Recreation of the pixel font from Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening" (1993) on the Game Boy.
This recreation includes the special/accented characters from the french and german releases of the game. In game, the characters with a diaeresis use an additional tile above them - in this recreation, the characters have been combined properly (and as a result, the height of the font overall is greater than 8px).
As an aside, this font was also used for the fan translation of "For frog the bell tolls" (aka "カエルの為に鐘は鳴る" / "Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru", 1992/2011).
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Updated 9 July 2022 to include additional accented uppercase characters, and the star icon.
8x8 pixel art generator. It can be used to draw at any size once you understand how it works. Feel free to write your own scripts/code to automatically draw with this!
Glyphs are mapped to pixels as follows:
456789,.
wxyz0123
opqrstuv
ghijklmn
YZabcdef
QRSTUVWX
IJKLMNOP
ABCDEFGH
ABCDEFGH will make a horizontal line at the bottom edge, HPXfnv3. would make a vertical line on the right edge, and so on.
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- INSTRUCTIONS -
Type to draw! See the sample for an example of how I do it.
1 space = 1px of spacing. Use 8 spaces to start a new block and 16 spaces to start a second block which is 8px away from the first. This fine space exists to allow any sort of pixel art to be drawn within an infinitely large "canvas".
- COMING SOON -
A guide to preparing any text for PixelGen 8x8 (I'm figuring this out now!)
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If you draw something with this font, feel free to show it off in a comment. This is an unusual way to draw, but it has many unforeseen potential uses!
One form of beauty in this type of art is that your code IS the art. And, the code and art are yours to recreate and modify endlessly as you desire, all without ever having to draw, save/load files, or even touch an image editor.
Have fun!
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- PREDRAWN ART -
(To see them, copy them, scroll up and use View -> "User Input" -> Ctrl+V)
1. 8x8 Black Square: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789,.
2. 16x16 Black Square: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789,. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789,.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789,. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789,.
3. 8x8 Circle: CDEFJOQXYfgnovx26789
4. 8x8 Square Border: ABCDEFGHIPQXYfgnovw3456789,.
5. 8x8 Chessboard: ACEGJLNPQSUWZbdfgikmprtvwy02579.
6. 8x8 Sword: ABEIJKLMRSTZacghjlsu13,.
7. 8x8 Smiley Face: CDEFJOQSTUXYdfgiknoqsvx26789
8. 8x8 Rosary: DLSTUbehiklnovw356789,
9. 8x8 Cartoon Bomb: BCDEFGIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnpqrstuz089,
10. 8x8 Microscope: ABCDEFGHLMRSTUVWYZaghkostwz015678
11. 8x8 Bomberman: BCFGKNQSTUVXZabcdegilnoqtvw356789,
12. 8x8 Slime: BCDEFGIJKLMNOPQRWXYZabcdefghjkmnprsuyz0178
13. 8x8 Double Stars: EGMNOTUVWXdhjpqrwxyz06
14. 8x8 Brick Wall: ABCDEFGHIMQRSTUVWXaeghijklmnoswxyz01236,
15. 8x8 Floppy Disk: BCDEFGIKLMNPQSTUVXYfgijknoqsvwy0256789
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A font which appears in "Defender/Joust" (1995) on Game Boy. This font is complete within the ROM, so only the original characters are included.
This font is used for Defender's menus and gameplay.
The placement of glyphs within the individual 8x8 tiles suggests that this font is meant to be monospaced. I've squinted at this one long enough... it looks right to me! :D
A font which appears in "Defender/Joust" (1995) on Game Boy. This font is incomplete within the ROM, so many letters and symbols were added for accessibility.
This font is used for Joust, although the numbers which actually appear ingame have their own look which is very different to these.
One of the many fonts used in "Hammerin' Harry: Ghost Building Company" by Irem for the Game Boy. This one can be seen on the title screen.
None of the fonts used in the game seem to have been completed. Analysis with VBA's Tile Viewer reveals only the glyphs needed to spell out what little text exists. In particular this font has only the glyphs "BCDEILMNORSTY139©". Thus, I took it upon myself to make the font more complete.
I did not add lowercase, since it's impossible to tell what style it would have been drawn in. EVERY font in the game is in uppercase... though some of the others do have small caps for "lowercase".
Font based on the font in Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal.
Existing characters are the same as in the game while I tried to fill in for some common characters that are missing.
Some notes:
Pk, Mn, and :L replace ¼, ½, and ¾, respectively.
Korean font's punctuation/Arabic numerals are contained within Fullwidth forms.
Also, I guess Fontstruct doesn't support precomposed Hangul characters, so I'm out of luck there. The full-size individual Hangul letters are in Hangul Jamo, while the smaller ones (like on the name entry screen) are in halfwidth forms.
Halfwidth katakana is the same as fullwidth, but fullwidth Latin is different.
Halfwidth versions of the won/yen symbols are the currency symbol, while the fullwidth version is the language's character for it.
Unown letters are contained within the letters in circled capital letters section of Enclosed Alphanumerics.
Some ligatures ('s, d', etc.) are found within the lowercase parentheses and circled letters of Enclosed Alphanumerics.
A logotype for retro-tech hardware inspired by Roc Mitchell's Corporate phototype series (aka Limited/Limited View and Logos/LogoStyle) from the 1970's. Free for personal use only. Alternate characters list: @ - P * - J # - L < - A > - t ^ - e { - F } - R ~ - K © - g ® - D § - S ¤ - E ‹ - A › - A ¹ - A ¼ - 4 ½ - m ¾ - w ² - V ³ - V ª - a « - p » - q † - f
Recreation of the pixel font from Nintendo's "Super Mario Land" (1989) on the Game Boy. The same font was reused in other games like "Tetris" (1989), "Dr. Mario" (1990) and "Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3" (1994). Only the characters present in the game ROM have been included.
Update: removed a stray extra pixel in the "9".