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The last of my recent variations on the classic Nintendo font - the original "Ice Hockey" (1988) on the NES, with its whimsical G; modified J,K,L,W,1,2,3,0; changed letter spacing for I,T,Y and custom colon and exclamation mark.

4 Comments

Comment by Patrick H. Lauke (redux) 4th october 2012
@redux - Great series of NES variations here.

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About the ubiquitous video game font:

From my limited research and Emailing with Owen Rubin (creator of numerous classic Atari video arcade games), Owen theorizes that the typeface was likely created by Lyle Rains, who co-created the game "Sprinter 2" with Dennis Koble in 1976 -- which was one of the first known uses of this typeface in a video arcade game. Evidently, Lyle was also an artist and had a good eye for such things, according to Owen.

The only other instance of that font being used in 1976 was Owen's own "Cannonball", but Owen says instead of designing a new font of his own while programming the game, he likely just copied the design style for use in the character PROM. Back then, the fonts were designed on graph paper and "blown" into the character PROMs(!).

Unfortunately, Lyle Rains is quite reclusive, and though Owen quite happy and open to talking about his own experiences, Owen's website states that he refuses to "pass on questions/comments" to other ex-Atari employees...

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And not to 'take over' or 'usurp' your thread here, but here are some of the more interesting Video Arcade Game variations that I've found over the last few years:

The Video Arcade Game Font

The Video Arcade Game Font - Solid
Comment by Goatmeal 5th october 2012
thanks @goatmeal ... super informative. and don't worry about linking to your own variations...i'm always interested in seeing more :)
Comment by Patrick H. Lauke (redux) 5th october 2012
@redux - Thanks! It's not every day you find someone interested in these types of fonts.

...And as soon as I hit 'submit', I realized I should have used 'hijack your thread' or 'thread-jack' instead of what I did use.
Comment by Goatmeal 5th october 2012

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