The Energon Pub

I know the title may be a little hard to understand. But what I'm wondering is what is the first game that used the same character model just with different colors to show that their tougher enemies? What is the latest game to use this cheap ploy? And what other famous games use it?

Just to give you a couple examples, Halo does it. Blue < Red < Gold < White. Which always made me wonder. Elites can found in these colors and so can Grunts, but Hunters only ever have blue armor. How badass would a white Hunter be?!

TMNT4:Turtles in Time, released in '92, had even more colors of Foot Ninjas. Almost every color in the rainbow I think. Purple, Blue, Red, Yellow, Orange, and White are the only ones I recall. There's probably more.

Pac-Man?

F' Clyde

Final Fantasy 1 was doing it way back in 1987. It was usually a palette swap. (Purple ogre with green shirt < Green ogre with purple shirt) Though not always.

I would say that most of the early 80's games were like that.... Asteroids, Centipede, Space Invaders, etc...

Well it is cheap as it saves the developers money on having to create new character models.

Though with Halo 3 they did a good job of making the armor unique to the harder brutes.

Blue, Red, Gold, White, and Black(stealth brutes)

Hell even before TMNT 4 they did this in TMNT 2: The Arcade Game as well.

Not to mention Mario, when we got Green, Red, Blue, turtle shells, even more so for Mario Kart now.

Dragon Quest does it still, the various Slimes etc

Chrono Trigger

For games back in the day, it was necessary to do this. However with games now-a-days anything less than an approach similar to how Bungie handled it (color showing rank, but each brute have a unique set of armor) just seems like a cop-out.

Saints Row 2 recolors the swat team outfit. Once in purple for any in your gang, blue for actual police swat, and orange for the elite ultor private army.

Thats the most recent i can think of