Game-Art-HQ

Busasami,  also known as Paulo Santana from California is not only a great artist but also a big fan of fighting games and especially the character designs. Interesting is, that he doesn’t just draw a few characters of 1-2 different fighting game series, no he tries out very different and unique character designs and interprets them in his own style but still very close to the source. You can visit his whole gallery on Deviantart Busasami participated in the Game Art HQ Street Fighter 25th Anniversary Tribute with his Alex entry

A while ago, in January 2012 i had a talk with him and he searched for ideas what to draw next. I recommended him Primal Rage characters and a Weapon Lord series. Those are mostly Dinosaurs and well..Apes. Giant Apes.

The game Primal Rage was a 2D Fighter by Atari Games from back the mid-nineties and still building on the Jurassic Park hype. Beside the unique idea to make a fighting game with prehistorical animals, they also used the good old stop-motion technique from old movies to animate the creatures.

The result was damn cool visually, but the gameplay itself was sadly lacking. Creatures however was something i rarely saw drawn by Paulo so i recommended him those since i thought it would be something new for him and be interesting not just for fans and viewers but also for himself.

Primal Rage has 7 characters, and Busasami draw them all, here you can see the results, under them you can read and see more of the 2nd  fan art series by Busasami

Click on each image to see the much bigger version!

WeaponLord. A 2d fighting game, released for the Super Nintendo /Genesis and seen by many as the spiritual predecessor of Soul Edge /Calibur …while it was developed in the USa by Visual Concepts and only published by Namco.  It is a weapon based fighting game with fantasy characters which could directly be from a Conan the Barbarian novel or movie, it was a bloody game with gameplay mechanics far ahead just every other weapon based fighter back in 1995. Sadly it was jsut released on the wrong platforms and on the wrong time.

The 16bit era ended abruptly when Sony released their Playstation, and almost nobody cared anymore for  oldschool 16bit 2d graphics when Tekken and Toshinden came out. I really wish this game would have been developed for the Saturn and Playstation, maybe still in 2D but with the 32 bit power which allowed crispy sound, bigger sprites and a lot more going on in the stages.

I remember how i imported the game back than..i think september 1995 from the USA and how i loved it..but a month later i discovered the Playstation with Ridge Racer and Toshinden and Weaponlord started to gain dust for a good while till i remembered this game and that graphics arent everything.

Busasami mentioned he wants to draw the WeaponLord characters, and i recommended him trying out somethign new and draw every of the 7 characters in a different art-style ..view the results of this art experiment and tribute to WeaponLord below and enlarge the images by clicking on them..these pieces are awesome and Busasami has my deep respect for creating the probably biggest tribute to this nearly forgotten game.

Korr, the main protagonist of WeaponLord

Zarak, the main antagonist and final boss