Even if we all can't agree that games are art, we can definitely agree that games can inspire great art. I think Art Attack Friday proves this well every Friday. As part of the UK's Gamecity festival, the festival organizers commissioned three of their favorite games to be turned into minimalist works of art. 15 pixels to recreate some of the Gamecity organizer's favorite games sounds pretty challenging, but the creative minds at the design collective Alaskan Military School have come up with some great stuff. You can see the video for Street Fighter above, and below are their takes on Parappa and Noby Noby Boy.
David Surman, one of the event's organizers, had this to say about the works: "They each take one of our favourite games at GameCity HQ and translate them into a 15 pixel grid. It’s Hyper pixel minimalism! We realised that you can communicate the essence of great, iconic games with minimal visual information. I think this approach echoes the values of the festival, to take a sideways look at games, and foster a creative space."
I think they did a good job, and by good job I mean these are totally frickin' sweet. However, I must gripe a bit about calling Noby Noby Boy an icon of gaming. I would have totally called that one Worm and put different sound effects on it.
Matthew Razak is Destructoid's Associate editor and co-founder of film site Flixist. He began as community member "cowzilla" and was since sequestered to write brainy features material. He lives in Los Angeles with his beautiful wife.
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This reminds me of the gag post I made of what Street Fighter IV would look like if it was in 1D. This was back before they released screenshots and everyone was speculating on it being 3D or 2D sprites. They even used Blanka/ken like I did :)
I love seeing the minimalist pixel art - there's gotta be a way of making some fun gameplay out of that, if only on the minigame level.
I can only understand the streetfighter video. Partly because I know what the various moves would look like. The other two videos are of games I never played and as such look like blobs of flashing pixels.
It took me a few watches (of the first two, I don't know Noby Noby Boy) to see it, but when I did--BRILLIANCE. It's sort of like one of those magic eye puzzles except ten times more awesome.
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10:00 PM on 10.11.2009
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I love seeing the minimalist pixel art - there's gotta be a way of making some fun gameplay out of that, if only on the minigame level.
http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/AgentMOO/street-fighter-iv-exclusive-gameplay-footage-58377.phtml
I hope they do more some day. I'm trying to imagine Mario, Zelda or Sonic done this way.
Though I do prefer the ones that have really good graphics!