Why is Mario's shirt brown?

[DRW]

also you want to keep the brand image of mario the same.

If you compare his clothes in "Donkey Kong" artworks with his clothes in "Mario Bros." artworks, he didn't have a brand image yet.

In fact, in the pre-"Super Mario Bros." artworks, even the character himself looked completely different. SMB was literally the first time that Mario had his typical look.

And it wasn't until the second game (the Japanese SMB2, "The Lost Levels") that anybody besides Mario had their typical look: Bowser and the Princess didn't look like Bowser and the Princess in the SMB1 artwork yet, and the Koopa Troopers were drawn in a strange style. Only in SMB2 (J) was their design standardized:
https://assets.catawiki.nl/assets/2020/ ... 9a1db4.jpg

And even there, they hadn't established yet that the Princess is taller than Mario. This and Luigi's canon artworks weren't defined until SMB2 (USA).
(Although it was brought to my attention that Luigi's modern design was first used in the box art of "Famicom Grand Prix II" which predates SMB2 (USA) by a few months. But I assume the design was probably still established because of SMB2 and the two games were simply in development at the same time, so the car racing game already used the new Luigi design.)

[Pokun]

Yeah Miyamoto put Mario into everything in an attempt to make him a mascot character. He is easy to draw and recognize so Miyamoto often told other artists that they could use him, which is probably why he looks a little differently every time. Though it's interesting that Miyamoto, who draw the original Mario look, also drew the quite different SMB1 look which then stuck as his modern look. So the final difference wasn't a matter of a different artist at all.

He drew Bowser with a cattle-look because he was inspired by the ox-demonking, but other developers thought he should be a turtle to match the other turtle enemies. He was changed into a turtle before SMB2j, but apparently not in time for the SMB1 boxart. Considering this, it's interesting that they went back to the ox-demon look in ANNSMB which came after SBM2j. I guess they just wanted it to match the original SMB1 boxart, since it's basically a variation of that game.

[sonder]

If you change the byte at $5EA in the hex editor in FCEUX to $02 you can see how it would have looked in blue. It looks like he did in Odyssey and I don't like it but that might just be my attachment to the original colors. I think it might have originally been a mistake and Miyamoto liked it and decided to keep it that way. He's been known to do that in other games.

[Pokun]

Yeah his shirt looks weirdly dark if changing to $02, changing to $12 (which is also used in many Mario games) is a bit better as it is brighter but still kinda looks weird to me. It would probably be better to give Mario a proper hue-shift, and that leads to another theory...


If going by color theory the changes to Mario's shirt from blue to brown may have just been an attempt at a hue-shift.
As most games before SMB used black backgrounds there was a need for a hue-shift towards the yellow hue when he is out in the sun (the mid-day sun shines a yellow light which adds some yellow to things) as he is in SMB with the sky blue background introduced for the first time.
His normal blue shirt/boots is color $02 or $12 and the brown shirt/boots in SMB is color $18, that's exactly 6 hue steps towards yellow and 1 tint step from $02 towards a brighter tone (but no tint steps from $12). This change of lightness (tint) is normally done when hue-shifting is done in order to make up for a brighter light source as in this case.

The main thing against this theory may be that they don't shift back his shirt/boots color to blue $02 or $12 when in dark levels (underground and night levels). I imagine it would have been simple to do, and they did make many enemies different colors. Maybe some powerup or something that shares Mario's pallette would look weird if they did, but it's an interesting improvement hack to try.

Also they didn't bother hue-shifting Mario's red overall/cap which is color $16 like in pretty much all NES games Mario stars in, but $16 is already very close to the yellow hue so it might not have made sense to change it given the low granularity.

They did hue-shift his skin color however. His skin color in most NES games is either $36 or $37 which both give quite fair skin, but in SMB he got the more yellowish $27 which is, if we pretend his "original" skin color is $36, both a single hue step towards yellow and a single shade step towards a darker tone.

This also gives Mario the same skin color as Luigi always had since Mario Bros, as Luigi did not get a hue-shift for his skin in SMB. Luigi previously had a more tanned skin $27 than Mario's pinkish $36 (though this is not reflected in the artwork), but as in SMB they both have $27 they have the same skin color for the first time.

In Super Mario USA, Mario gets to keep this new yellowish look $27 while Luigi is reverted back to Mario's old pinkish skin color $36 for some reason.

In SMB3 they revert Mario back to his old $36 skin color and also gives Luigi this color, officially abandoning his old tan. I think after that they always
had identical skin colors.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Expecting blue but getting brown

[dragonsbrethren]

(the mid-day sun shines a yellow light which adds some yellow to things)

The mid-day sun radiates close to pure white: it's slightly more green on the spectrum but it's certainly not yellow. The change from blue to greenish brown was, as established earlier in this thread, most likely done to increase contrast with the blue sky and (especially) water backgrounds.

[Pokun]

Regardless of what color the sunlight in the real world is, hue-shifting is a common technique used by many famous artists (especially impressionists and their derivatives). It requires shifting the hue, not only the lightness and saturation. Games that fails to do that and simply changes lightness (meaning just adding or removing white) tends to look like the sky is very cloudy or dusty as was established in another thread here that discussed hue-shifting.
A proper hue-shift for daylight is to shift hue towards the yellow hue on the color wheel (in either direction I believe) as that is what we expect sunlight to look like. It gives the art a warmer light than just adding more white does and hints that it's sunny (lightness should still be increased and ideally saturation should be decreased a bit). If it's sunrise/sunset you can go towards red instead as the sunlight is red at that time (or orange or whatever), etc.
For shadows you shift towards violet instead since that is the complementary (opposite) to yellow on the color wheel (RYB color space is assumed in art), and if sunrise shift towards the complementary of red (which is green) and so on.

But yeah, I don't really believe hue-shifting was intended as it's way too much of a shift from blue to brown. They probably simply picked a color that worked with the backgrounds in the game as said earlier in the thread. Besides, contrast is another art technique (part of composition theory) that is used to make important parts to be noticed earlier by the viewer, by for example giving it a color that stands out from the background. In a game, contrast is both aesthetic from an art perspective and practical from a gameplay perspective as it allows you to see the player character more clearly which gives you better control which in turn makes it more fun.

Mario's skin color seems like a proper hue-shift though, whether or not it was intended as one or if they just tried out Luigi's tan on him to create contrast.

SMB proto Mario

The early photos of the game development seems to use his old fair skin along with the blue shirt, so I guess they changed both around the same time for the same reasons.

As for why they didn't change Mario's shirt in the artwork to brown to reflect the sprite color change? I can only guess that the artwork was drawn earlier in the development when the game still had a black backdrop and Mario's shirt was still blue.

[SMB2J-2Q]

Regardless of what color the sunlight in the real world is, hue-shifting is a common technique used by many famous artists (especially impressionists and their derivatives). It requires shifting the hue, not only the lightness and saturation. Games that fails to do that and simply changes lightness (meaning just adding or removing white) tends to look like the sky is very cloudy or dusty as was established in another thread here that discussed hue-shifting.
A proper hue-shift for daylight is to shift hue towards the yellow hue on the color wheel (in either direction I believe) as that is what we expect sunlight to look like. It gives the art a warmer light than just adding more white does and hints that it's sunny (lightness should still be increased and ideally saturation should be decreased a bit). If it's sunrise/sunset you can go towards red instead as the sunlight is red at that time (or orange or whatever), etc.
For shadows you shift towards violet instead since that is the complementary (opposite) to yellow on the color wheel (RYB color space is assumed in art), and if sunrise shift towards the complementary of red (which is green) and so on.

But yeah, I don't really believe hue-shifting was intended as it's way too much of a shift from blue to brown. They probably simply picked a color that worked with the backgrounds in the game as said earlier in the thread. Besides, contrast is another art technique (part of composition theory) that is used to make important parts to be noticed earlier by the viewer, by for example giving it a color that stands out from the background. In a game, contrast is both aesthetic from an art perspective and practical from a gameplay perspective as it allows you to see the player character more clearly which gives you better control which in turn makes it more fun.

Mario's skin color seems like a proper hue-shift though, whether or not it was intended as one or if they just tried out Luigi's tan on him to create contrast.
smbprotomari.png
The early photos of the game development seems to use his old fair skin along with the blue shirt, so I guess they changed both around the same time for the same reasons.

As for why they didn't change Mario's shirt in the artwork to brown to reflect the sprite color change? I can only guess that the artwork was drawn earlier in the development when the game still had a black backdrop and Mario's shirt was still blue.

Here's what I did to fix the color palette:

Code: Select all

PlayerColors:
      .db $22, $16, $27, $02 ;mario's colors
      .db $22, $19, $27, $03 ;luigi's colors
      .db $22, $37, $27, $16 ;fiery mario's colors
      .db $22, $30, $27, $19 ;fiery luigi's colors

And also change this, so that in 2-player mode fiery Luigi will have his former super colors:

Code: Select all

GetPlayerColors:
               ldx VRAM_Buffer1_Offset  ;get current buffer offset
               ldy #$00
               lda CurrentPlayer        ;check which player is on the screen
               beq ChkFiery
               ldy #$04                 ;load offset for luigi
ChkFiery:      lda PlayerStatus         ;check player status
               cmp #$02
               bne StartClrGet          ;if fiery, load alternate offset for fiery player
               tya                      ;transfer current player's default offset to A
               clc
               adc #$08                 ;then add 8 to point current player's default offset to appropriate fiery palette
               tay                      ;move the modified offset back to Y
StartClrGet:   lda #$03                 ;do four colors

These changes will have Mario assume his old Donkey Kong color palette (blue shirt but still red overalls), while regular and super Luigi will have a purplish blue shirt and green overalls instead of the attire meant for his fiery form. These changes also reflect the way the brothers' respective attire looked in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show cartoon series and in the Super Mario All-Stars remakes of SMB and SMB2J.

~Ben (SMB2J-2Q)

[Pokun]

That's nice, could you upload an IPS patch or something so we don't have to rebuild the ROM just to try it out?