History Main / SuddenlyBlonde

[[quoteright:310:[[Franchise/SuperMarioBros https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/peachtoadstoolhairchange.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:310:With the shift from 8-bit to 16-bit gaming, Princess Peach's hair also shifted shades from auburn to blonde.[[labelnote:L-R, top to bottom]]''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'', ''WesternAnimation/SuperMarioBrosSuperShow'', ''VideoGame/SuperMarioAllStars'', ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie''[[/labelnote]]]]

* ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'': Samus Aran took a few games to become fully blond — in ''VideoGame/{{Metroid 1}}'' she was a brunette (''green'' with the Varia Suit), and in ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' she had a sort of dishwater blond color. [[note]]''VideoGame/MetroidIIReturnOfSamus'' was on the monochrome UsefulNotes/GameBoy.[[/note]]

* In the [[VideoGame/GoldenSun1 first]] [[VideoGame/GoldenSunTheLostAge two]] ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'' entries on the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance, Garet has brown hair and clothing in all of his official art but red hair and clothes in all of his sprites. Come ''VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn'' on the Nintendo DS, Garet finally has brown hair everywhere, although his son Tyrell has red haired sprites, models and official art as a nod to Garet's old look.
* ''VideoGame/LunarTheSilverStar'' for UsefulNotes/SegaCD had both graphics and color limitations to work around, so Luna's sprite had green hair, Ramus' had blue, and... '''some'''thing happened to Jessica, who's almost unrecognizable; but they're depicted more “normally” in cutscenes and in their dialogue portraits. Despite the graphical leap presented by the UsefulNotes/PlayStation version, Ramus' sprites still kept the blue hair for some reason.

* In ''[[VideoGame/NinjaJajamarukun Ninja Jajamaru-kun]]'', Princess Sakura's hair is pale pink on the cover, but her in-game sprite has black hair (in the Famicom and Vs. System versions, that is; the UsefulNotes/{{MSX}} version had to color her mostly red). Later games sensibly compromised by giving her black hair with a pink headband.

* The cast of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' had extremely simple, blocky designs compared to previous ''FF'' heroes, due to the limits of what could be achieved in 3D at the time. While the characters have been {{Art Shift}}ed from the 90s anime art style of the original game into a more realistic one, and lots of details have been tweaked here and there, there is no way Cloud will ever lose his [[MemeticHair iconic]] [[AnimeHair hairstyle]], even though it was originally intended less as an actual fashion choice and more as an artistic representation of him having hair at all. (Early ConceptArt depicts him with slicked-back hair; repeated redesigns had the loose strands around the front of his face get more and more exaggerated until they ended up with what we had now, in order to make the character stand out more on screen.)

* In ''VideoGame/PoliceQuest'', Sonny bonds started with black hair in the first game (brown in the remake) and became blonde in the sequel. The general explanation is that he dyed his hair for an infiltration job. He got brown hair in the third game.

* In ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestVTheNextMutation'' Roger who's always had brown hair, suddenly became blonde without any explanations. He's back with brown hair in ''VIdeoGame/SpaceQuestVIRogerWilcoInTheSpinalFrontier''

[[quoteright:350:[[Franchise/SuperMarioBros https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/peachtoadstoolhairchange.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:With the shift from 8-bit to 16-bit gaming, Princess Peach's hair also shifted shades from auburn to blonde.[[labelnote:L-R, top to bottom]]''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'', ''WesternAnimation/SuperMarioBrosSuperShow'', ''VideoGame/SuperMarioAllStars'', ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosMovie''[[/labelnote]]]]

** The elves in ''Origins'' looked like short, lithe humans with pointy ears. In subsequent games they received some more distinguishing facial features, like large eyes, a flat transition from forehead to nose, and a cultural [[DoesNotLikeShoes preference for bare feet]].

As consoles became more advanced, some franchise characters kept their quirks as a legacy feature. However, most artists opted to revert to the original concept art. As a result, these characters became Suddenly Blonde. This trope refers to any example of a technical limitation that requires a character in-game to differ from their concept art, which is reverted when that limitation is removed. It doesn't just refer to hair color.

* The cast of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' had extremely simple, blocky designs compared to previous ''FF'' heroes, due to the limits of what could be achieved in 3D at the time. While the characters have been {{Art Shift}}ed from the 90s anime art style of the original game into a more realistic one, and lots of details have been tweaked here and there, there is no way Cloud will ever lose his [[MemeticHair iconic]] [[AnimeHair hairstyle]], even though it was originally intended less as an actual fashion choice and more as an artistic representation of him having hair at all. (Early concept art depicts him with slicked-back hair; repeated redesigns had the loose strands around the front of his face get more and more exaggerated until they ended up with what we had now, in order to make the character stand out more on screen.)

** Praetor Artanis is a particularly striking example. In his one cutscene appearance in ''Brood War'', due to a bad case of NoFlowInCGI and a generally primitive rendering engine, most of the elaborate armor seen in concept art had to be cut. In ''Starcraft II'', the technology had advanced enough to show off his BlingOfWar and NiceHat to full effect.

* Terra from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' is blonde, but the team was running out of palette space, and the rest of her design worked better if she reused an existing palette. Her palette didn't have enough shades of yellow to create believable blonde hair, but they did manage to make believable greenish-blue hair, which is what most fans remember; however, in all of her other appearances (including the official artwork for ''Final Fantasy VI''), she has blonde hair. Administrivia/TropesAreNotBad however, as most fans agree Terra's green hair helped her stand out from Celes who shares the a similar color. Being half-Esper, it further emphasized her uniqueness.

* In the [[VideoGame/GoldenSun1 first]] [[VideoGame/GoldenSunTheLostAge two]] ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'' entries on the Gameboy Advance, Garet has brown hair and clothing in all of his official art but red hair and clothes in all of his sprites. Come ''VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn'' on the Nintendo DS, Garet finally has brown hair everywhere, although his son Tyrell has red haired sprites, models and official art as a nod to Garet's old look.

* ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'': Samus Aran took a few games to become fully blond — in ''VideoGame/{{Metroid 1}}'' she was a brunette (''[[YouGottaHaveBlueHair green]]'' with the Varia Suit), and in ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' she had a sort of dishwater blond color. [[note]]''VideoGame/MetroidIIReturnOfSamus'' was on the monochrome UsefulNotes/GameBoy.[[/note]]

* Clair in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGaiden'' is an odd example. In the original NES game, she had [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair blue hair]]. Official art depicted her with red hair. Come the remake on 3DS, ''Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia'', she now has blonde hair. This was probably done so she more greatly resembled her brother Clive, except that he ''always'' had blonde hair, even in the NES version. It makes you wonder why she wasn't blonde to begin with...

* ''VideoGame/LunarTheSilverStar'' for UsefulNotes/SegaCD had both graphics and color limitations to work around, so Luna's sprite had green hair, Ramus' had blue, and... '''some'''thing happened to Jessica, who's almost unrecognizable; but they're depicted more “normally” in cutscenes and in their dialogue portraits. Despite the graphical leap presented by the UsefulNotes/PlayStation version, Ramus' sprites still [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair kept the blue hair for some reason]].

* In ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', Schala is depicted as a nineteen-year-old woman with [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair long, blue hair]] and a purple robe, which displays her position as the magic-using princess of Zeal. In ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'', she's revealed to have been absorbed by the remains of Lavos, creating the Time Devourer; she now appears as a shorter girl with blonde hair and a white dress, making her resemble her daughter/clone, Kid. [[ShrugOfGod No official explanation]] for this dramatic change in appearance has ever been given.

* The brothers [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]] had appearances designed to be easy to render on the low resolution arcade monitors of the day — the caps were to avoid having visible hair, the overalls were to make the arms more distinct, the sideburns made the ears more distinct, and the mustaches were to make the nose distinct and make the lack of any visible mouths less noticeable. This also had the side effect of making the characters look distinct during an era where almost every video game hero was either a cute ball-like monster or a Japanese boy with [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair blue, spiky hair]].

So ''This Game Is Totally Awesome'' comes out on your [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem NES]]. And it lives up to its name. You laughed. You cried. You cheered. You fight the legions of hell and rescue the DamselInDistress, a cute-looking brunette. And you can't wait for the sequel.

Four years later, it finally arrives - ''{{Super|Title64Advance}} This Game Is Totally Awesome'' is released. And it's even better. The {{Technobabble}} is more babbley, the SlippySlideyIceWorld is more slippery, the [[PlayerPunch Player Punches]] are more punchy, and the DamselInDistress is... blonde? TheyChangedItNowItSucks, right?

Wrong. She was always supposed to be blonde. However, the NES couldn't render blonde hair very well (it was hard to distinguish from skin tone, and they could only have three colors per sprite, making yellow "less useful"), so most artists switched to brown. Likewise, it was usually very difficult to render ''black'' hair, because black was generally reserved as the background color. [[note]]This is a trick that allowed designers to sneak an extra color - black - into their character designs, since the transparent pixels on the sprite would always render as black. ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'' used this constantly.[[/note]] This also explains why familiar characters in some older games are drawn in their usual colors in cutscenes only.

* Link suffered from this trope in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'', which is funny since his two NES games had him with brown hair, which matched the official art of him. The official art of Link in ''Link to the Past'' still had him with dirty blond hair, but the in-game sprite of Link has him with ''pink'' hair, which is most likely due to palette limitations for the SNES. The GBA port still retained Link's pink hair.
* ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'''s Samus Aran took a few games to become fully blond — in ''VideoGame/{{Metroid 1}}'' she was a brunette (''[[YouGottaHaveBlueHair green]]'' with the Varia Suit), and in ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' she had a sort of dishwater blond color. [[note]]''VideoGame/MetroidIIReturnOfSamus'' was on the monochrome UsefulNotes/GameBoy.[[/note]]