A stupid twist on the Nintendo cab that was fun to draw: Pokemon Red and Blue

[TheGreatRedDragon]

(and Green)

This is purely hypothetical, since dedicating an arcade cabinet to a Gameboy game is pretty dumb and dedicating three (or more) cabinets to Gameboy games is absolutely ludicrous (hence it being here instead of in Project Announcements). But Wyo's excellent NES-based designs inspired the hell out of me to try my hand at something similar, and the idea of applying that concept to a shrunken down bartop (Haruman's Minitendo to be precise) to represent the portable Gameboy stuck in my brain. That, combined with a desire to work on my Illustrator skills with lots and lots of tedious vector tracing and a childhood admiration for the early work of Ken Sugimori led me to by far the biggest game of my childhood.





I started with just a general "Pokemon" theme, but that quickly transformed into designing three sets of artwork for the first three versions. From there I decided on a monochromatic theme for each cabinet. Thinking back to the marketing of the time, the greatest appeal of the first generation was the novelty of the Pokemon themselves and how many of them there were. Aside from that there wasn't much theme or narrative to the games other than a quasi-futuristic setting, so I stuck with bold colors and long lines, leaving it to the Pokemon art to be the real eye candy.

Deciding what Pokemon to use was an ordeal. I limited myself only to the art Sugimori created for Red and Blue, which is the second batch of Gen 1 art he drew, because they're the most dynamic drawings he did, and I didn't want any duplicate Pokemon to show up. I also wanted to avoid legendary Pokemon for being too obvious of a choice, I wanted to focus more on the grunts. The three box mascots were the obvious picks for the sideart, but the bezel and marquee art was wide open. When I figured out the basic design for the bezels I knew I needed fifteen Pokemon. Since there were fifteen types in Gen 1 I decided that each type should be represented. I also wanted to respect the original version exclusives, so for example Magmar could only appear on the Green bezel (I went by the Japanese distribution). Juggling that with color coordination and pose meant it took a while to figure out what I wanted there, and some of the art I made went unused, but I'm happy with the end result.



The marquees were easier to figure out. The three starters on the left, and on the right I used the rival's non-starter Pokemon of the same type. Fitting everything into such a narrow band was dicey but I was able to make it work without much compromise.



I considered putting the second form starters on the control panels but I couldn't make it work. The overlay art is based on the Donkey Kong design but tweaked to feel more modern, metropolitan, fast, pop, etc. Figuring out what how to label the buttons was tricky, because just putting a letter in there didn't look right but with the games being RPGs there is no set command either. I went with labels I found in a manual that made enough sense. For the instruction box I tried a few things but just pulled the original blurb from the back of the Gameboy boxes for that extra shot of nostalgia (with a few tweaks).



I still have to do some tweaking, and I want to make labels for the two admin buttons ("Exit" and "Turbo"), but so far I'm really happy with how they look. Will I ever actually make them? Maybe, maybe not. With some mulling and experimentation the idea of adapting the games to an arcade isn't as dumb to me as it was before. It's not like a console game where it's meant to be played with a controller. I tried them with my fightstick and the games play about as well with arcade controls as they do with a keyboard or controller, none of which are really like playing on a Gameboy. But playing on a Gameboy has numerous disadvantages, so why not make something special to play these games on? And for a while I've wanted to make a personalized ROM hack of FireRed/LeafGreen to, among other things, make it possible to complete the Pokedex without trading. One of these cabinets would be a fun venue for that: "Pokemon: Arcade Version." Still pretty dumb, and there are greater priorities right now, but I think it's a fun kind of dumb. Others may not agree, and I know I may be facing excommunication for even bringing it up. 

[Malenko]

They all look great, the only thing I'd change is to drop the word "version" from the marquess. 

[TheGreatRedDragon]

They all look great, the only thing I'd change is to drop the word "version" from the marquess. 

Thanks!

I wanted to put the actual game title somewhere on the cabinet and it didn't look right on the CPO, bezel or sideart. Not that it's really necessary, because you can take one look at the cabinet and know what game it is (kinda like the White Album), but I liked incorporating one more little piece from the box art.

[Malenko]

I wanted to put the actual game title somewhere on the cabinet and it didn't look right on the CPO, bezel or sideart. Not that it's really necessary, because you can take one look at the cabinet and know what game it is (kinda like the White Album), but I liked incorporating one more little piece from the box art.

I agree, but colloquially they are known as pokemon red, blue, green just like in your title :p 

I'd replace the nintendo logo on the CPO with "red version" etc , and I'd probably keep the pokeballs red on all 3 as well. Still, they look factory. good clean lines.

[yotsuya]

Thank you for understanding and demonstrating the intricacies of design concepts instead of just plastering every single Pokémon all over the cab. Kudos!

[TheGreatRedDragon]

I wanted to put the actual game title somewhere on the cabinet and it didn't look right on the CPO, bezel or sideart. Not that it's really necessary, because you can take one look at the cabinet and know what game it is (kinda like the White Album), but I liked incorporating one more little piece from the box art.

I agree, but colloquially they are known as pokemon red, blue, green just like in your title :p 

I'd replace the nintendo logo on the CPO with "red version" etc , and I'd probably keep the pokeballs red on all 3 as well. Still, they look factory. good clean lines.

They're commonly referred by those names, but at that point the overall design of the cabinet is self-demonstrating. I could look at it and know it's Pokemon Red, so just having the word "Red" on the marquee is redundant, but if it says Red Version then it's displaying the title of the game. When in doubt I went back to what it would look like from a factory, and I figured the actual game would be identified on the marquee along with the Nintendo logo.

I also thought about making the Pokeballs all red, but the problem with that is contrast. On the Red cabinet they'd be part of the monochromatic scheme, but on the Blue cabinet they'd stand out and on Green cabinet they'd be ultra high contrast. So they'd be the same color across the board but each CPO would have a different feel because of it, when what I'm aiming for is uniformity. I think if I wanted to make the Pokeballs pop I'd use the accent color from the sideart (which coincidentally three of the colors the Gameboy Color launched with ).

Thanks a lot for the feedback though, and for the compliment. 

Thank you for understanding and demonstrating the intricacies of design concepts instead of just plastering every single Pokémon all over the cab. Kudos!

Thanks a lot but I'm not sure I really understand or demonstrate anything, other than not to give Pikachu a joystick penis. 

[yotsuya]

Thanks a lot but I'm not sure I really understand or demonstrate anything, other than not to give Pikachu a joystick penis. 

You have no idea what an accomplishment that is in itself.

[TheGreatRedDragon]

Thanks a lot but I'm not sure I really understand or demonstrate anything, other than not to give Pikachu a joystick penis. 

You have no idea what an accomplishment that is in itself.

I've done enough research, read enough threads and seen enough pictures to know that it's a low bar to leap over. 

[Vigo]

No Yellow Version? Cool concept, especially if they could link up.

I'm kinda with Malenko, the version on the marquee is about the only outta place thing for me as well. I personally would just remove it completely. The color version isn't on your side-art, why have it on your marquee? I would say if you want it, I would put it under the pokemon logo on your CP. That's a minor thing though. Overall, good clean art.

My son started watching Pokemon on Netflix this week, so today I dug out my old GB cart and let him play on the game boy. He has been getting a kick out of it. Probably gonna get one of those bootleg GB colors so he can play on a backlit screen. (I had an SP, but I lent it out and never got it back.)

[TheGreatRedDragon]

No Yellow Version? Cool concept, especially if they could link up.

I'm kinda with Malenko, the version on the marquee is about the only outta place thing for me as well. I personally would just remove it completely. The color version isn't on your side-art, why have it on your marquee? I would say if you want it, I would put it under the pokemon logo on your CP. That's a minor thing though. Overall, good clean art.

My son started watching Pokemon on Netflix this week, so today I dug out my old GB cart and let him play on the game boy. He has been getting a kick out of it. Probably gonna get one of those bootleg GB colors so he can play on a backlit screen. (I had an SP, but I lent it out and never got it back.)

Yellow, you say?



I put the Yellow version on hold to finish up the others. And I was having trouble translating the palette into yellow, because it's such a tricky color to work with. It's hard to get lighter values that aren't neon, midtones that are legible and darker values that aren't brown.

[Vigo]

Nice!! And yes, I hear ya! Yellow can be a pain to work with, it can come out weird in printing as well.

[Mike A]

That is some nice work.

[TheGreatRedDragon]

That is some nice work.

Thanks man!

[nintendoid]

Like what you have done here... was a good concept

[TheGreatRedDragon]

Like what you have done here... was a good concept

Thanks buddy.

[stuzza]

These are simply fantastic!         Nice work.

I have made similar ones for Super Mario 1, 2 and 3 and hope to make cabs for them one day.  Something about the Nintendo cabs that just look cool!

[TheGreatRedDragon]

Thanks.

I think Nintendo cabs just have a classy, unique design that lends itself well to iconography. And since Nintendo has a ton of great iconography to pull from there are many ways to successfully interpret it.

[droople]

It's really nice work.
wish could have a tutorial how to make the artwork.

[TheGreatRedDragon]

It's really nice work.
wish could have a tutorial how to make the artwork.

I made the artwork in Adobe Illustrator. And how I learn any kind of software is I start with an idea and look up how to do it. Just by doing that you build up technical knowledge. Beyond that it's trial and error. Once I got my basic idea down I laid in countless small tweaks and changes that all added up and gradually led me to where I wanted to go.

[Mooselogic]

In fear of getting shot at dawn for daring to ask this question  where did you manage to find the Pokémon artwork, my son is Pokemon crazy and I would love to swap out my marque for one of these style ones. I think they are really cool and also love the simplicity of them.

[TheGreatRedDragon]

In fear of getting shot at dawn for daring to ask this question  where did you manage to find the Pokémon artwork, my son is Pokemon crazy and I would love to swap out my marque for one of these style ones. I think they are really cool and also love the simplicity of them.

All of the artwork was drawn by Ken Sugimori and pulled from this archive. I vectorized it all by hand in Illustrator.

Here are some I didn't use for the final artwork:





It's not very hard to do, though time consuming (depending on the complexity of the piece). Figuring out the overall design took a lot more thought and effort.

[Mooselogic]

That’s awesome  thank you, time to get creative 

[Wyo]

Dude, these are legit.  Great designs!

[TheGreatRedDragon]

Dude, these are legit.  Great designs!

Thank you man! Your work was a great inspiration to me.

[TheGreatRedDragon]

Got cabin fever so I'm dipping my toe back into this one.

[arfink]

Fantastic work, you ought to be proud of yourself for this one. I spent around 10 years as a designer and several of those in a sign shop, and this is the kind of stuff I always wished I had the customer approval and budget for, but nobody ever wanted to spend that kind of time or allow me the creative freedom to do it. Now that I'm out of that business entirely, maybe I'll take the time to design something for myself.

[TheGreatRedDragon]

Fantastic work, you ought to be proud of yourself for this one. I spent around 10 years as a designer and several of those in a sign shop, and this is the kind of stuff I always wished I had the customer approval and budget for, but nobody ever wanted to spend that kind of time or allow me the creative freedom to do it. Now that I'm out of that business entirely, maybe I'll take the time to design something for myself.

Go for it! It's a ton of fun.

I've always been an artist but never by trade, and have only dabbled with design. Stuff like this is a very fun learning exercise.

[Osirus23]

That looks so good I want to build one, and I don't even like Pokemon or Bartops.

[TheGreatRedDragon]

That looks so good I want to build one, and I don't even like Pokemon or Bartops.

Thank you!

[BGoulette]

These are beautiful! As someone who's more than conversant in Illustrator, I know it can be a tedious pain sometimes to get every anchor point and control handle positioned just so. Great work. And I think you managed yellow quite well, too, given, as you noted, the difficulties in manipulating its values while avoiding pastels or browns!

[tdean10]

GreatRedDragon,

I love your creations!  If you are ever willing to do some commission work, please let me know. 

[TheGreatRedDragon]

Did a little more work today.

First I got the Yellow marquee done:



While I was at it I decided to try a suggestion from Malenko, moving the Version tag to the control panel:

[stuzza]

Stunning!   

[TheGreatRedDragon]

Got Yellow finished and made more tweaks to the overall design.








Armed with my new Cintiq, I've started using a new method for vectorizing these guys. Instead of using the pen tool to create every individual piece of color, now I'm tracing the Sugimori artwork by hand in Clip Studio Paint. The vector drawing tools in that program are incredible, and while unfortunately the resulting lineart can't be exported with the lineweights intact, I can export the refined lineart as a .png with a high enough resolution that Illustrator's Trace tool works damn near flawlessly. Perhaps a little more time consuming than my old method, but with more consistent quality.

At this point I still have to come up with a kickplate piece. But as fun as it is to work on these, the artwork is just part of the project. My main goal is to create a ROM hack creating an idealized "arcade edition" of Generation 1. I have lots of ideas for what to implement, mostly simple tweaks to FireRed but some big ones as well, but that's a long road ahead of me. In the meantime I might get started on Gold, Silver and Crystal.

[TheGreatRedDragon]

Got exposed to COVID, got two weeks of isolation ahead of me, starting on Gold/Silver.

[Minutemaid101]

I'm not sure if this is a way to post but if the artist doing these arcade machine builds can email me at andrewscott646@gmail.com. I would love to speak with you on a project I could use your help on

[bobbyb13]

Really outstanding work.

It would be a shame to not build a few of these machines.

[TheGreatRedDragon]

It seems like an annual thing, every winter I come back to this project for another pass.

I've created a new background for the sideart to better fit with the rest of the package.I've also tweaked the color balance of the artwork itself, and I've made the same adjustment to the rest of the Pokemon art to better fit color-wise.






I've also got an idea for the kickplate, but it hinges on a few outside factors.

As far as actually building the cabinet goes, I'm getting closer. The big hurdle is on the software end.

My plan is to make the cabinet a dedicated Pokemon machine.

At the centerpiece, a ROM hack of FireRed meant to represent a theoretical "Arcade Edition" of Gen 1. On the surface, that means pulling out most of the extra features introduced in the remakes, such as the Sevii Islands. At the same time, the games must be able to be completed without trading, so trade evolutions, version exclusives, starters, Eevees, and Mew need to be accounted for with new events. In terms of gameplay, I want to pull the combat further into the present with the Physical/Special split and newer moves and abilities, while doing a substantial amount of tweaking to balance the roster (with the intention of making every evolutionary line at least viable) and making things like EV training and move tutors much more accessible in the post-game. I have some greater ambitions beyond that, incorporating Battle Frontier and Breeding mechanics in a new way, but those are future projects.

Beyond the central game, I'll include the original versions of Gen 1 and their remakes, spinoffs like the Trading Card Game and Pokemon Pinball, and some of the classic, highly acclaimed ROM hacks out there.

For the frontend, I'm planning to make something custom but basic. The idea would be adapting the classic start menu for game selection, while having an updated variation of the game's splash screen (with the scrolling Pokemon) as the attract mode.

Hardware-wise, I'm gonna use a Raspberry Pi for sake of simplicity. For controls, I considered using classic DK-style buttons but Seimitsu buttons and sticks have a wider range of accessories that can be more easily color-coordinated. I'm thinking of using white dust and shaft covers and white buttons for Start/Select, with Version-colored ball top and A/B buttons (possibly giving A or B a white plunger for contrast).

It's all coming together really well in my head, I just have to start making.

[bobbyb13]

That bezel artwork is excellent!

[TheGreatRedDragon]

That bezel artwork is excellent!

Thanks a lot! It's been a long process of tweaking.

Where I started:



Where I am now: