Snarboo

Source: VideoGames and Computer Entertainment 16 (May 1990)
Scan source: RetroMags

Screenshots Courtesy of MobyGames

Not only is this an Origin game I've never heard of, but like most Origin games, the aesthetic is immaculate. Big shout outs to the interface, which despite obscuring most of the game world, more than makes up for it via sheer charm. There's also a C64 port which looks pretty solid, but the beer bottle health bar is sadly replaced by what looks like a jar of pee.

Shocked that this didn't receive a Sega Genesis port, nor has it been re-released.

I don't envy the pixel artists of old who had to make everything look as close to the same as they could on 27 different graphics and hardware standards that all had less than nothing in common and probably didn't even come from the same planet.

I've often wondered if artists of the era had access to some kind of palette conversion utility that would have automated some of the process involved with this. The basic shapes and outlines are in roughly the same place in each of the palettes, but some parts clearly had to be redrawn.

So much of this era and its tools are a complete mystery to me, and I wish we had more insight into what time saving measures developers took in order to streamline tedious tasks like this.