Retrogames Issues

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Is the cartridge compatible with your console? Have you syntonyzed your TV to get rid of glitches? That’s right, we went back to the 80s for our latest project with All in Pixel. And boy, did we have fun – and issues!

Retrogame Issues takes us back to a decade of big hair, saturated colours, 8-bits and local arcades. When game stations were loaded up with multi cartridges, TVs took ages to tune and setting up a new video game would require MacGyver-like skills.

The short film explores the excitement and limitations of that era, going through the typical video game issues of that time and taking the fans of today on a powerful, nostalgic trip. The entire premise of the film is based on the very game-like nature of these limitations – often enough, actually managing to play the game would become a game in itself, with challenges to overcome in order to get to the next “level”. This, in turn, would lead to some out-of-the box thinking, providing home-made solutions for technical problems and proving, once again, that limitations often foster creativity.

Our creative approach was based on the same principle: we used limitations as a means to increase creativity and designed the whole film in PETSCII art, with nothing else but 8-Bit character sets used as graphic elements to illustrate and animate the story.

Playing with the PETSCII geometric limitations allowed us to create more interesting shapes and patterns: we created geometric shapes out of built-in symbols and letters available in the PETSCII character set, and added colours and 8-bit mapping techniques to create depth and texture. Character dialogues were included visually in the compositions in order to add more expression and we used frame by frame animation in PETSCII with the help of the LVLLVL software to bring everything to life.

In order to push this video-game aesthetic even further, we added text mosaic glitches between scenes to give the animation a fluidity that’s reminiscent of playing an old school video game.