Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[Austin]

@BIL - I know, I should feel ashamed, haha. The game is becoming quite addictive and I think that's from not having played a NES platformer like this (one that's new to me anyway) in a very, very long time. It's a good feeling and it's making me severely miss this style of platformer. When I think about it, it's not something that really lasted past the 8-bit generation. There's just a specific kind of feel you get with NES platformers/action games like this that just doesn't seem to be duplicated elsewhere. Maybe it's simply a result of the hardware, who knows.

The combo system in this game is a little wonky at first like you said, but now that I'm getting a real feel for it I'm pummeling guys with no problem. I'm intentionally using the harder punch and it has its own benefits, from just being more powerful in general, to giving you more cash from the money bags, to actually pushing you or enemies back for better safety (depending on the type of enemy).

I haven't spent much time with Shadow of the Ninja, but because it's by Natsume and since I am on a NES kick, I am moving it up my to-do list. I haven't played Dragon Fighter either. If you think it's worth checking out, I'll certainly give it a look.

your biggest sin, Austin, was describing the music as not bad! it's frickin amazing. area a in particular is one of the greatest pieces of videogame music ever.

I don't know if I would go that far.

I do like the soundtrack but it doesn't do anything special for me like Ninja Gaiden or Castlevania does. Every time it starts to go in a direction I like it changes things up. It's like, "Aha! Gotcha! Right when you thought it was about to get good.. Sorry, but we can't have you enjoying this soundtrack to its fullest! Muhahahaha.."

Funny enough, I couldn't help but notice it rips a riff straight from the original Castlevania's death/grim reaper level, and the ending tune rips a riff straight from Duck Tales. Hilarious, haha..

The soundtrack is good, but it's not jiving with me as well as a lot of other NES greats do--Castlevania, Batman, Silius, Ninja Gaiden, etc. Now those are what I'd call frickin' amazing soundtracks.

[Austin]

I tried Shadow of the Ninja tonight, and, well......Wellllllllll.... Uh.. Yeah.... Er... I am going to need to spend more time with this. Yeahhhhhh.. I'll just leave it at that. Maybe going back from Shatterhand wasn't the best idea.

[Squire Grooktook]

^^^ I'm actually liking Dragon Fighter quite a bit though. Interesting game.

[Ghegs]

Beat Jigoku Gokuraku Maru just now for the first time. Bit of a surprise clear, as this was the first time I was seeing Stage 5 as well. I had been playing the game every now and then for a while, but I don't think I can have had more than 10 credits in it. So kind of easy but still a fun game, and I might go for the no-miss clear. Interesting that the "Watch for my next adventure"-message after the credits is in English in the JPN release, and it's lacking the main character bowing animation like in Kabuki.

Also beat Spartan X the other day. I got the game recently and turned it on while I was waiting for my PC to boot, ended up clearing the first loop. I had the game as a kid but never beat the fourth boss back then. I think it's just an utterly charming game despite being quite simple.

[BIL]

Shadow/Kage* is kind of the middle child of the DF/Kage/Shatterbrain trio. It's too complicated to pick up instantly like DF (or Ninja Gaiden), but not as sophisticated and absorbing as Shatterhand (or Batman). It's also genuinely a bit unwieldy in some regards. RULE #1: keep the sword, no matter how tempting the chain's increased range may be. Chain is useless even maxed out. RULE #2: the sword only feels effective at max power, and every fourth hit you take will lose you a level. RULE #3: shuriken and grenades are extremely useful at max power and near-useless otherwise.

It's not a very welcoming game. ^_~ It does pay off eventually, though. The fourth and fifth stages are some of my favourites in the whole FC sidescroller canon, particularly negotiating the former's elevator shafts and the latter's... everything really, but especially the laser guillotines and the long, sniper and edge guard-infested climb to the last boss. It's a very substantial action game that would've benefited from more useful default weaponry, especially with the powerdown on damage mechanic. Although its miniature companion Ninja Gaiden GB isn't as good overall, I find it more fun to pick up and play with its lack of this penalty.

*I play the FC version - not too sure of the regional differences. In his NES/FC topic evil_ash mentioned st1's pirates taking extra damage in Kage, but I've not looked into it further.

Funny enough, I couldn't help but notice it rips a riff straight from the original Castlevania's death/grim reaper level, and the ending tune rips a riff straight from Duck Tales. Hilarious, haha..

Kage nicks the climax of CVIII's "Beginning" twice, in stages 3 and 5's BGM. :3

I think there's actually some musical connection between Konami and Natsume; I read a colleague of Hidenori Maezawa (architect of that awesome "Konami FC Sound" exemplified by Contra and Gradius II) worked on the tonally very similar-sounding Abadox. Abadox also very obviously uses The Konami Pause Sound, haha!

Also beat Spartan X the other day. I got the game recently and turned it on while I was waiting for my PC to boot, ended up clearing the first loop. I had the game as a kid but never beat the fourth boss back then. I think it's just an utterly charming game despite being quite simple.

Same - absolutely love Spartan X, both the crisp action and timeless, boldly pixelled aesthetic (it's the total inverse of the heavily shadowed, intricate artwork that characterises the FC's latter-day action greats). I plan to get Irem Arcade Classics for the AC version at some point, but I wasn't even considering that when I got the FC version. Feels like its own little thing.

[Ghegs]

Honestly, I prefer the art style in the FC port of Spartan X. The arcade graphics just look weird and aged to me.

[Volteccer_Jack]

Shadow of the Ninja is the hardest of the three games to really appreciate. The level design is great and the bosses are cool, but it just isn't as viscerally fun as Dragon Fighter or Shatterhand. Additionally the learning process is pretty annoying. While nothing in the game is super difficult to survive, there's a lot of enemies and attacks that are tricky to get past damageless, which exacerbates the problem of downgrading weapons with weak base levels.

RULE #1: keep the sword, no matter how tempting the chain's increased range may be. Chain is useless even maxed out.

On the contrary, when I was learning the game, I preferred the chain, because with level one sword you are basically a helpless child while the chain still has decent range and angled attacks. The chain also puts out damage faster when upgraded and can do a sort of stunlock.

*I play the FC version - not too sure of the regional differences. In his NES/FC topic evil_ash mentioned st1's pirates taking extra damage in Kage, but I've not looked into it further.

Differences I've been able to spot:
1-1 running pirate guys take two hits to kill in Kage
The enemy at the highest point in 1-1 is a monkey in Kage, and one of those rocket roombas in Shadow of the Ninja, with the monkey moving to a different spot. Also Shadow of the Ninja has an extra runner right before the boss.
2-1 swimming ninjas take an extra hit in Kage
5-1 spider robots seem to have more health in Kage

I've never paid attention to the damage enemies do to the player, and I only bother with 3 of the hidden items, so possibly there's some differences in those areas. The two-hit runners in 1-1 are the only difference that causes me to change my approach at all, so I prefer Shadow of the Ninja just because they're annoying.

[andsuchisdeath]

I'm a bit surprised to see Shadow Of The Ninja ranked last when compared to Solbrain and Dragon Fighter.

I totally agree though. I suppose I only enjoy the last few stages. From an aesthetic stand point, you'd think an FC Natsume Ninja (game) would be the coolest ninja game in the world. Though not a ninja, Solbrain = coolest.

Anyways, the game never clicked with me until this past fall, and I ended up clearing it shortly after, with a bit of stage 5 trial and error of course.

I happened to find the chain only useful for stage 5, as well as for the final boss fight.

I like Dragon Fighter , but maybe I've played it in a way that kills it's natural pace. In several of the stages I'll edge over a bit, milk enemies, transform, milk, transform.

[trap15]

Regarding the Konami-Natsume sound similarities, I seem to recall Iku Mizutani (main composer for Natsume) worked at Konami and did some of their NES music before going to Natsume.

[Austin]

Shadow/Kage* is kind of the middle child of the DF/Kage/Shatterbrain trio. It's too complicated to pick up instantly like DF (or Ninja Gaiden), but not as sophisticated and absorbing as Shatterhand (or Batman). It's also genuinely a bit unwieldy in some regards. RULE #1: keep the sword, no matter how tempting the chain's increased range may be. Chain is useless even maxed out. RULE #2: the sword only feels effective at max power, and every fourth hit you take will lose you a level. RULE #3: shuriken and grenades are extremely useful at max power and near-useless otherwise.

Yeah, the game definitely feels weird. It's a little stiff, the jumping mechanic doesn't feel very smooth, etc. I found out last night that the sword is definitely the better way to go. I figured the chain would be better but its problem is that the linkage part of it doesn't hurt enemies which severely cuts down its usefulness. You can also attack faster with the sword which means taking down those tougher enemies faster.

[cicada88]

I've been neglecting my Famicom lately. After beating Akumajou Dracula, Boku Dracula Kun and Batman, I got burnt out trying to beat Akumajou Densetsu and need to finish that and move on to Kage & Shatterhand.

[Immryr]

it's funny how trivial things seem in castlevania after you get past them the first time. I managed to get through to death with the holy water for the first time today, I had made it through the room before but only ever with the cross. I wasn't having much luck getting through with your method of focusing on spamming standing whip, BIL, and earlier I had realised that jumping and throwing holy water was the easiest way to take care of the shield knights but for whatever reason I hadn't thought of doing that in the run up to death. it makes the room a walk in the park. just whip the first medusa who spawns to your right when you enter the room, then jump+ throw holy water at the knight, dodge a couple of medusa's and repeat.

of course with the holy water death himself was a very easy kill - he was decimating me when I had the cross.

[BIL]

rocket roombas

Ah, the rocket roomba. My favoured cross-developer link between Batman, Kage and Jigoku Gokurakumaru. I suppose those crappy Rockman thingies in Bomb Man's stage might've been their shared precursor but I don't like those nearly as much.

I like Dragon Fighter , but maybe I've played it in a way that kills it's natural pace. In several of the stages I'll edge over a bit, milk enemies, transform, milk, transform.

It's definitely possible to do that - maybe a time limit could've helped there. For me the appeal is in keeping a steady pace and sword/shot groove: hacking down small fry, blowing away bigger targets, repeating, with judicious charge attacks to bridge the gap. Even so I definitely find myself slowing down in stages 4 and 5, the former since I try to reach the boss with a full dragon meter, the latter while recovering energy between those turret batteries. The way chargers are technically free, but deprive you of meter-building sword kills and thus dragon time is a minor bit of genius, I think.

As with Kage, stage design is good but the difficulty curve feels a tad slack; it's only in st5 that the dragon's maneuverability and firepower is truly vital. Could've put that pressure on a stage earlier. Even if the earlier stages can mostly be handled sword-only, though, it's still really good straightforward hack and slashing.

Regarding the Konami-Natsume sound similarities, I seem to recall Iku Mizutani (main composer for Natsume) worked at Konami and did some of their NES music before going to Natsume.

Ta! Just looked him up - his working at Konami and apparently later coding Natsume's sound driver potentially explains a lot. So many striking resemblances in the two companies' best FC music and sound effects, those protracted, echoing boss explosions in particular... totally impossible for me to play Natsume's FC action games without constantly recalling Konami's, and vice versa.

Turns out the guy I was thinking of was Kyouhei Sada, who's credited alongside Hidenori Maezawa for "sound creation" in Contra FC, and subsequently composed for Abadox. That thumping drum sound is unmistakable.

I wasn't having much luck getting through with your method of focusing on spamming standing whip, BIL, and earlier I had realised that jumping and throwing holy water was the easiest way to take care of the shield knights but for whatever reason I hadn't thought of doing that in the run up to death. it makes the room a walk in the park. just whip the first medusa who spawns to your right when you enter the room, then jump+ throw holy water at the knight, dodge a couple of medusa's and repeat.

Holy water will do the trick on axe knights for sure. I like the cross since it's easy to keep one or two flying and interfering with medusas, while the whip neutralises and destroys knights/their projectiles, but it's pretty much a tossup. The game's more than flexible enough that any subweapon (or none) is viable with the right basic handling of the knight/medusa patterns. Obviously the stopwatch isn't gonna help much with Death.

Obscure axe knight trivia: besides freezing them, the holy water's flame will disable their contact damage while active. The cross will rebound off them until they're down to 2HP; then it'll pierce clean through. I like to send a piercing cross ahead to wreak havoc on the medusa waves. It's so satisfying, that bit. ^__^ Anyone having problems with the sine wave pestering there should fire up Holy Diver and know REAL WAVEY TERROR:



Now that is state of the art sine wave pestering.

edited 4 image url bloodbath :[

[Austin]

Now that is state of the art sine wave pestering.

Man, I need to fire this one up now too. It looks awesome!

[BIL]

Very loveable game if you're into hard as hell Irem memorisers, with a couple caveats (my trenchant report from hell~). It's a definite personal favourite of mine, but it'd move up tremendously if its kinks were ironed out.

Incidentally I've been playing Super Shinobi all morning. DOG HANDCUFFS, now there's a glitch I like to see!

Spoiler

But mostly in it for the i-frame fuelled boss murder (・｀W´・)

Spoiler

[Ghegs]

Beat Jigoku Gokuraku Maru just now for the first time. Bit of a surprise clear, as this was the first time I was seeing Stage 5 as well. I had been playing the game every now and then for a while, but I don't think I can have had more than 10 credits in it. So kind of easy but still a fun game, and I might go for the no-miss clear.

Got the no-miss clear on my very next run. Neat.

Slipped and fell in the Stage 3 and 5 towers a few times so it was sloppy in that regard, but got the job done.

[BIL]

I love stage 3 so much - I wish the game had given a bit more of that near-total focus on gymnastic prowess. I wouldn't even care if there was no combat at all, just lots of tricky hazards and vertical scale. That somersault maneuver is sublimely fluid and controllable, a true original in the console's sidescroller library. Fitting that it gets pride of place on the back of the little FC box, heh.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I love stage 3 so much - I wish the game had given a bit more of that near-total focus on gymnastic prowess. I wouldn't even care if there was no combat at all, just lots of tricky hazards and vertical scale.

Has there ever been a 2D platformer like this that's all about constantly moving and being agile/dextrous rather than combat oriented? Or 3D for that matter? Mirror's Edge comes to mind, but even it had several combat sections that, at the very least, required melee disarming.

[Ghegs]

I love stage 3 so much - I wish the game had given a bit more of that near-total focus on gymnastic prowess. I wouldn't even care if there was no combat at all, just lots of tricky hazards and vertical scale.

Could be interesting, yeah. I do feel the combat is the weakest part of the game. The enemies and the bosses tend to feel...I'm not sure what's a good word to describe it. Not random, but kind of overly slippery. Also the hair's vertically tiny hitbox plays a part in this.

Shame the game is a bit underappreciated/unknown, I'm sure it could have at least some stage romhacks that would provide us with even trickier vertical stages. As it is, there's not a single one.

Curiously, the game seems to be suitable for high score play since the remaining time, HP and chip energy are converted into score at the end of every stage, and there are end-of-game bonuses for remaining extra lives. Not many action-platformers do that, or they can be exploited really easily. I don't know if the couple 1ups certain enemies drop come back after respawning, that could still ruin it.

Has there ever been a 2D platformer like this that's all about constantly moving and being agile/dextrous rather than combat oriented? Or 3D for that matter? Mirror's Edge comes to mind, but even it had several combat sections that, at the very least, required melee disarming.

One the 3D side of things Cloudbuilt came to mind. It still has combat, but you'll often want to just dodge and get out of the way rather than engage the enemy.

[BIL]

It's only for one stage, but I've always enjoyed Super Shinobi II's eschewing of combat at its finale. Some very satisfying walljumping to be done there.

[SriK]

There are only 48 hours left in the Steel Assault Kickstarter campaign!



In fact, as of now there are just 44 hours left! We're entering the very last stretch, and again, we need all the support we can get. We have less than $2,500 left to raise, and we can make it. But we're going to need some help.

Even if you can't back our project, please consider sharing our project page on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.). Tell your friends, your family, your co-workers about us. Print out flyers and make your dog deliver them to the neighbors. Anything and everything helps.

Thanks for your support, guys!

[Squire Grooktook]

Will back tommorow when I get some money. Totally agree with everything under "flow" also. Fuck that instant respawn shit. Also like that the retro pretenses have been dropped (wish more indie devs would do that), even though the sprite work here looks better than 90% of the indie games out there.

Really hope this goes through. Good luck.

[Obscura]

I have to admit, I will never understand the fascination people have with following the restrictions of 8/16 bit consoles.

Sure, there were good NES games. Sure, there were even some good looking NES games. But why on earth would you limit yourself to a tiny palette with extreme sprite limitations instead of making something that looks like, say, Metal Slug or Symphony of the Night, unless you just can't match that level of quality? And if you can't match that level, why not try to get as close as you can instead of saying "fuck it, let's just limit ourselves"?

[Squire Grooktook]

Metal Slug or Symphony of the Night, unless you just can't match that level of quality?

That level of quality was ridiculously hard to reach and only really attained a few times even for professional studios with tons of animators and programmers. It's pretty much out of the question for any indie or doujin group.

[cicada88]

I would support that game if it either ran on NES/Famicom hardware or if it starred the smoking Ninja from the first level of Sunsoft Batman (AKA Tobacco Ninja)

[Obscura]

Metal Slug or Symphony of the Night, unless you just can't match that level of quality?

That level of quality was ridiculously hard to reach and only really attained a few times even for professional studios with tons of animators and programmers. It's pretty much out of the question for any indie or doujin group.

You missed the next part of that:

And if you can't match that level, why not try to get as close as you can instead of saying "fuck it, let's just limit ourselves"?

How many "indie" teams have done that? In a different genre, there's Skullgirls and possibly Divekick; in the world of indie sidescrollers, there's Konjak's games, there's Alien Hominid... and I think that's it, at least when it comes to "western" indie. Everyone else has decided "fuck it, let's just follow a bunch of silly restrictions because nostalgia!" which might be a fun novelty if it was one group doing it, but is just ridiculous when it becomes as common as it has.

[SriK]

Thanks, Squire Grooktook!

I have to admit, I will never understand the fascination people have with following the restrictions of 8/16 bit consoles.

Sure, there were good NES games. Sure, there were even some good looking NES games. But why on earth would you limit yourself to a tiny palette with extreme sprite limitations instead of making something that looks like, say, Metal Slug or Symphony of the Night, unless you just can't match that level of quality? And if you can't match that level, why not try to get as close as you can instead of saying "fuck it, let's just limit ourselves"

[...]

How many "indie" teams have done that? In a different genre, there's Skullgirls and possibly Divekick; in the world of indie sidescrollers, there's Konjak's games, there's Alien Hominid... and I think that's it, at least when it comes to "western" indie. Everyone else has decided "fuck it, let's just follow a bunch of silly restrictions because nostalgia!" which might be a fun novelty if it was one group doing it, but is just ridiculous when it becomes as common as it has.

I'll quote myself from the NeoGAF thread:

I think you might be underestimating the leap in budget, time commitment, and development talent required in the jump from 2D to 3D (or even 8-bit 2D to high-res 2D, or modern-pixel-art styled 2D a la Owlboy). Consider that STRAFE, a game with about Doom-level aesthetics, is asking for $185,000 on Kickstarter (that's over 20 times our goal) and probably needs it to finish development. Also consider the $35,000 goal that Hollow Knight had. "Mid-tier" games cost mid-tier money, take mid-tier time, require mid-sized teams. As such, it's completely expected that they'll be less common.

The trend toward retro style in 2D games isn't necessarily based on laziness as much as developers simply being conscious of how much money, time, and overall resources they have. A well-executed simpler style is almost always going to win out over a poorly executed complex one (poorly executed because the developers don't have resources). Of course, the ideal is a well-executed complex style, and I'd love to make a game that looks like the latest Guilty Gear with a live orchestrated post-rock soundtrack (synchronized perfectly to the level design) as much as anyone else... but in the real world this takes TONS of money and TONS of talent, which no one has any real reason to trust me with yet. So this is the graphic style and budget level we're committing to, and I think personally that Daniel's doing a really great job with it.

Even going from 8-bit to 16-bit retro style is a HUGE increase in the amount of assets required, amount of animations, the detail needed for those assets, etc. Not to mention that you also need to scale up the non-visual assets to match as well (e.g. music going from Famitracker chiptunes to SNES soundfonts or orchestrated). Every single one of the Western 16-bit or modern-pixelart styled sidescrollers I can think of has either taken YEARS to develop, or is still in development. Owlboy, Legend of Iya, Heart Forth Alicia, Timespinner, The Iconoclasts, you name it and it's probably had a development cycle of over 3 years. And many of these games also have multiple artists working on them, and sometimes even multiple musicians and programmers, etc. For a small team working outside of the established game companies, it seems impossible to have both a modern pixelart style and a reasonable development cycle. (Compare Heart Forth Alicia's development cycle to that of an Igavania and you'll get what I'm talking about.)

Also, Alien Hominid is not a good looking game at all...

I would support that game if it either ran on NES/Famicom hardware or if it starred the smoking Ninja from the first level of Sunsoft Batman (AKA Tobacco Ninja)

I think getting the game running on actual NES is out of the realm of possibility, without delaying the game to 2020 or something hahah. Even the most experienced NES homebrew developers have only gone for stuff like puzzle games or single-screen platformers, not huge seamless sidescrolling action games with tons of setpieces. And you're talking people who have been researching and programming the system for DECADES now (I programmed my first NES rom, an FMV demo, in May of last year). The NES isn't easy to develop for because it's an outdated platform, in fact it's far harder to develop for than a modern PC for this exact reason. There are also several design elements I want in Steel Assault which are extremely hard or impossible to implement on an actual NES (like I said earlier, the aesthetic is both an artistic choice and a budget/time choice).

[Obscura]

I'll quote myself from the NeoGAF thread:

I think you might be underestimating the leap in budget, time commitment, and development talent required in the jump from 2D to 3D (or even 8-bit 2D to high-res 2D, or modern-pixel-art styled 2D a la Owlboy). Consider that STRAFE, a game with about Doom-level aesthetics, is asking for $185,000 on Kickstarter (that's over 20 times our goal) and probably needs it to finish development. Also consider the $35,000 goal that Hollow Knight had. "Mid-tier" games cost mid-tier money, take mid-tier time, require mid-sized teams. As such, it's completely expected that they'll be less common.

The trend toward retro style in 2D games isn't necessarily based on laziness as much as developers simply being conscious of how much money, time, and overall resources they have. A well-executed simpler style is almost always going to win out over a poorly executed complex one (poorly executed because the developers don't have resources). Of course, the ideal is a well-executed complex style, and I'd love to make a game that looks like the latest Guilty Gear with a live orchestrated post-rock soundtrack (synchronized perfectly to the level design) as much as anyone else... but in the real world this takes TONS of money and TONS of talent, which no one has any real reason to trust me with yet. So this is the graphic style and budget level we're committing to, and I think personally that Daniel's doing a really great job with it.

Even going from 8-bit to 16-bit retro style is a HUGE increase in the amount of assets required, amount of animations, the detail needed for those assets, etc. Not to mention that you also need to scale up the non-visual assets to match as well (e.g. music going from Famitracker chiptunes to SNES soundfonts or orchestrated). Every single one of the Western 16-bit or modern-pixelart styled sidescrollers I can think of has either taken YEARS to develop, or is still in development. Owlboy, Legend of Iya, Heart Forth Alicia, Timespinner, The Iconoclasts, you name it and it's probably had a development cycle of over 3 years. And many of these games also have multiple artists working on them, and sometimes even multiple musicians and programmers, etc. For a small team working outside of the established game companies, it seems impossible to have both a modern pixelart style and a reasonable development cycle. (Compare Heart Forth Alicia's development cycle to that of an Igavania and you'll get what I'm talking about.)

Also, Alien Hominid is not a good looking game at all...

I agree that Alien Hominid is an ugly game (also, a bad one), but it's a good example of a sidescroller where the aesthetic isn't entirely trading in nostalgia. It's definitely doing its own thing; whether "its own thing" is tasteful or well realized is a different issue.

My counterpoints:
1. As Kayin pointed out here, as an indie developer, a lot of the stuff that a larger developer would pay money to have done, you're more likely to pay "in time" for.
2. Doujin developers seem to be able to pump out games with 16-bit quality graphics. I mean, look at Astro Port's library; sure, it may be never-ending mediocrity game-wise, but there's a crap ton of pixel art that's faaaaar beyond the "NES limited" style that's en vogue now. Likewise, I know of at least one indie FPS with a graphical fidelity that, while not "modern AAA" quality, is far beyond the likes of Doom/Build Engine (that game is Wrack, go play it if you haven't, it's amazing).
3. Since when is 3 years an astoundingly long development cycle for an indie team that isn't reusing assets from a previous game? Multiple years isn't a "OMG, RIDICULOUS!!" development time; it's what I'd expect for almost any game.
4. Even if we accept that low-res/low-color sprite artwork is the best you can do, how does it do you any benefits to carefully follow the NES palette restrictions? Wouldn't you be able to make it look better (and do it more easily!) by not limiting yourself to "4 colors per square when the screen is divided into a 16x16 grid, 4 colors per sprite, etc"?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Different genre, but aesthetically Rakugaki Showtime did something Alien Hominid tried to do. Also, not really real-time, but cel shaded 3D just before Jet Set Radio had arrived.
White outlines are underused.

As a person who sees modern games almost exclusively on screenshots, I can appreciate retro graphics for one thing - screenshots interesting to stare at, whereas modern graphics makes for some pretty bland stills. (Someone says a game looks nice/poor and I wouldn't guess which from the screenshot.)

Come to think of it, FarCry might have been the first game universally praised for its graphics where the stills left me indifferent, while the first Chronicles of Riddick might well have been the last one where I thought they had some character.
(Around that time I saw first comparison shots from games with and without HDR and was like "hmmm...", then I got to play some and - again - liked the effect in ChoR; meanwhile, in SC: Chaos Theory and H-L2: Lost Coast it looked overdone and not really worth all that extra computing power it took, but I digress.)

[Ghegs]

Personally, I love Steel Assault's look. Good aesthetics are good aesthetics, whether they operate under a restriction or not. Steel Assault certainly has good aesthetics.

And restrictions can fuel the designer's imagination in ways having unlimited capabilities can't.

SriK, hope you make it. You got my money.