This was a new idea for the splash page based on the previous design, after some reconsideration and a little bit of research, it became evident, even blatant that the majority of retro game screens are either black or very dark green.
With this in mind the change from the white gives the site the feel it needs, with the correction of the logo (inverted the black) it has a much better impact. The proposal of a Galaga style game came to me when I was trying out typefaces and doing some 'research' playing Galaga and Space Invaders. Both incredibly popular and simple to create, thus the idea seemed something that would bode well for my target market as well as adding to the exclusivity of what the company has to offer.
The margins are in order as they because I accidentally moved them up and down so its created a downstroke effect similar to the scrolling of the game Asteroids, which leaves me to think if including/developing relative gifs for the project maybe something to look at, but not until the necessary work has been done to fulfill what I set out to do.
I dont think I was quite 'there' in terms of the impact of the site, nor in the look of the splashpage. There is no real sense of playing a game or the experience of playing a game here. I do like the layout and the placement of the 'press start' part however, but has given me a good starting point.
Some of the first type treatments I was working on, the statements are reminiscent of the terrible game names and poorly structured "engrish" (as mentioned in the previous posts) but obviously taking this as a structure for my paradoxical title screen menus. I wanted to leave the logo as just part of the spashpage, maybe putting it into context on the site at some point, as to remind the potential customer of what it is they are looking at, not just a silly parody of something they used to love. On the other hand, its exactly what Im doing.
I was definitely polishing a turd with this one, but I just wanted to get it out of my system. Why the sudden change in visuals? Well arguably there is a lot of negative space on a game screen normally, but since the advent of the early 90s games started to have a much more visual approach to their design, leaving backdrops lingering in the foreground whilst the ever dominant text stands proudly at the front. Its this focus on type as part of the image as a whole which has contributed to the art of game design.
The type was a bad choice here. The impact is low, as well as having no clear definition. The choice of colours however, I think works particularly well and are the two most common colours from the megadrive and snes respectively (think fire levels, water levels, lava, skies, fire, red vs blue etc)
After a quick review of the type choices I had made initially, it became quite clear that I needed something with a heavy weight, dense stroke and a typeface that would be near impossible to avoid looking at, no matter the size.
I ended up going with (????????) since it fitted all of the criteria, and seemed to fit in with the rest of the type decisions I had made prior to making the site, with the uniformity evident through my range, products and distribution methods. Not entirely sure on the menu bar being red, but thats something I can tamper with tomorrow.
Instead of using something obvious like "what console do you want" or "what platform do you require?" I thought to carry on the quest theme I would include words like 'inventory', 'equipment', 'item(s)' and 'game select' to keep a feel that it is an emulation of shopping for clothes, since most men cant be bothered to go to the shops to get what they want. In the case of gamers, this is almost paramount to their existence [being able to go online] is something they are more than accustomed to, so why not make it a much more fun thing to do?
The addition of a short loading screen before the next window loads was a last minute idea. I was on illustrator and had some of the icons from the Galaga-esque game at the start half coloured in. Fits in perfectly, but maybe adjust the icons, and just replace it with a more traditional loading bar.
I kept the inclusion of 'engrish' as subtle as possible in this set of sites, as it is something that could offend some of my target market, so by keeping it quite lo-brow I can get away with it.
This last screen was to get an idea of how the products would be laid out. I think I need to properly plan out exactly how the products will be displayed. Colours are working, but the background is something I need to have another look at.
