So yeah, Gradius is a game that has been talked about and played to death by pretty much every SHMUP enthusiast (and probably a lot of non enthusiasts as well). Although personally, I never played the game as a kid and only recently played it for the first time (the NES version). I had watched runs of the game but never gave it an actual shot, until last month. What spurred me finally playing it was a friend of mine who decided he wanted to 1cc it (the first loop anyway). So that gave me an idea...
Why not both of us 1cc the game, cap our runs, put the footage side by side and then do a comparison video? I was pretty sure it had never been done before quite this way, so why not try something different? I think the results turned out pretty good. I created an overlay to separate our footage (based on the sprites for each level) and kept the runs perfectly in sync. I had to pause the footage at the end of each stage for whoever beat the boss first, then unpause to re-sync them again. I also rotated the audio from one run to the other so we didn't get the audio from both games going at once. We also both recorded commentary together with the runs in unison so that we could discuss the differences in our runs in real time.
The runs were both recorded on original hardware. Mine on a Model 2 NES with RGB, and my friend Brasel's with a model 1 NES via composite. The video quality on mine was quite a bit better due to RGB but I did my best to match them as closely as I could.
Lastly, we recorded a 5 minute intro where we talked about Gradius and our history with the game. I needed something to fill this time on screen so I did a super high rez scan of the game manual and had it scroll through as we talked (in hindsight it would have looked even better in 4k). I also animated many of the sprites in the game and incorporated them into the manual scroll. I think it turned out pretty cool.
So has anyone seen anything like this done before? I searched around and there have been speed runs and things with footage run side by side but I don't think I've seen a SHMUP done perfectly in sync before. And please, give me your Gradius stories! I'd love to hear them, Arcade version, NES, whatever. Any thoughts and feedback is always appreciated! Let me know if you like this idea and I'll do more like it. Just need to find the peeps to tackle it with me, which I'm sure there are many of here in the forums
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30nbDek ... m-comments
