Mistigram: guest artist @itsdeadguy came through at the very last minute with a bunch of great #PETSCII screens on game themes. Here are two virii from #DrMario! This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2ncD7yT
Mistigram: @wasabim.games has used modern technology to enhance the opening scene from Delphine Software’s 1989 adventure game #FutureWars, Eric Chahi’s first big break in gaming. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2nWVSq2
Mistigram: this is a sly little joke for fans of the #BitmapBrothers’ 1988 sports brawler #Speedball who also used to use their television’s #teletext service to look up the scores from the latest matches. The BBC never actually ran rankings for a fictitious futuristic sport, but if they had… This screen by @carlos_teletextr was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2mVLkrn
Mistigram: back in the queue, we’re still firmly in the ‘80s. Check out this frankly amazing interpretation of a boss fight from Irem’ s 1987 horizontal shooter #RType, drawn in #PETSCII by Cal @buzz_clik Skuthorpe! This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2nWVPum
Mistigram: going chronologically, it was going to take us a while to get to this #ANSIart screen, derived as it is from a game (River City Girls) released this year. (But one with deep roots - it’s the latest spin on an old series, this character (Misako) first appearing in a Technos game in 1990.) But then C0unt WAVnstein won fifth place with it in the ANSI art competition at this weekend’s @flashparty_ar demoparty in Argentina, so I had to bump it up in the queue in a big hurry. That’s a big deal for an artist who’s only been drawing in the medium for under two months! And what’s more, he had a second entry that performed even better. Stay tuned! And hats off! This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2oFe8Vt
Mistigram: le plus ca change… Despite holding the record for the longest period in continuous production, Nintendo’s line of #GameBoy mobile handheld video game systems went through several evolutionary twists and turns. @pixelartfortheheart shocked us all (because it’s not a landscape) with this #pixelart portrait of a folding #GameboySP, peripheral of choice for the Gamecube. Just try playing Pac-Man Vs. without one of these babies!… but I digress. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2nCQAQH
Mistigram: as the old gives way to the new, Cal @buzz_clik Skuthorpe used the Commodore #PETSCII character set to make this sideways illustration of Nintendo’s #GameBoy handheld video game system, still today the weapon of choice at chipmusic throwdowns. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2onvSoe
Mistigram: whatever your skill level, you, also, can make #Tetris fanart. But this seemingly simple #teletext screen by Uglifruit has some surprising bits of business, with the font and the shading and the motion lines. It’s a class act! This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection https://ift.tt/2oja9xv
Mistigram: OK, let’s drill down and cover the entire #Tetris corner of our catalogue! This is an early member of @bhaal_spawn’s suite of #gaminghaikus, included in the MIST0917 artpack collection released two years ago this month. https://ift.tt/2nCi494
Mistigram: @8bitbaba drew on the idea of using the, ehh, tetrizoid shapes as a typographical medium in this isometric, pseudo voxelart logo. Yeah, I love #Tetris, too. We all do! And yet somehow Minecraft has sold more units? Ah well, it’s not a contest. I’m sure the baba can reskin the logo to celebrate that game also! This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2nKSVZB
Mistigram: did someone say “#Tetris”? Jim Gerrie adapted that one in textmode for the #TRS80 #MC10, too! This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2mRO5cZ
Mistigram: but as the ‘80s waned, another compelling option for on-the-go gaming reared its head. Hearkening back to Nintendo’ s brief sideline as a purveyor of handheld LCD games, they launched the battery-powered handheld #GameBoy line and, with a little help from Tetris, things were never the same again. This #teletext illustration was drawn by @illarterate and included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2mGkaEQ
Mistigram: back in the ‘80s, you didn’t always have a C64 or NES available when the need to game struck on the go. But as long as you had some quarters in your pockets and could locate one of these in a nearby corner store, you’d be good to go. #ANSIart arcade cabinet by @picrotoxin, included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2m1Ps8y
Mistigram: all right, all right, the people have spoken, and they demand to know why I hid the accordion VGM for so long. OK - here’s another specimen which actually appeared, in pure audio form, in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection - an instrumental arrangement of #JonathanCoulton’s #StillAlive from the end credits of Valve’s #Portal It’s performed by our old colleague Anton Van Oosbree from Chervona, transformed through a Roland V-accordion and a little video editing multitracking into an unstoppable VGM cyborg.
Mistigram: and one more artefact of lifelong #Commodore64 devotion, here’s a t-shirt design of the #Commodore logo, filled with all of the possibility contained in the little powerhouse, drawn by PETSCII artist @snakepetsken and included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2lS5XUC
Mistigram: Cal @buzz_clik Skuthorpe taps the mainline of #Commodore64 nostalgia here by drawing the iconic machine exclusively using textmode characters from the #Commodore company’s distinctive #PETSCII character set. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2mE2Xf1
Mistigram: taking a brief break from the endless tabulation of fanart for individual games this weekend, there are also wider realms of gaming fandom. One of the oldest and most passionate are adherents of the #commodore64 faith, who remember the dominant role the absurdly flashy machine demonstrated between the Atari 2600 and NES eras. This #teletext #Commodore logo was drawn by @horsenburger and included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2m1k9uM
Mistigram: your Mistigris artpack experience may vary wildly depending on how you access its contents. If you just see what washes up on social media or even browse the archives at Sixteen Colors, you will miss out on literature, programs, but most notably the music!
When Cthulu revived Mistigris in 2014 and went monthly two years later, he wanted to tap creative talents from other communities he’d crossed paths with outside the digital underground since the turn of the century, and this included a global community of accordion players performing music you might not expect to hear on squeezeboxes. The happy medium best fit straddling the disparate realms was Adam “An Historic” Matlock, who has a thriving practice recording ripping covers of music from (among other sources) video games. We tapped him extensively for our 22nd anniversary collection and for a few months thereafter, and needed to revisit his catalogue for our video game-themed MIST0919 artpack this month. This fresh take on a theme from #ChronoTrigger arrived just a couple days too late to be included, but it serves as a great reminder of his 19 (!) unsharable-on-social-media accordion VGM tracks hidden bundled in the artpack’s direct download incarnation at bit.ly/MIST0919
Mistigram: keeping our #teletext moment going, here’s Uglifruit’s adaptation of a screen from Gargoyle Games’ 1984 #ZXSpectrum program #TirNaNog, based on Celtic mythology. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2mdJbad
Mistigram: but there would be no reason to bust a dozen joysticks and blow ten dollars in quarters QTE-ing through Singe’s castle, the titular #DragonsLair, if #PrincessDaphne was not there waiting for you at the end! #teletext portrait by @horsenburger, included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2ngHpFn
Mistigram: 1983 represent with @horsenburger’s #teletext portrait of #DirkTheDaring from #DonBluth’s #DragonsLair on Laserdisc in the arcades! This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2nWlVOn
Mistigram: @nikkiandbunty recall that Horace also had an affinity for winter sports, as demonstrated here in their own #teletext portrait of our hero in the Frogger-alike #HoraceGoesSkiing, also from 1982. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2nPPAsl
Mistigram: in the early days of video gaming, sometimes the designs of the on-screen sprites would need to be a little streamlined because the capabilities of the period hardware weren’t entirely up to the task of being wholly representative… which brings us to @horsenburger’s #teletext portrait of the protagonist of Psion’s 1982 Pac-Man clone #HungryHorace. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2nhc3y8
Mistigram: while this design appears to derive from a 1999 compilation, it’s hard to believe that #LeisureSuitLarry has been with us since 1987 (derived from the still older Softporn game!) This #teletext portrait of the lousy lover was drawn by @horsenburger and included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2n3INe6
Mistigram: on to #ANSIart now with MeaTLoTioN’s reproduction of a screen from #Codemasters’ 1985 #SuperRobinHood by the 17-year-old #OliverTwins. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2lUR58f
Mistigram: and @scofanogd returns to his 3-D take on #Atari2600 games with this voxelized version of Activision’s 1984 cart #HERO. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2lmFhet
Mistigram: @horsenburger returned to the Rare well (from their #UltimatePlayTheGame days) with this #teletext adaptation of the loading screen to 1983’s #TranzAm on the #ZXSpectrum. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2lmMISW
Mistigram: and here @scofanogd is, back in voxel mode with this isometric take on #CarolShaw’s 1982 #RiverRaid for the #Atari2600. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2liFuzg
Mistigram: @horsenburger drew this #teletext portrait of Rare’s updated #DonkeyKongCountry design for the great ape, circa 1994. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2lkJgYY
Mistigram: you might not even realise it based on what we’ve shown you over the past few days, but @scofanogd doesn’t even work with voxels all that much - it’s much more typical for him to play with standard #pixelart. Here he is demonstrating his skill with the tiny blocks on a portrait of 1981’s big Nintendo hit, #DonkeyKong. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2mZ0ADc
Mistigram: and here’s a @horsenburger #teletext adaptation of the loading screen to Ultimate Play the Game’s 1983 game #Pssst!, in a very #ZXSpectrum palette! This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2l9L5bf
Mistigram: there is no scene so iconic that there is no wisdom or insight to be gained from fresh perspective. (Here, that might be: walk around the alligator pit, perhaps?) @scofanogd once again brings his isometric voxel trick to a classic game, here another look at #DavidCrane and Activision’s 1982 #Pitfall. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2l97uW1
Mistigram: from the #pixelart laboratories of @8bit_poet, here’s his illustration of the feeling you should be experiencing, very in keeping with period box art aspirations, while playing Activision’s 1982 #Pitfall for the #Atari2600. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2l5n0SM
Mistigram: Jim Gerrie went into his time machine and returned from 1981 with this screenshot from his working textmode conversion of Konami’s #Frogger that the #TRS80 #MC10 always deserved but never got… until now! This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2l8ON4X
Mistigram: sports were a popular subject of early video games because despite the often highly abstracted sprites, between the game’s name and the art on its box, the players could usually get the idea. @scofanogd gives the pixel blobs in the 1980 #Atari2600 #Boxing a little voxel refinement, suggesting that the game was perhaps about battle bots all along! This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2l1rr0S
Mistigram: we already saw a vision of what its gameplay might have looked like in #teletext, now here’s an adaptation of the splash screen to Durell Software’s 1985 game #Saboteur!, as drawn by @carlos_teletextr. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2mZVJSv
Mistigram: and on to 1984 and the emergence of the Famicom! #ExciteBike was a hit on that early machine but, as you can see, the artist @8bitbaba ran into a spot of trouble in his #pixelart revisitation to the racecourse. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2lrgVjQ
Mistigram: speaking of enhancements, @jellica_______ has taken the foundational 1983 British edutainment game #GrannysGarden and rolled back the clock on the witch - while preserving the #BBCMicro graphics feel by drawing the scene in #teletext. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2mSlqUN
Mistigram: by 1982 the home machines were starting to steal some of the spotlight from arcades with home exclusives. Here’s an enhanced sprite from #YarsRevenge on the #Atari2600, as drawn by @8bit_poet. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2lrgQwy
Mistigram: in 1981, IBM introduced the personal computer, and with it, the operating system PC-DOS, a quick hack of CP/M made by Microsoft, standard purveyor of BASIC to microcomputers. In time this product would be rebranded #MSDOS, as celebrated here in this #ANSIart advertisement for the Total MS-DOS collection drawn by Viler and included in our MIST1015 artpack collection nearly four years ago. (He made another screen enshrining PC-DOS’s great game, DONKEY.BAS, programmed by no less than Bill Gates himself!) https://ift.tt/2lpDjdc
Mistigram: @scofanogd had his own pseudo-3-D take on Stern’s #Berzerk, also included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2msDTqK
Mistigram: in 1980, Stern released #Berzerk, and… quite a bit later, Jim Gerrie ported it to the #TRS80 #MC10. This screenshot of the textmode feat was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2mpya59
Mistigram: Atari’s #Outlaw came to arcades in 1976, celebrated here voxel-style by @scofanogd. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2lnloUE
Mistigram: 1973 is probably the earliest we’re going to get in our celebration of computer games. That marks the time-shared BASIC mainframe release of MECC’s #LemonadeStand, but in making his #TRS80 #MC10 port, Jim Gerrie was assuredly adapting the graphical version bundled with the Apple II from 1979 on. This screen represented it in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2kPG738
Mistigram: finally, a brand that looks a little more contemporary: it’s Hudsonsoft’s #Bomberman, whose lineage began in 1985, drawn in #teletext by @horsenburger. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2mCBPga
Mistigram: 1984 brings Datasoft’s #BruceLee game, whose protagonist is celebrated here in #teletext by @carlos_teletextr. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2kCcwKx
Mistigram: Jim Gerrie sets his sights on 1983 and Broderbund’s #LodeRunner for the #TRS80 #MC10. If you squint just right, you’ll see it too. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2kBBYzF
Mistigram: if #MelbourneHouse had implemented their 1982 text adventure blockbuster adaptation of #theHobbit in #teletext, this Uglifruit prototype screen suggests what it might have looked like. This piece was included in this month’s new video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2l3hyQo
Mistigram: this @8bit_poet #pixelart portrait captures what you should be seeing in your mind’s eye while playing the 1981 game #Kaboom! on the #Atari2600. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2l5Dbzr
Mistigram: here is @scofanogd’s isometric voxel slice depicting 1980’s Activision cart #Skiing for the #Atari2600. This piece was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2mts1ov
Mistigram: looking at more very early titles from the history of video and computer gaming, here’s a shot from Jim Gerrie’s #TRS80 #MC10 adaptation of the 1979 #LunarLander game. This screen was included in this month’s video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2kEbopM
Mistigram: Jim Gerrie is at it again, converting #Adventure from the #Atari2600 to the #TRS80 #MC10. Remember, these aren’t just prototype screens, he actually rewrites the games on BASIC. You can find the games on his website, and this screen in this month’s new video games-themed MIST0919 artpack collection. https://ift.tt/2NrBIA7
