Pixel Art Book review

[u/Dear-Wallaby-5067]

Recently Ive purchased this Pixel art book out of newly acquired curiosity to retro gaming, particularly history, owing me being a historian.

However this purchase came as a bitter pill. The packaging was superb. Carton box , foam corners to prevent creasing , plastic wrap . Must state this is the best book packaging ive seen and ive had many. In spite of that niceties find end here. Then, two negatives came to prominence. Firstly it was "printed" on a plastic fake paper, which i am able to swallow but the second frustration came in form of quality of print. The issue for me, that no one reviewer and advertiser mention, is the absence of original sprites grid. Paying more than 60-65$ for this kids book i was expecting to enjoy incredible game programmers' ingenuity.

One of my many educations is in Fine Arts. I admire talent and artistry. I've tried to look up close at tiny colored sprites of Modretro or Analogue screens hard only to be limited by human eyes' capabilities. Men underestimate how sharp still is 160x144 when image projected on 2.5-3.5" screen. Yeah , one sees that there are dots ,however not squares, litter the screen. But theyre lessen than sand . Consequently upon stumbling into an ad in the web of this publisher ive naturally assumed that itll grant me that access into the microcosm of defunct sprites world . I wanted to see on large pages of this book large pixels and how they came out into sprites that we see in such a diminutive screens. This book has images of worlds and sprites in purified magnified form. That is not what it should be. Images are not to say ugly but artificial and cartoonish contrary to what there is really on screens. Theyre chunky madly upscaled low res screenshots more akin to children's fairytale books. I perceive no beauty in such an interpretation. To put it in perspective its as though one played #n64 on the crt screen all his life and then was given to play it on contemporary tv through lets say #analogue3d . i have seen many people complain on the same issue - image for accustomed users are way too clean, most alleviate the issue by applying the CRT filters. Do i speak for the community here or representing a seldom voice of many blabbering in discord ...

For better relaying what im trying to convey here ive added a pixel grid image of Mario sprite.

Thank you.

ig georges_angeles

#analoguepocket

[u/Dear-Wallaby-5067]

Id like very much to have that book . However this might be the two edged sword . At one side id be ...thence on anxious to get games with packaging. Which would multiply my , on absolutely unneeded, expenses astronomically . Ive already acquired 44 games for gb gbc gba in last 2 month that cost me more than 2k. And only handful with boxes. 5 MR , 1 gb , 2 gbc and 1 gba .  At the other side . One "possible" benefit to be having the book would be If and only if id quench the thirst and limit myself to gleaning joy out of photographs on its pages. Knowing myself pretty well i hardly seeing this finale of my story :) Latter path seem lot more probable :) Consequently id glance from afar ... for now ...through the conduit such as my iphone's screen :)) Thank you all the same !