Pixelated Pornstaches and the Outer Limits of the Nintendoverse

It may not surprise you that I have a thing for lesser-known Nintendo characters. I blame Smash Bros., I guess, for reminding us with every edition of bygone franchises and protagonists that never saw a proper sequel.

Maybe one of the lesser less-known Nintendo titles ever would be Arm Wrestling, a spin-off to the Punch-Out!! franchise released only in arcades and, even then, only in those located in North America. As far as I know, this might be the first Nintendo-developed title never to see the light of day in the company’s homeland. I don’t know why it showed up here and not there, but I think it’s too bad. I remember playing this long, long ago and enjoying it. I even tried to find a port of it to the NES but couldn’t: Arm Wrestling never saw a second life on a home console.

Also working in the game’s favor is its appealingly oddball mix of characters. They wouldn’t be out of place in a Nintendo game today. Nintendo has, after all, stayed weird. I tried to see if any site featured large-ish sprites of Arm Wrestling’s opponents and couldn’t, so I’m just going to post them here.

First up: Texas Mac, a ripped, bare-chested cowboy with a Falcon Studios mustache.

By the way, like Punch-Out!!, Arm Wrestling featured two screens — one with the action and one showing the score as well as who you’re fighting. This second screen included a descriptor for each opponent, and Texas Mac’s was, strangely enough, “Stud-Horse.”

I think I know why he likes holding hands with other strong men.

Second: a sumo named Kabuki.

Before you accuse him of being a rip-off of Street Fighter’s E. Honda, know that Arm Wrestling came out six years before Street Fighter II. If anything, E. Honda ripped off this guy, but I’m not sure how common it is in Japan to see a sumo wrestler wearing face paint. Every town has one, I’d like to think.

Third: Mask X.

Billed simply as “Who?” he’s actually just Bald Bull from Punch-Out!!, wearing a mask for no discernible reason. You can even unmask him.

Fourth and by far the best of the group: Alice and Ape III.

Yes, you have to best one of the more tragically awkward little girls in video game history in the form of her hulking arm-wrestling robot. They’re billed as “Best Friends,” and I can’t tell if that makes me sad for Alice or jealous of her. And yes, if you squint right, she does look just a little bit like a later-generation Nintendo science whiz, Penny Crygor.

Finally, you must fight Frank Jr.

Frank Jr. gets no nifty intro text, because if you can’t tell who he’s supposed to be, you are culturally illiterate.

And so there you have it: classic but forgotten Nintendo characters who have zero chance of being playable in the next Smash Bros. game. But wouldn’t you want to play as Texas Mac if you could? Or as Alice, so you can take revenge on the society that has shunned you? (I’m just assuming but come on.)

All character images taken from this YouTube video save for “Stud-Horse,” which came from Wikipedia.

Obscure Nintendo, previously:

• Deflating Balloon Fight
• Does Nintendo Hate Eggplants?
• The Happiest Arabian Family in Video Game-dom
• The One Nintendo Heroine No One Talks About
• Athena by Way of Kelly Kapowski
• The Busiest Bosom in the Mushroom Kingdom
• Buffy the Dolphin

Buffy the Dolphin

Proof that Nintendo has a sense of humor: this sprite for the minor enemy Buffy the Dolphin from Wario: Master of Disguise.

Of course, it goes without saying that for someone somewhere, this marked the realization of a long-suppressed fantasy. You know who you are.

Well, now you do.

Original pixels via Spriter’s Resource.

Dreaming of Pixelated Summers

It’s the simplest of gifs, really: just four frames. But I can’t stop watching it, can’t stop letting it make me think of jaunty little ocean adventures from one port to another on little pixel ships.

That or magic eye puzzles. Oceanside magic eye puzzles.

(Original screengrabs via Luminous Arc, via Spriter’s Resource.)

Beautiful pixels, previously:

• Clouds and clouds and clouds
• Your childhood ambassador to hell
• Low G Man
• Running down a dream
• The Phanto of paradise
• If the world had ended in 1992
• Pixels crashing on a 16-bit shore
• Secret inrestigater

Clouds and Clouds and Clouds

This and only this today: background clouds from the dystopic Neo Geo shooter Metal Slug 3 — first in their original form and in every subsequent instance a variation and another variation because I could not decide which looked best. Clouds. Clouds and clouds. Different, fake-looking, stage background clouds.

“But you could be taking photos of real clouds,” you say. Ha. But ha. I live in Los Angeles. There are no real clouds here. Just wildfire smoke.

(Original background pixels via Spriter's Resource.)

Fire Flowers

This is what I do when I’m bored, when I’m suffering from writer’s block, when I’m waiting for programs to download, when I’m wanting to see something I should have seen back when eight-bit graphics were considered very of-the-moment.

Pixel art, previously:

• Pixels Crashing on a Sixteen-Bit Shore
• If the World Had Ended in 1992
• The Phanto of Paradise
• Running Down a Dream
• The Simple Beauty of Low G Man
• Three-Dimensional Death in a Two-Dimensional World
• Your Childhood Ambassador to Hell

Your Childhood Ambassador to Hell

Oh, the things you do while you’re waiting for files to download.

Modified by sprites found here.

Three-Dimensional Death in a Two-Dimensional World

Back in Donkey Kong, Mario died by spinning in a circle and landing flat on his back, with a little halo floating above his head.

However, he died differently by the time he got his second starring role — Mario Bros., which isn’t Super Mario Bros. but is instead the game that dumped him in the sewers, introduced Luigi and for the first time pitted them both against a host of creeping turtles. When one of those turtles got too close, Mario leapt to his death, more or less. It’s weird when you think about what you’re actually seeing: In a game where Mario spent the whole time either facing left or right and scurrying along a two-dimensional plane, he died by facing the screen and jumping off the platform, toward the screen.

This style of video game death wasn’t invented in Mario Bros. A year before, Nintendo released the direct sequel to Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., where the main ape died in a similarly theatrical manner: making bug-eyes at the screen, flailing his hands and then plummeting down with a cartoony slide whistle noise. But Mario did it in Mario Bros., and Nintendo used it again in Super Mario Bros., and that’s the game that hit big. Perhaps as a result of the popularity of Super Mario Bros., it ended up everywhere in video games from that era — mostly Mario-style platformers, of which there were many, but some other genres too. Your character died, and he or she looked at directly at the screen — at you, effectively — before they spasmed and leapt into oblivion. It’s like they were saying, “Hey. Fuck you. You killed me.” And then the leap. It seems strange, given that it ads a z-axis into a world that often only had an x and a y previously. But that’s how it happened.

I don’t know how many games featured characters dying in some kind of variation on this Mario-style death, but I think it’s interesting how prevalent it once was in video games. And so I did a little look-through of NES sprites to see what I could pull find. What resulted is the eight-bit Halloween celebration you see below.

Enjoy it. This time, it’s not your failure.

A few notes:

• Yes, this began with this post.
• For all I know, the Mario-style death could have originated in some game other than Donkey Kong Jr. Anyone?
• Yes, the collection is quite Nintendo-heavy, I know. This is perhaps not a coincidence.
• I don’t doubt that there are other games that featured this style of death. This is just what was available at the retrogaming sprite sites I could find.
• Since it’s been forever since I laid hands on some of these games, I kind of had to trust the sprite sheets. Most of the time, these aren’t labeled as “death animation.” I had to guess sometimes.
• Here’s where everything came from, left to right, top to bottom: Little Nemo, Kid Icarus, DuckTales, Wai Wai World, Adventure Island, Adventures of Lolo 3, Doki Doki Panic, Doraemon, Bomberman II, Donkey Kong Jr., Mickey Mousecapade, Balloon Fight, Super Mario Bros. 3, Clash at Demonhead, Gyromite, Doki Doki Panic, Kid Dracula, Donkey Kong 3, Balloon Kid, Adventures of Lolo 3, Pitfall, Doki Doki Panic, Darkwing Duck, Mickey Mousecapade, Magic of Scheherazade, Rainbow Islands, 53 Stations of the Tokaido, Super Mario Bros. 2, Tiny Toon Adventures, Super Mario Bros. 2, Magic Forest Champion, Wario’s Woods.

Video games, previously:

• Strains of feminism in Metroid and Kid Icarus
• Full House meets Dragon Warrior meets African wildlife
• The weirdness that is The Krion Conquest
• Nintendo’s well-documented hatred of eggplants
• The terrific typos of Super Mario Bros. 2
• Square’s awkwardly racist Tom Sawyer RPG
• “Decisive Battle (of Music Trivia)”

But Then They Came...

Some well-done pixel art from the intro to a largely forgotten 1990 NES video game, Low G Man.

Slightly modified from sprites found here.

Pixel art, previously:

• Running Down a Dream
• The Phanto of Paradise
• If the World Had Ended in 1992
• Elevating the Pixel? Or Just Moving It Around?
• How I Prefer to Remember King City
• Thomas Kincade: The Video Game
• Pixels Crashing on a 16-Bit Shore

Running Down a Dream

It makes sense, I think, that when I think about whole new worlds, I think about them in pixels. Here’s to new horizons — clunky, blocky, new horizons.

modified via

Pixel art, previously:

• The Phanto of Paradise
• If the World Had Ended in 1992
• Elevating the Pixel? Or Just Moving It Around?
• How I Prefer to Remember King City
• Thomas Kincade: The Video Game
• Pixels Crashing on a 16-Bit Shore

The Phanto of Paradise

So long as I’m making some effort to convince the world that I can arrange shapes on a flat plane in a way that pleases the eye, and that’s apparently my game plan this weekend, there’s this sickly colored little tribute I made to Super Mario Bros. 2 and its stripey hills and sinister masks. It doesn’t mean anything.

I made this a few months ago, by the way. I liked it, and though I posted on my Tumblr it never made it onto this blog. I feel like it should. So now it has. Now everything is different.

Credit to sprites from here, here and here.

Pixel art, previously:

• If the World Had Ended in 1992
• Elevating the Pixel? Or Just Moving It Around?
• How I Prefer to Remember King City
• Thomas Kincade: The Video Game
• Pixels Crashing on a 16-Bit Shore

If the World Had Ended in 1992

Is it weird if my ways of relaxing from working at a computer are essentially the same as working at a computer? Whatever, I did this dismal scene in copper:

It’s a doodle, essentially, without the burden of having to put pencil to paper. Modified background spites found here, here and here. And more of whatever you would call this, pixel-pushing or whatever, here.

Elevating the Pixel? Or Just Moving It Around?

It’s hard for me to admit this, but I’ve been experimenting for some months now — with pixels. They’re not my pixels. Largely, these pixels were put in place, square by square, by a Japanese person decades ago. I’m just taking them out of their original video game context and modifying them to varying degrees.

(via sprites from this game)

(via sprites found here)

(via sprites from this game)

It’s not art, though there are some true artists out there doing amazing work with pixels. Like Paul Robertson. You can’t question his artist credentials. So then what the hell am I doing, aside from passing time between one task and another? Can I just say that I’m digitally doodling? Is it e-collage?

And what do we call these throwback compositions: images inspired by and often made within the constraints of antiquated technology? Do we just call it all pixel art, as this process was called back in the 80s? Or is the retro aspect to what people are doing now — making art that’s inspired by old video games and that exists on its own, separate from actual video games — inherently different?

More digi-doodles after the jump.

(via sprites i found here)

(via sprites from this game)

(via sprites found here)

(via sprites i found here)

(via sprites i found here)

How I Prefer to Remember King City

Now, this will mean little to anyone who hasn’t had to pull off the northbound 101 after San Ardo and roll through the supersized truck stop known as King City. But had you done so on a late spring day and had you been hurrying to beat some rain whose clouds were glowing furiously red over the sunset, you might have noticed how, for the first time ever, King City looked better than its typical lonely, windblown and for the first time looked beautiful.

Then imagine my surprise when I saw my memory of King City realized in pixels.

It’s not a dead-on reproduction, of course, and I know that any Dorothea Lange-esque dot on the map could look the same, meteorological circumstances permitting. But if you knew King City, but if anyone else had been in the car that day, you’d get it.

(Image via King of Fighters 96, via here.)

Pixels Crashing on a 16-Bit Shore

I can’t remember the last time I set foot in an actual ocean.

That might be excusable if I lived in Ohio. But I live in California, and for the last decade have never resided more than a short drive from the beach. Still, as the thick heat of a Los Angeles July is creeping up on me and into my house, I’m looking at this Super Nintendo approximation of sun and sand and just getting lost in it. It doesn’t bother me that I can see the tile pattern in the ripples on the water or that I can tell that the palms are so clearly the same arrangement of pixels, copied and pasted. I love it. It’s nostalgic. It’s aspirational. It’s calming.

Mom was right: I did spend too much time staring at screens.

Secret Inrestigater

In honor of Friday, I will be turning my brain off. Hence, this:

No, the text does not work. But the graphic does. Shit, was I supposed to have turned off my brain?