I basically made solid colour blocks going to black and then detailed them in. There really is not much more to it than that.

I am in absolute love with your rock formations and tiles. Any notes on how you made those?

Among other aspects, I love the shadow of the walls in the castle and on the cliffs. I need to look these over closely, there's a lot to take in.

this is great

 Alter Keiler. ist supi.

 Love this haha nice job

Yeah. I can't quite see how it could be done to look exactly like it is there but hey it still looks nice.  I still can't decide whether that whole weird sub-palette thingy of the NES makes it too much of a pain in the butt to do graphics for or makes it extremely interesting and rewarding to do.  Am pleased with the couple I did anyways and there really are some lovely looking NES games but I can see why a lot of people go for a NES-inspired look rather than true NES restrictions in their indie games these days.  The rest of the screens here look doable and very nice too.

I'm 100% sure (as in, I like, made a rom) the cliffs/slopes in the desert scene that are similar to the ones you like will work with about eight pixels of changes to the tiles themselves+a rearrangement of the scene to hit 16x16 borders, and I'd bet money I could make the pink cloud scene work with very little lost. Except the Yus bird and his text. :P (Disclaimer: The cliffs/slopes/cacti/cool mountain background could all work together. I make no 100% sure promises for the blocks there, I never checked.)

Consider light gray or brown (probably light gray is best) to be the universal color rather than the expected black, or sky color. Discard any yellow cloud that's touching the cliffs. (the one by the Yus and the left one overlapping the dark pink mountain can stay). Shift a few things to 16x16 boundaries. I think you'll see at this point how very little needs to be changed. Some underhangs would need one color removed, but in most cases I can see it's a very, very small loss of pixels. It's very possible I'm missing something, but I don't have time to make a rom again at the moment. You're right to study and admire this, it will teach one a lot of tricks one can use to actually comform, even if it doesn't itself without tiny, tiny tweaks (Or the ever nefarious sprite overlays).

Edit: Because it wasn't immediately obvious and I thought it was neat: http://i.imgur.com/d2q78ek.gif It says "This is not the tile." But it means "This is not the 16x16 region that only has one palette. :P

Ah cool.  I wasn't criticizing.  I was just genuinely interested if there had been something I wasn't aware of when I was doing NES mock ups and researching the 'limitations'.  :)

omg 

I used the NES palette which Adam Atomic used for his little NES Spec sheet. So if he fucked up, it's all his fault.

I have a question, the dark grey you use is a super useful color and I've been using it a lot when doing NES themed sprites and tiles. But when I look at actual NES games I never see it used. Why is that?

Yeah, I see what you mean. If you look closer, there are plenty of places that would not quite work, but then again, I was not trying to be 100% NES conform. Just get the vibe.

Yeah it was mainly the dark rock edge tiles in the one with the Yus in it that were intriguing me as to how the palettes would work on that.

Nice mockups!

Very cool!

 Wow so much detail! Good job

Like what for example? Slopes are perfectly possible on the NES, SMB3 among other things had slopes. And I am keeping with the 4 palettes with 1 shared bg colour in these, apart from the bottom right one I think. Might be some cheating in some other places too. Not sure.

EDIT:

OK, just checked. The first 2 are conform. The one with the very blocky tiles is almost conform but has 5 instead of 4 palettes I think. And in the other ones I cheat here and there, because I could not be arsed. But The slopes and all that would be perfectly doable with a bit more tweaking and such. All of these could look very close to this on a real NES.

I'm not quite sure how some of the seemingly non-square tiling would work unless I'm missing something.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Friend: Most of the screens would be, yes. Of course some of them are multiple screens at once, so that would have to scroll.

this is possible on a NES????!!!

Very cute and charming!

Gorgeous work Ptoing! Great inspiration for my own NES mockups! So smart!

 Like the rocks' texture.

Still my favourite NES screenshot-mockups. Especially these desert scenes.

And I would love to play that game.

 Yus, you finally post these here! Awesome stuff man c:

 Perfect marks.

Goes to show you what some smart, well-guided style can achieve when under harsh graphics restrictions.

I renember these.   I loves me some NES mock ups. :)

 Now that's some niceNES.

 Hrm. I keep thinking one of the enemy mobs is the player, not the player itself. I think it's because in each mockup the camera doesn't really focus on the player and instead focuses on the environment- which is okay for a mockup, I suppose.

 Yus!

Amazing.