 colors, was they had a palette of 16 predefined colors consisting of black, white, and 14 colors of various hues of flesh, hair, eyes, lips and a few others that don't fit human features. The original hand-drawn image was purposely colored to match the 16 colors in the palette. They then scanned in this image and applied the palette with an advanced half-toning algorithm. Then they cleaned it up manually.

VIPER games, by comparison, appear to have been reduced to about the 240 most common colors and then translated in a nearest match algorithm.

[Asukachan]

Yeah, thats the reason I used to use flash for my early work. It made putting two different gifs together look exceptionally clean and seamless. I had planned on still using it for my original animations for CCR, but it was just so difficult for me to trace everything I already drew over using vector tools. I'd rather just digitize my cels.

[JG]

I know it was two weeks ago, but just got around to finishing up photo-taking and posting the pictures of all the new stuff from Japan:

FOR ME:
* Animahjong X Perfect File 3.5" diskettes
* CTR-if doujinshi - the best VIPER doujinshi to come out of Comiket 80. And it's 100% Miki, folks.  And I got an extra one for sale, too.
* Strong Girl Cala doujinshisoft - from the artist who brought us the Kemonomichi games
* A new style of Sogna Store bag - probably an earlier version than the others
* Asuka character poster - got one of these for sale, too.
* Akira Character poster - hawt.  Also got one of these for sale as well
* Messe Sanoh poster
* Raika Login foldout poster
* VIPER Digital Museum poster
* CTR Girls poster - I managed to get another one of these for sale, too
* CTR Sales poster
* Foldout V16 Girls poster
* V16 Girls poster - doubly hawt
* A trade show art set.  Looks like this was given away to promote the VIPER series for sale in game shops or something.  Everything has the very early VIPER logo on them, making it 1994-era.  Includes folder and a single sheet of promotional artwork from V6, V8, V10, and V12.
* A set of a dozen classic postcards.  Note the pre-V16 VIPER logo on these, too. (Anri, Asuka #1, Asuka #2, Carrera & Mercedes, Friday the 18th Girls #1, Friday the 18th Girls #2, Kate & Yuria #1, Kate & Yuria #2, Leeza, Miho & Kumi, Silvier, Yuki)
* A bunch of telecas (Akira #1, Akira #2, JACOM 96 set #1, JACOM '96 set #2, JACOM II set #1, JACOM II set #2, JACOM III set, Raika #1, Raika #2, V16 Girls)


FOR YOU (IF YOU HAVE THE MONEY):
* VIPER-V16 (Windows), $45.00
* VIPER-M1, $40.00
* VIPER-F40 Early Edition, $32.00
* VIPER-V10 (Windows), $20.00
* VIPER LTD 2, $30.00
* VIPER LTD 3, $30.00
* Sogna Information Vol. 1, $5.00
* Sogna Information Vol. 2, $5.00
* Sogna Information Vol. 3, $5.00
* Sogna Information Vol. 4, $5.00
* Sogna Information Vol. 5, $5.00
* CTR-if Doujinshi, $20.00
* VIPER-CTR Girls Poster, $20.00
* Asuka Poster, $15.00
* Akira Poster, $15.00
* Christmas Deskmat, $12.00
* VIPER-GTB Pre-release Fan, $10.00
* Asuka Postcard (Katana style), $3.00
* Asuka Postcard (Kendo Stick Style), $3.00
* Mercedes Trading Card #6, $1.50
* Miho Trading Card #7, $1.00
* Leeza Trading Card #13, $1.00
* Succubus Trading Card #14, $.50
* Yuki Trading Card #20, $1.00
* Clis Trading Card #21, $1.00
* Kate & Yuria Trading Card #28, $1.00
* Saki Trading Card #35, $1.00
* Miki Foil Trading Card #42, $2.00
* Takesi Trading Card #43, $1.00
* Raika Trading Card #49, $1.00
* Lilia Trading Card #50, $1.00
* Maki Trading Card #56, $1.00
* F40 Trading Card #57, $1.00
* VIPER-M1 Puzzle Trading Card (1 of 9) #64, $.50
* VIPER-M1 Puzzle Trading Card (8 of 9) #71, $.50

All of these are available for sale now at Sogna Digital Museum.  Visit the site for more information about these items.  I should also point out that most of them are discounted (up to 50%!) if purchased with a game or art book, so these prices aren't neccesarily what you'd actually pay.

[Moge]

I feel like a kid in a candy store when i look at all these trinkets you got.

Thanks for posting your swag. I actually might buy something.

[azbe12]

And now, the motherlode. This actually came as four different shipments over the course of the last 2 or 3 weeks, but I'm taking photos of it as if it were a single shipment. In fact it's so much stuff I couldn't get it all into one picture. (This is all the unique stuff - new duplicates I'm putting up for sale aren't in any of these pictures.)

VIPER Collection Photos

HORY CLAP!!  That's alot of PC98 and FM-TOWNS games (and an X68000 one in there too.)
From left-to-right, top-to-bottom, that's Animahjong V3 (3.5"), Animahjong X (5"), Animahjong X Perfect File (5"), VIPER-V6 (3.5"), VIPER-V6 RS (3.5" and 5"), VIPER-V6 Turbo (X68000), VIPER-V6 Turbo RS (FM-TOWNS), VIPER-V8 (3.5" and 5"), VIPER-V8 RS (5"), VIPER-V8 Turbo RS (FM-TOWNS), VIPER-V10 RS (3.5" and 5"), VIPER-V10 Turbo RS (FM-TOWNS), VIPER-GTS (3.5" and 5"), VIPER-GTS RS (3.5"), VIPER-V12 (3.5" and 5"), VIPER-V12 (FM-TOWNS), and VIPER-V16 (5" and 3.5")

If you ever want to sell them. Please let me know.

[JG]

If you ever want to sell them. Please let me know.

All VIPER items for sale are now listed on the site's For Sale page.

I may occasionally list non-VIPER stuff like these Anime posters on the forum though.

[黒い灯影]

Just thought this was funny..
How they spelled Viper RSR at the bottom   
One of the magazines I bought from Japan.

[JG]

How much RSR preview content is in that? I've never seen that particular edition listed in any of my magazine searches for VIPER material (probably due to the misspelling)

[黒い灯影]

I dont know yet.. but just bought a bunch of retro mags, i'll let you know once they come in
There are some magazines that don't advertise Viper content on the front cover, but you can see, on the table of contents,
if you're lucky enough if those pics are even included

[黒い灯影]

Also got this one, that said something about Strength and future of Sogna (or Sonia).. but i will find out when i get it.
The mags I'm buying are from around the years SOGNA was active,
a lot of the mags also don't explicitly say anything on the cover of any Viper content, but i'm hoping to find some when i dig into them.
but here are some that do mention a viper game on the cover

as i also found a community of retro mag enthusiasts who are missing a bunch of japanese retro mags
I'll probably scan them to preserve them in digital format

[JG]

I have the May 1996 and June 1998 E-login mags. I will have to hunt for the other three now that I know.

August 1997 is the most prominent one as it has the Raika folder out poster.
I also have October and December 1997 editions, which also have VIPER content in them.

Honestly it would be a big help for you to maintain a list of the mags you've got that have VIPER content in them so I can seek them out as well. I've already got my mags listed on my collection page (but haven't taken photos of most of them yet)

[黒い灯影]

Interesting page in Tech Gian Oct 1998 - pages ripped from archive.org

[JG]

Fantastic insight. I have that magazine and forgot about that stuff. Especially how messy P-Warrior's deskspace is

I don't remember noticing it before, but "P-Warrior Car Collection Vol. 4" catches my eye - I've got several other Tech Gian mags and don't recall ever seeing volumes 1-3. (Possibly in July, August, and September 1998 editions, which I don't own.)

[黒い灯影]

you're correct on that,
pages were ripped from archive.org