Well, I know this won't come as a surprise to everyone, but I'm the one who pushed the pixels!
Yeah, I know I said I wasn't the one behind it, but April Fools is the only time you're really allowed to lie.
It dawned on me near the beginning of March that April Fools was right around the corner, and I figured an X9 SNES mock up would be perfect. Perhaps predictable, but the intent wasn't really to fool anyone (though, that's always a nice side effect). I wasn't even counting on fooling anyone anyway; it was just something fun that I wanted to do, and I thought maybe some other people might think it's a neat idea. If anyone was upset at it, well, too bad.
I was only doing it to have fun, and pleasing everyone isn't a requirement I have to meet to achieve that.
Still, overall, there's been worse reactions to pranks and hoaxes.
To everyone who saw the fun in the idea, Vixy and I say "thanks!" Everyone who reacted in a sour way: "meh."
Yeah, something I need to point out is that Vixy was on board from the start. I told her about two weeks ago, before I even started to push pixels, about the idea. We actually bounced some ideas back and forth of what the levels could be, and that helped me come up with what I made. She also e-mailed the prank to other sites, which was awesome! And as always, typed up a very nice news post.
So, on to the sprites... In fact, take a look at the tiles:
(There's un-used stuff at the top).
The funniest stuff I read was about the sprites. First of all, I promise you guys have never seen that Axl sprite before, because I made it from scratch just for this hoax. The only person who saw it before anyone else, was Oakes (who gave some great crits). Axl is also NOT an edit. If you can't tell by looking and comparing, well, I don't know how else to explain that he isn't.
None of the backgrounds have reused tiles from other games either. Everything there is also made from scratch. Designing the backgrounds was probably the most difficult part; which is why there's un-used stuff. I was originally just going to make tiles to set up several shots of the same level, but then I realized that the parts I was dividing the level up into, might as well be levels themselves.
The only kind of notable thing to say about them might be Zero's screen.
When I finished making it, I realized it was stupid to have spikes on the walls when there was no reason to go near a wall. So I made these enemies that shoot out tornadoes that would push you into them. I thought it kind of made sense, and then made that part seem more dangerous.
So yeah, I still had a lot of fun doing this hoax, and that's all I really care about.
I hope it at least made you guys want to pick up a controller, and play some of the old MMX games, or hope for a new one! After all, with enough fan interest, we might get one...
Ah, and the sprites and tiles are PD.