Good work! Really impressed at all of the original artwork. I also love your use parallax and watermode/mode 7 transformations in the backgrounds. Gameplay looks a bit like Rastan, which I loved as a kid.
The new sprite is a big improvement (you added much crisper detail), but I also think the darker skin looks better than the light skin. The darker version makes it easier to see the shading around the muscles which makes them look more 3-dimensional. The lighter version gets lost against the dark outlines, so it looks much more flat.
The new sprite is a big improvement (you added much crisper detail), but I also think the darker skin looks better than the light skin. The darker version makes it easier to see the shading around the muscles which makes them look more 3-dimensional. The lighter version gets lost against the dark outlines, so it looks much more flat.




