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I hope you enjoyed the demo wrap up because here is part two. I almost forgot about these, to be honest, so I am sorry!
What we have here is a bunch of files in the categories of Music, Graphics and Games.
All the oldschool platforms are bundled together on one music category, called “executable oldschool music”. Don’t ask me about the ‘executable’ part, some of these did not come in any sort of executable format. Pixel graphics are not a very popular thing nowadays on the demoscene, so this year we only got one category to cater for that: C64 graphics. Fortunately for the oldschoolers among us, they made an unofficial compo for ASCII and ANSI graphics so we have that too. Then we have 96KB game, which was multiplatform and had a very cool game for the C64.
So, let’s hit it on with all the data!
Click here to see all the data!
By Peter Swimm, on April 30th, 2009  8Bit today has a great interview with pixel pusher Helm. As with previous profiles, Sander gets deep into the philosophy and techniques of the artists he interviews.
An excerpt:
To make a more specific statement I’ll say that pixel art teaches the visual artist to respect the the foundational elements of their chosen genre of work. In pixel art you cannot go any smaller than a single pixel, and so anything you compose has to be made from this finite element, the atom of the digital display. Of course that’s all barring messing with cathode ray tubes in old televisions that displayed pixel art which could do half pixels and less (this inexact realm actually annoys me to think about and I’m very happy the high-tech digital displays of today show a single pixel in all its crisp and lucid beauty). This might seem like a limitation to the beginning artist, but I’ve found that too much freedom makes the artist fear their medium. If you can do anything, where do you start? Limitations breed innovations.
By Peter Swimm, on April 24th, 2009 [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/nOZfVAZ0MF4" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]
March Pulsewave NES ROM Flier – Graphics by Enso, code by NO CARRIER, music by Alex Mauer
By Peter Swimm, on April 21st, 2009  As told by this exhaustive and detailed dissection on NFGWorld.
An excerpt:
CDs and plasmas (and DLP projectors) are fixed resolution displays, and they don’t scale images well. Photographs and TV shows and movies look just great when you zoom in or stretch them a little. They use a technique called resampling to create an image that’s not quite entirely unlike the original, but bigger.
Pixels, however, are hard-edged pointy little things which look really terrible if you stretch them at all. Resampling a pixel makes it blurry, and half the appeal of pixel art is its clarity… Even if you’re not a pixel-art fan, they often look out of focus. Many people won’t notice, or won’t care, and they might as well stop reading here.
By Peter Swimm, on April 21st, 2009  8Bittoday has an interview with Minusbaby, l’efant belligerent of 8bitpeoples. They discuss his background, his reason for pixel pushing and some of the tools he uses to create his art.
An excerpt:
[8bit today] Instead of being restricted by limitations, you give the 8bit touch to it by mind. Could you tell more about your process of working?
[Minusbaby] “Because I come from a sort of mixed media background on a several fronts (dependent on what was around and what I could afford) – computer, spray paint, lead, carbon, oil pastels, fake gold leaf, smoke, fire, ink and anything else – I felt that there was no reason for me to stick to traditional pixel art techniques. While I do follow a set of rules based on grids, aspect ratios and aliasing, everything else is fair game. For example, a Commodore 64’s palette is limited to sixteen colors. A few months ago, I made a Pulsewave flier using its palette along with darker versions of the original sixteen colors. While some purists have a tough time giving me respect, my color choices and disregard of the screen resolutions of the original consoles and computers set a personal precedent allowing me to do whatever I want, therefore avoiding boredom and inspiring growth. I am done being bothered by conservative crews who can’t cope. Besides, it’s fun to be naughty and break rules.
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