Xbox is paying homage to manga and video game artist Akira Toriyama by bringing a new dynamic dashboard background to Xbox consoles. The new dynamic background features art from Xbox 360 RPG Blue Dragon, which featured artwork by Toriyama.
Akira Toriyama gave us gaming’s most perfect character design
10.03.2024 - 13:21 / polygon.com
Akira Toriyama’s impact on the media of manga and anime, thanks to Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball, was gargantuan. In addition to his expansive fictional worlds and trademark illustrative style, Toriyama was a brilliant character designer — right down to the lowly Dragon Quest Slime, video gaming’s most perfect character design.
With the humble Slime, Toriyama transformed a simple idea into a powerful visual icon that has prospered for nearly four decades. The design for the common monster (and occasional hero) has inspired fashion, furniture, food, home electronics, and hundreds of other products.
The Slime made its debut in the original Dragon Quest, released on Nintendo’s Famicom in 1986. The glob of blue (or orange) goo is one of the first, if not the first, enemies players encounter in a Dragon Quest game. They’re adorable, but they were originally envisioned to be terrifying.
Yuji Horii, the creator of the Dragon Quest series, says the Slime was inspired by Sir-Tech’s Wizardry, the classic role-playing game that featured its own slimy monsters. “I was really hooked on Wizardry, the PC game, and that’s kind of where I got the inspiration for the Slime,” Horii told MTV in 2010. “I was doodling the slime-looking character and I took it to Mr. Toriyama, who did the character design, and he made it the Slime we see today.”
It wasn’t until more recently that many Dragon Quest fans got a peek at what Horii had originally envisioned. His loose sketch of what a Slime might look like, drawn in the mid-’80s, was more widely disseminated in 2017. Here’s a good look at Horii’s original idea, on the left, with Toriyama’s interpretation on the right.
There has never been a more important glow up in history then the sketch Yuji Horii gave Akira Toriyama for slimes in Dragon Quest vs what Toriyama sent back. pic.twitter.com/aSivcJ4nbl
Horii’s description says it’s amorphous and jelly-like. It would attach itself to people’s faces and suffocate them to death, according to his notes to Toriyama.
“Originally when we thought up the slime it was a pile of goo and we gave it to Toriyama-san to draw a picture of and make it a proper monster,” Horii told IGN in a 2007 interview. “We had imagined it [as] an icky pool of slime, but when he came back with that perfectly shaped tear-drop monster we thought it was perfect. That’s part of Toriyama’s power to take something like a pool of slime and use his imagination to make it a great character.”
Toriyama’s design is, indeed, perfect. Using only a few primitive shapes and lines, he gave the Slime a sense of volume and wetness. Its large, circular eyes and inflexible smile give it a blank, purposeless expression — an appearance that makes it ideal to serve as low-level cannon
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gamerant.com
30.03.2024 / 03:39
New Xbox Background Pays Tribute to Akira Toriyama and a Classic 360 JRPG
A new dynamic Xbox background pays tribute to the late Akira Toriyama and his work on the classic Xbox 360 title Blue Dragon. Microsoft is known to regularly release themes for players to download on Xbox. Most of the time, the thematic releases take inspiration from holidays and other notable events. Such is the case for March 2024, with the legendary Akira Toriyama's passing.
gamesradar.com
29.03.2024 / 19:19
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gamesradar.com
25.03.2024 / 19:41
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gamerant.com
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Dragon Ball XenoVerse 2 Players Come Together to Pay Their Respects to the Late, Great Akira Toriyama | Push Square
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pushsquare.com
10.03.2024 / 10:48
Dragon Ball Manga Icon Akira Toriyama Passes Aged 68 | Push Square
Akira Toriyama, the artist behind iconic manga like Dragon Ball, has passed away aged 68. His death was confirmed by the official Dragon Ball website, which noted that he still had “several works in the middle of creation”. A statement added: “He has left many manga titles and works of art to this world. We hope that Akira Toriyama’s unique world of creation continues to be loved by everyone for a long time to come.”
gamerant.com
09.03.2024 / 22:03
Sonic the Hedgehog Designer Pays Tribute to Akira Toriyama
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thesixthaxis.com
09.03.2024 / 10:27
Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama has passed away
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