UC Irvine

Software / Platform Studies

Title
Fake Bit: Imitation and Limitation

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https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s67474h

Author
Camper, Brett

Publication Date
2009-12-12

Peer reviewed

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University of California
 Fake Bit: Imitation and Limitation

Brett Camper
[email protected]

ABSTRACT adventure and role-playing games, which are traditionally less

A small but growing trend in video game development uses the action-oriented. Several lesser known NES games contributed to
“obsolete” graphics and sound of 1980s-era, 8-bit microcomputers the style early on as well, such as Hudson Soft’s Faxanadu (1989)
to create “fake 8-bit” games on today’s hardware platforms. This and Milon’s Secret Castle (1986), as well as Konami’s The
paper explores the trend by looking at a specific case study, the Goonies II (1987). In more recent decades, the Castlevania series
platform-adventure game La-Mulana, which was inspired by the from Konami has also adopted and advanced the form, from
Japanese MSX computer platform. Discussion includes the Symphony of the Night (1997) on PlayStation, through Portrait of
specific aesthetic traits the game adopts (as well as ignores), and Ruin (2006) for the Nintendo DS.
the 8-bit technological structures that caused them in their original La-Mulana is an extremely well made title that ranks among the
1980s MSX incarnation. The role of technology in shaping finest in this genre, displaying unusual craftsmanship and
aesthetics, and the persistence of such effects beyond the lifetime cohesiveness. Its player-protagonist is Professor Lemeza, an
of the originating technologies, is considered as a more general archaeologist explorer charting out vast underground ruins in a
“retro media” phenomenon. distant, unspecified corner of the globe (Indiana Jones is an
obvious pop culture reference, but also earlier examples like H.
Keywords Rider Haggard’s late nineteenth century pulp paperbacks).
Video games, retro, 8-bit, platforms, MSX, sprites, pixels, media, Though the game provides plenty of fierce action and demands a
aesthetics, software studies, platform studies. relentless on-guard posture, the player’s progression is mostly
dependent on the solution of cryptic riddles and other challenges
of logic, with a familiar “start from zero knowledge” conceit: the
1. INTRODUCTION player arrives at the ruins with no map and only the vaguest of
Today, the commercial games industry is increasingly recognizing rumors, setting the stage for the free-roaming, hostile territory
the potential for a “retro” market, resuscitating its back catalog of common to the genre.
older titles via digital distribution on Nintendo’s Virtual Console
for the Wii, Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade, and elsewhere. This
in itself is a meaningful development for the medium and business
of games, an explicit recognition (and economic legitimization) of
its history. But why stop at re-packaging older titles? This paper
examines a recent aesthetic trend of retro styled – but entirely
original – video games. These “faux 8-bit” games display all the
hallmarks of a 1983 blockbuster: chunky pixels, pastel color
clashes, and lo-fi chiptunes. Adopting technologically “obsolete”
audiovisual conventions for a new generation of software and
players, they exhibit a stylized self-awareness of technologies,
aesthetics, and genres, and the underlying relationship between
them – the kind of reflexivity that is central to advancing our
critical understanding of video games as a medium.
To illustrate, I take an in-depth look at La-Mulana, a puzzle-
centric platform-adventure for Windows PCs, created by a
Japanese amateur development team called the GR3 Project (now
known as Nigoro). Originally written in Japanese and released in
2005, an English version (patched by the fan translation group Figure 1. La-Mulana is a 2-D action-adventure in the tradition
Aeon Genesis) was completed in early 2007, considerably of Metroid and Castlevania. Though it was created in 2005, the
expanding the game’s audience, and bringing with it high critical game uses retro-styled graphics to evoke its 1980s
praise: one reviewer simply said “It’s the best game I’ve played in predecessors.
a year” [14]. La-Mulana belongs to the subgenre of 2-D platform-
based action-adventures, which originated in the 8-bit console era What really sets the game apart, however, is its distinctly
most prominently with the classic Metroid (Nintendo, 1986) for recognizable retro visual style, and from the title screen onwards
Famicom/NES. Unlike a traditional action platformer, the we are treated to a sparse, “8-bit” styling. While La-Mulana is in
emphasis is on world exploration, with a degree of non-linearity fact an ordinary, contemporary Windows game without any
and player discretion. The genre borrows elements of methodical special technical capabilities (or limitations) of note, it mimics a
puzzle-solving and incremental character development from very specific older game technology: the MSX, an 8-bit home

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computer popular in Japan in the mid-1980s. This self-stated pixels is (as we would expect) much less granular than
adoption of the MSX platform – the creators cite Konami’s Maze contemporary standards, which deliver 640x480 pixels on the low
of Galious (1987, also known as Knightmare II) as their primary end, with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles supporting far
point of inspirational reference – makes the game an attractive greater detail up to 1920x1080 pixels as HD (high definition)
case study, because it explicitly foregrounds its retro aspirations, television is ushered into more homes. As with most of its
while giving us specific technological heuristics by which we can technical guidelines, La-Mulana’s 256x192 resolution matches
analyze it. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost have established the that of the original MSX1. By default, the game scales up to a
approach of platform studies as a means of understanding a full-screen display in Windows, restoring the familiar coarseness
program’s technical basis in context: “the investigation of of NES (256x224) and PC EGA or VGA (320x200) era titles.
underlying computing systems and how they enable, constrain, Conveniently, the currently common PC resolution of 1024x768
shape and support the creative work that is done on them” [9]. is 4 times greater than that of the MSX1 on both axes, allowing
The distinct bundles of hardware and software that make up a La-Mulana’s original pixels to be easily blown up to an area 16
platform profoundly shape the kinds of games that are (and can times their original size. If desired, the user can also opt to play in
be) made for it: 2-D pixel-based systems favor side-scrolling a windowed mode – and doing so makes the game so tiny that the
platformers and top-down maps; native support for 3-D polygonal vast differences in detail are immediately driven home.
graphics has made the first-person shooter a mainstay; the lighting
effects of today’s programmable shaders encourage further Nonetheless, La-Mulana’s graphics are dense enough to depict
stylistic distinctions like the shadowy “survival horror” genre. reasonably recognizable representations of “real-world” objects
Though La-Mulana is not actually written, compiled, or executed and environments: from stone statues, to waterfalls, pottery, birds,
on a real MSX computer, the game’s conscious imitation of (as and skeletons, right down to the player’s hat and whip. There is a
well as dissonance with) that system makes for a degree of noticeable increase in fidelity over the stereotypically blocky style
of the Atari VCS console, where highly abstract games like
platform study by proxy.
Breakout (Atari, 1978) and Kaboom! (Atari, 1981) were common.
For example, Atari’s Adventure (1979), the progenitor of the
2. AN “MSX-STYLE” GAME entire action-adventure genre, was so visually constrained that it
To fully understand La-Mulana’s aesthetic and cultural references represented the player’s character on screen as a simple square,
requires some background knowledge on the MSX itself. Though while the sword looked more like an abstract arrow shape. Pitfall!
the system was never seriously marketed in the United States, the (Activision, 1982) is the closest VCS comparison to La-Mulana in
MSX was a successful platform, particularly in Japan: it sold over theme and gameplay, but despite its reputation for pushing the
5 million units worldwide, and maintained its relevance alongside system’s graphical limits (pioneering techniques for multi-color
the fierce competition of Nintendo’s better known Famicom sprites), the wide rectangular pixels and severe limitations on the
(branded the Nintendo Entertainment System in the U.S.); both simultaneous display of sprites favor broad splashes of solid,
machines were released in 1983. Notably, the MSX hosted the contrasting colors, with each screen literally centered on a single
first titles in significant franchises that have remained strong to interaction (as the VCS has a technological predisposition to
this day, including the inaugural Metal Gear (Konami, 1987) and symmetrical environments).
Bomberman (Hudson Soft, 1983) games.
As a computational platform, the MSX had an unusual genesis:
the brainchild of Kazuhiko Nishi, a Microsoft executive at the
company’s Japanese branch, it was an attempt to standardize the
nascent PC market by providing clear guidelines for hardware
manufacturers. Rather than building or assembling the machine
itself, Microsoft instead specified which components third party
vendors should use in order to make their computers “MSX
compatible”. Over fifteen years later Microsoft would consider
the same standards-based approach when planning its Xbox
console, before rejecting the idea in favor of keeping production
centralized [16]. The MSX was a general-purpose computer rather
than a strict game console, but its graphics and sound chips (from
Texas Instruments and Yamaha, respectively) provided 2-D
hardware acceleration and music capabilities that were lacking on
regular PCs. The reliability of standardization made it attractive to
game developers, who dominated the machine’s software library.
In relative technological horsepower, the initial MSX1 was more
sophisticated and had a higher pixel resolution and greater Figure 2. The MSX was a hybrid console-computer, popular
graphical variety than predecessors like the Atari VCS 2600 and in Japan in the mid-1980s. Though it looked much like other
Intellivision consoles, but lacked some important features of the personal computers of the time, its standardized cartridge
rival Famicom (such as continuous scrolling). The audiovisual format and graphics acceleration made it attractive to game
components were later upgraded with the MSX2 specification in developers. (Photo by Paolo Tonon.
1986; La-Mulana’s chief reference point is the MSX1. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Canon_V-
20_MSX_computer.jpg. CC-BY-SA 2.0).
Much of La-Mulana’s 8-bit aesthetic is tied to its self-imposed
graphical limitations. To start, the native resolution of 256x192
While pixel resolution is arguably an important criterion for a experience. Yet as I’ve begun to show here, it is also not simply a
more general concept of retro game style, La-Mulana’s particular nominal difference to say that La-Mulana is an “MSX style” game
look actually owes more to its palette, which is limited to a mere rather than only an “8-bit style” game. The MSX has specific
16 colors. Replicating the palette of the MSX1, these run the technical limitations, some of which are unique to its particular
gamut from gaudy cyan, to neutral brown and gray, to deep systems design, and these fundamentally impact the platform’s
primary red; though not a perfect match, U.S. players unfamiliar range of possibility, not just in visuals but also in gameplay.
with the MSX would likely recognize La-Mulana’s often jarring
juxtapositions as similar to those of PC EGA games (also 16 3. AN 8-BIT GAME WITH
colors). Because the palette is fixed throughout the game, much of
the artistic accomplishment surrounds creatively mixing these 16 CONTEMPORARY AMBITIONS
colors, using dithering techniques to achieve distinct moods in Indeed, while the influence of the MSX is most immediately
each of the game’s areas: the grassy village outside the ruins, the apparent in the game’s visuals, if we read what the game’s
huge red stone monuments depicting the god-like creatures of the developers themselves have to say about their intent, graphics are
“Giants’ Mausoleum”, and the faux Egyptian tombs of the never explicitly mentioned. Instead the inspiration initiates from
“Temple of the Sun”. gameplay, and more specifically the concept of challenge. La-
Mulana is a deeply difficult game, which the developers describe
But where La-Mulana ups the ante is in its more subtle adherence as a reaction to “the new-style of really easy games”, going on to
to the MSX1’s specific limitations on the spatial distribution of say: “it may be very hard to beat La-Mulana. But that’s OK.
colors. One of the platform’s most interesting peccadilloes is that We’re looking for those gamers that could in days past defeat
within the background layer, each horizontal segment of eight Druaga [The Tower of Druaga, Namco, 1985], bring the baby
pixels can only consist of two distinct colors. This is due to the back safely from the clutches of Galious [Maze of Galious], and
particular manner in which the data for each eight pixel row is seal the Evil Crystal [Hydlide 3, T&E Soft, 1987]” [7]. There is a
stored, across two bytes. The first byte determines which two two-part supposition here: first of all, that the trend of gameplay
colors should be used from the 16-color palette; this is done by in the commercial industry has been from harder to easier; and
each set of four bits (out of the byte’s eight bits total) selecting a second of all, that an earlier platform style can reset that clock,
color (since together, four bits have the capacity to store 16 triggering an association with those older, harder games, and the
different values). The second byte then uses each of its eight bits, set of gameplay expectations that come with them. The evocation
one for each pixel, to indicate (via a setting of zero or one) which of 8-bit gameplay is at least as important as, if not more so, than
of the two previously selected colors should be shown for that that of 8-bit graphics. And the developers have bent over
pixel. So while the specific colors used can be altered from backwards to categorically associate the game with the long
segment to segment, the two-color restriction puts significant defunct MSX platform because they believe the two are
“local color pressure” on the visual design, and encourages the associatively linked for gamers.
use of gradients with horizontal bands to create a sense of texture
or sheen – an effect evident from La-Mulana’s title screen logo to We can follow this trail from hardware to gameplay in La-Mulana
its environmental backdrops. Furthermore, while the MSX1 did with another MSX1 example: the system’s lack of support for a
provide basic support for freestanding sprites (that could be graphical effect known as “smooth scrolling”, in which the entire
placed anywhere on screen, unlike the fixed location of its background image could be moved left, right, up, or down in
background tiles), each sprite graphic is limited to a single color pixel-by-pixel increments, enabling the illusion of the screen as a
(plus transparency, for a total of two values, or one-bit-per-pixel). window into a much larger, continuous world space. Smooth
As a result, most of La-Mulana’s characters and enemies are flat scrolling was a signature difference between “early” 8-bit
silhouettes that require the artist to carefully attend to shape and computers like the Atari VCS, on which backgrounds were largely
outline. The color palette plays a sometimes subliminal but static, and later, more mature 8-bit systems like the Nintendo
significant role in establishing a platform’s visual style, so La- Famicom/NES, which popularized the side-scrolling platformer
Mulana’s particular 16 colors provide an effective cue of its MSX genre most notably with Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985).
origins; even the Atari VCS, which generally only allowed four Smooth scrolling hardware capabilities were far from a given in
unique colors to be shown per line, still had a far larger palette of the time of the MSX, but the feature was common enough
128 overall colors from which those four could be chosen. By amongst its contemporaries. The Commodore 64’s VIC-II
contrast, every pixel of every MSX1 program had to be picked graphics chip, for instance, has a register (a mechanism for
from its lonely 16 color palette. programmatically operating computing hardware by toggling and
configuring low-level features through the manipulation of
As players, we don’t need to consciously recognize or understand individual 1-or-0 bits) that allows the screen to be finely scrolled
all (or even any) of La-Mulana’s specific technological one pixel at a time. The ZX Spectrum (popular in its British home
constraints in order to appreciate its aesthetic style, and to territory) has no such specialized register, and in fact lacks a
intuitively identify it as “8-bit”. The MSX’s computational dedicated graphics chip altogether, requiring the main CPU to do
similarities to other platforms in the same “family” – the Nintendo all the heavy graphics lifting. Yet a reasonable form of smooth
Famicom/NES, the Commodore 64, among others – create a scrolling is still possible by way of the “block” instructions
wider, more accessible aesthetic and cultural touch-point. The available on its Zilog Z80 CPU, enabling large areas of video
game appears to be attractive to retro-minded players in the U.S., memory to be filled in or copied all at once (thus the whole screen
for instance, despite the MSX being almost unheard of in this can be shifted a small number of pixels by brute force).
market. La-Mulana’s self-assigned and abided rules create such
specificity that even without an explicit statement of connection The MSX uses the same Z80 CPU as the ZX Spectrum – and has
(as the game provides), a devoted MSX fan would likely its own dedicated graphics chip, the Texas Instruments
recognize the visual inspiration purely from the phenomenological TMS9918A – so on its face it is reasonable to expect the system
to be more suitable to graphics-intensive techniques such as of exploration is enabled by both the ability to escape local battles
smooth scrolling. Yet the peculiar nature of the TMS9918A by leaving the room, and through the Grail, an item acquired early
complicates matters on two fronts. First of all, the video buffer in the game which allows the player to warp instantaneously to a
(where the image to be displayed on-screen is stored) is non- handful of key checkpoints. In another technique borrowed from
linear: the pixels are not laid out sequentially, but are instead out 8-bit classics, many puzzles depend on “clearing the room” –
of order in relation to their positions on the screen. Secondly, the defeating all enemies in the immediate vicinity – in order to
chip does not allow direct access to the video buffer, and actually trigger events or reveal items. These natural pauses also provide
precludes the use of the system’s other natural hardware for a good blend of action with slower, thought-focused riddles.
capabilities by requiring programmers to go through the much
slower I/O ports: “accessing video memory involved first
outputting the low then the hi bytes of the video memory address
to I/O port $99, then the 8-bit data to port $98… This also meant
that the fast z80 blockmove and blockfill instructions could not be
used on the video memory” [10]. Both issues prevent the MSX
from using the Spectrum-style scrolling techniques. And
therefore, a hardware bundle that is ostensibly more powerful
(Z80 plus TMS9918A) is in practice more constricted.
Fine grained smooth scrolling was ruled out on the MSX1, but a
herky-jerky approximation could be achieved in 8-pixel
increments, shifting the entire background over one 8x8 pixel tile
at a time. To adhere to these constraints, La-Mulana’s world space
is displayed as a vast series of contiguous (rather than continuous)
single-screen areas, often called “rooms” in genre parlance. While
the backgrounds are usually fixed, quick chunky scrolling
transitions slides one area over into the next each time the player
reaches the screen edge of a room. The chunky, non-interactive
scrolling method shows what a mid-position the MSX was in
compared to its 8-bit relatives, able to partially adopt aspects of
continuous spatial representational from newer 2-D scrolling
games, while remaining significantly barred from others.
Certainly the technique increases the spatial coherence of such a
large world by reinforcing mental cues to its layout. Landmark
Atari VCS titles Adventure (the first game to use the contiguous
room model) and Pitfall! have no such transitions, and instead
simply re-draw the entire screen immediately when the player
changes rooms. Were La-Mulana a “VCS-style” game (not at all a
stretch given the system’s larger fan-base) this feature would have
similarly been absent. On the other hand, self-imposed restrictions
vis a vis a game’s native hardware are themselves nothing new:
the first Legend of Zelda game (Nintendo, 1986) also uses the
single-screen, transitional-scrolling method, despite the
Famicom/NES’s full support for smooth scrolling. The “room”
mode of spatial representation is borne from a mix of
technological necessity and intentional design choice.
Figure 3. La-Mulana’s low-resolution, 16-color graphics follow
Typical for both room-based game spaces and 1980s era the conventions of the 8-bit MSX computer, which limited
gameplay more generally, non-player characters and enemies in horizontal color variety. Instead, the system favored vertical
La-Mulana are confined to the area of their own local room bands of solid colors, seen in the title screen lettering, as well
screen, and they will not follow the player across screens. Action as the ladders and bricks of the in-game graphics.
scenarios are choreographed around specific, partially
predetermined room set-ups, with pseudo-random elements The MSX-adopted limitations on pixel configuration and color
introduced through techniques such as multiple potential enemy distribution also create background graphics that are highly
spawn points. Such containment is convenient to the MSX’s limit repetitive within each area of the game world. But rather than
of 32 total simultaneous sprites (with a maximum of four allowed attempting to “overcome” this, the game naturally orients itself in
per line of pixels); juggling the display of an indeterminate this direction. In the tradition of Adventure, many of La-Mulana’s
number of characters across a free-roaming world composed of underground rooms are very similarly templated, with slight
hundreds of screens would be atypical for the machine, even if it variations that create a sense of labyrinthine confusion.
might be possible (the same might be speculated as a factor in Distinguishing between these rooms is a key challenge – it is a
Zelda’s avoidance of a free-scrolling world on the NES). designed psychological task of gameplay, a simple visual example
Continuous action is therefore de-emphasized to some degree. of the developers’ overarching intent to make you slow down,
Though the game does require complex execution of real-time take your time, and carefully observe your surroundings. As the
actions (many of them quite challenging), a reconnaissance style designers chide:
 You can proceed however you like, but if you solve “I’m trapped! I’m going to warp out!” and do so, you
riddles and don’t pay attention to how the ruins change won’t be able to get back into that room from the
accordingly, that’s not very archaeologist-like!....Try outside. Once you do finally manage to find your way
not to miss changes in the ruins, things that seem out of back in, you may be confronted with an even more
place, or strange mechanisms just because you didn’t obnoxious mechanism to overcome than before. If you
look them over carefully enough! [7] make enough big mistakes it will even become quite
tough to complete the game [7].
In fact, the game’s translators even advise taking sequential
screenshots (using extra-game utilities) of rooms and tablets as an The design demands self-regulated pacing and patience from the
aid to deducing one’s progress [8]. It’s a strategy reminiscent of player. One of the most commented upon aspects from new
the 8-bit adventure game tradition encouraging (sometimes players is its difficulty at the outset: initially, players cannot save
requiring) the player to create hand-drawn maps of the game their progress (until they have purchased the Game Master MSX
world, with a twist that suggests the play-style of recent ROM), cannot read the ancient tablets that contain the majority of
“camera”-based games, in which visual evidence is gathered clues to the game’s riddles (until they have acquired the Hand
directly from within the game world itself (such as Fatal Frame, Scanner accessory which translates this text), and even assuming
Tecmo, 2001, or Dead Rising, Capcom, 2006). one did manage to successfully solve a puzzle under these
conditions, they would not receive any positive feedback or
encouragement alerting them to this fact (until finding the Shell
Horn, which sounds a note each time an action is completed).
Many of the basic scaffolding capabilities that players have come
to expect are noticeably and intentionally absent. To sum up: “we
decided to put in the fear of death” in La-Mulana.
As La-Mulana’s particular subgenre of 2-D platform-adventure
has seen a recent resurgence of critical interest, its roots are
undergoing a reappraisal. La-Mulana has fared well in the
comparison:
[S]omehow, La-Mulana manages to avoid the clunky
presentation and gameplay which has aged the real
1980s games so dramatically. Operating without real 8-
bit constraints, the developers have made an 8-bit game
with modern ambition. It makes me want to throw away
my next-gen devices, but at the same time it is richer
and more satisfying than any game I could find for an
Figure 4. Players must pay close attention to the poses of the emulator. La-Mulana is deeper and more complicated
statues in the Giants’ Mausoleum. Completing a puzzle in one than any other game with 16-colour graphics, though it
room may subtly alter a statue in another. is never inaccessible or obtuse. It is exceedingly
difficult without ever feeling arbitrary [14].
La-Mulana’s designers have consciously aimed for a style of play
Difficulty may be central to La-Mulana’s charter, but it is a
that does not simply replicate its classical models, but adapts and
challenge built on clarity of presentation and logic, rather than the
evolves them. Recounting their development and play-testing
charges of obscurity often leveled at similarly large, non-linear 8-
process, they describe an initially vague but continually nagging
bit worlds. Take, for example, 1UP.com editor Jeremy Parish’s
self-recognition that while they worked ever more to match the
assessment of Faxanadu (1989, NES): “there’s a certain element
source of their inspiration, a sense of satisfaction did not follow,
of abstraction to the whole thing – vaguely-translated objectives,
even in their success. Coming to a moment of design crisis
unexplained item effects, a bit of trial-and-error – but do recall
midway through, they concluded that “in the end, what we had
that this is the 8-bit era we’re talking about” [11]. La-Mulana
was nothing but a cheap Maze of Galious knockoff” [7]. Their
aims to correct these flaws and evolve past them by adopting
response, interestingly, was a direct attempt to inject
qualities of the 8-bit form; thus its design began grounded in
contemporary (that is, current platform generation) gameplay
nostalgia, but ended up driven by critique.
trends into their design: they “wondered if it might not be possible
to incorporate the sense of tension in newer games like [the] From a perspective beyond strict technology and game design, we
Metal Gear [Solid series, Konami, 1998-]” [7]. also ought to remind ourselves of the changed nature of global
communications today, two decades after the MSX and NES
What they pivoted towards was a design best described as
heyday: La-Mulana is blessed with an excellent English
contemplative. They espouse this philosophy as follows:
translation that was done entirely by dedicated fans. The game’s
We tried to make it so that people wouldn’t get English text is clearer than that in a great number of Japanese
hopelessly stuck everywhere, but if you just whack commercial games of the 1980s. Such quality is crucial to
walls at random without thinking you’ll die. If you think understanding its complex system of logic and riddles, and the
“Ooh, a treasure!” and run charging toward it without title’s appeal outside of Japan would be severely limited without it
thinking, you’ll die. If you just operate a mechanism – a fate many of its 1980s predecessors endured in the United
without thinking about how it works, you may end up States. Further mitigating its difficulty, an exhaustive series of
not ever being able to get a specific item. If you think walkthrough videos (comprised of 89 individual segments)
appears on YouTube (again courtesy of a fan). These tutorials can they deemed relevant and necessary to their goal of aesthetic
be especially helpful in starting the game, and as of August 2009 association. In some circumstances, such differences in the
the opening episode had garnered over 100,000 views [12]. La- processes of production and operation may not be detectable to
Mulana was designed in a far more advanced (and commercially the player at all. Yet in other cases, La-Mulana does flaunt some
independent) environment of cross-cultural reception. MSX1 specs, bending the color distribution rules for the player
sprite of Professor Lemeza (adding a thin black outline to make
the character more legible), and ignoring the flicker caused by
more than four simultaneous sprites per line. It’s possible that the
extra colors employed for the player sprite might be achievable on
the MSX1 through multi-sprite overlay techniques (in which two
or more sprites are stacked upon one another) or other tricks. In
this case, La-Mulana’s pixel artist simply gave himself the benefit
of the doubt.
It is often quite difficult to determine – not just in advance but
also in retrospect – how specific technical platform qualities will
manifest themselves in software behavior. Or trickier, to predict
how initially undesirable or negatively associated technical
artifacts can actually have indirect positive effects, or even
become attractive themselves over time. Take the MSX’s sprite
limitations, which as previously noted display a maximum of four
sprites per horizontal line of pixels on screen. When programmers
exceed this limit (consciously or unconsciously), the result is that
part or all of the fifth sprite, sixth sprite, and so on are simply
skipped and not drawn at all. The system does offer a way to
mitigate the problem, however, by deciding which sprites should
be drawn and which should be skipped: “Sprites with a higher
priority are drawn first. The VDP [Video Display Processor]
reports in a status register the number of the first dropped sprite.
The CPU can get around this limitation by rotating sprite priorities
so that a different set of sprites is drawn on every frame. Instead
of disappearing entirely, the sprites will flicker” [17]. Developers
often make this tradeoff in graphical consistency, preferring to
create games with more than four simultaneous, horizontally
overlapping sprites – though the technique can only reasonably
support up to around six sprites before the flickering becomes too
distracting. This effect of sprite flicker is extremely common
across 8-bit platforms, and recognizable to any gamer acquainted
with such systems.

Figure 5. Despite their amateur origins, La-Mulana’s textual La-Mulana does limit the number and position of its sprites to
riddles and conversations are better translated and more approximately those of the MSX, but not with complete accuracy
intelligible than their professional predecessors from the or fanaticism (while there are generally no more than four sprites
1980s. on any line, there also doesn’t appear to be any specific policing
of this requirement). More importantly, the game makes no
attempt to re-create the flickering seen on real 8-bit hardware.
4. LOST IN IMITATION And the same is true of the vast majority of faux 8-bit games,
How might La-Mulana have been different had it been developed despite the widespread prevalence of sprite flicker in their
for an actual MSX? Many hobbyist programmers, for instance, do historical sources of inspiration (to my knowledge, the only
continue to create games for the MSX platform today, so the example of a game that does implement a “fake flicker” is Mega
option was clearly available. On one hand, La-Mulana goes to Man 9, though this is only visible when the player enables “legacy
great lengths to match the observable behavior of the MSX. On mode”). While flickering could easily be considered as essential
the other hand, this imitation is clearly selective and intentional, a to the aesthetics of 8-bit gaming as color palette and pixel
vehicle for stylization. And there are technical aspects of the resolution, it is instead more often perceived as a glitch, a
platform that are not adopted or enforced, fundamental low-level technical limitation to be left behind rather than preserved.
structural elements such as the maximum addressable memory
space. These limitations were often significant hurdles to Generating pixels within the internal memory of the machine
programmers writing real-time graphics code on 8-bit platforms, itself is just part of the hardware equation: most 8-bit home
and while they could be overcome through skilled coding, La- computers, the MSX included, output a standard CRT (cathode
Mulana’s programmers, developing on the much more “friendly” ray tube) TV signal (NTSC in Japan and North America, PAL in
and flexible environment of the modern Windows-compatible PC, Europe, etc.). The images on CRT televisions of the 1980s were
were able to conveniently skip these challenges, and instead substantially less precise than those we see on our super-stable
implement only those ultimately resulting visual behaviors which LCD screens today (or even on the dedicated CRT computer
monitors that were standard in the 1990s, which had much higher Cure, though, because the player’s eye is often drawn directly to
refresh rates than TVs did). These CRTs were blurry, noisy (think the enemies, as opposed to the brief, non-interactive use it serves
TV snow and poor reception), the colors bled into one another, in La-Mulana (in the latter case, there is no negative gameplay
and the relative intensities of colors to one another (known as consequence to the animation being less smooth than one might
“temperature”) were different. Sprites looked less blocky. 8-bit want, while in the former, misjudging the enemy’s position
artists took all this into account quite naturally, because the because of an imprecise graphic could actually cause the player
displays they were developing on themselves exhibited these harm). On the other hand, in return for this sacrifice The Cure’s
qualities. When we view the palettes and pixels of the MSX, the developer gained the ability to devote all four MSX sprites to the
Atari VCS, or the NES on an LCD (whether on a screenshot display of the player character, overlaying them on top of one
online, through an emulator, or within mimic software like La- another to increase the number of available colors from one to
Mulana), we are literally not seeing the same colors and shapes. four and therefore substantially upping the character’s detail level
in comparison to most MSX titles.
A recent comment from a homebrew developer creating a role-
playing game for the 8-bit TI-99/4a computer (which shares the
same TMS9918A graphics chip as the MSX, and thus the same 16
color palette) illuminates the difference in practice:
For example, I originally had my foothill tiles in dark and
light yellow. Then I discovered on NTSC that you couldn’t
really see the color differences. They also didn’t appear very
distinct against desert tiles. My solution was to change the
light yellow to dark red. On a crisp emulation display, it
seems a little jarring. But on an NTSC display, it’s subdued,
and even comes close to making the hills seem more
“brown” [3].
Yet this example aside, the hallmarks of CRT displays, as with
sprite flicker, are ignored much more often than not in today’s
treatment of 8-bit aesthetics (both in emulation, and the
production of new software). At least two examples come to mind
that show that awareness is improving, however. Ian Bogost
challenged his students at Georgia Tech to modify the popular
Atari VCS emulator Stella, adding graphical post-processing to Figure 6. Beluga Mk II evokes a fuzzy Cathode Ray Tube
simulate many of the properties of CRTs [1]. And on the faux 8- television with its blurry and cheerfully bright blue, green,
bit side is the indie game Beluga Mk II (T. Matsushima, 2008), a red, and yellow colors.
horizontal shooter with an astronaut protagonist that recalls a
childhood spent 12 inches from the TV screen, with a fuzz filter But amongst The Cure’s very positive reception, another MSX
and four-color palette of fully-saturated green, blue, red, and developer made an observation in comparing it to its source of
yellow, that evokes the blur and bleed of a CRT. All these inspiration:
hardware properties – color selection and pixel resolution One thing that bugged me a bit in The Cure was exactly the
governed by the CPU and graphics chips, or clarity and brightness fact that with tile enemies you didn’t have a real limit, as
shaped by the optical effects of the screen – are interdependent, with sprites. [W]hen climbing stairs in [Vampire Killer] there
and their compound effects are not always linearly cumulative. was usually a limit for those purple witches so there was a
Picking and choosing (as a faux 8-bit game like La-Mulana or chance to actually reach the higher platform. But in [The
Beluga Mk II must) can significantly, if at first subtly, alter these Cure] they just kept coming and coming. So, in [Vampire
games’ “8-bit” character. Killer] this sprite limit at least contributed to the
Another illustrative case from the world of today’s 8-bit hobbyist gameplay/balance [13].
homebrew developers is found in The Cure, a platform game The following chain of events had occurred: the MSX’s four-
inspired by Vampire Killer (an early MSX entry in the sprite maximum was viewed as a gameplay hindrance because it
Castlevania series), created in 2005 for native MSX hardware and limited how many simultaneous enemies the developer could
winner of the MSXdev’05 programming competition. The Cure’s display. Because increasing the number of sprites would have
developer chose to minimize MSX sprite flickering by drawing caused flickering – an undesirable visual artifact – the developer
enemy characters on the actual screen background itself, rather instead decided to cleverly use the background tile method for
than through sprites (the traditional method). The 8x8 background representing the game’s enemies. Yet without the natural limit
tiles are simply replaced with images of the game’s enemies, such provided by the sprite hardware, the developer actually
as a skeleton. As with sprite flickering, this was a conscious unwittingly overloaded the game’s difficulty. In other words,
compromise on the part of the programmer: because the skeleton hardware sprites on the MSX often play the classic role of a
is drawn on background tiles with fixed positions every eight prescribed artistic constraint, and circumventing them is far from
pixels, it can not be moved smoothly and freely as it approaches certain to lead to “improvement”.
the player character. Instead, the skeleton “jumps” across the
screen in eight pixel increments, similar to the “chunky” scrolling While no such similar sprite charges have been leveled at La-
used to transition between room screens in La-Mulana. This low Mulana (a game that is deeply difficult for other reasons, yet
granularity motion is arguably more distracting in the case of The never physically overwhelms the player in this manner), the
lesson is that the manifestations of hardware are unpredictable. into the new for legitimization. A similar strategy can be seen in
When we’re trying to create a piece of software that mimics the the artificial film grain layered onto the sci-fi role-playing game
observable behavior of an 8-bit platform, how do we determine Mass Effect (Bioware, 2007). The allure of such effects emerges
what “observable” is? As The Cure shows, the answer to this from the dialectic of Bolter and Grusin’s “double logic of
question isn’t straightforward even on native MSX hardware remediation”: an ideal of immediacy – a perfectly, preternaturally
itself. Simple surface level observations of graphics and sounds sharp 3-D rendering on today’s gaming hardware – mitigated by
are not enough – a true assessment can require considerable hypermediacy, the awareness and exploitation of a medium’s
computational (and even physical) investigation. The discarding artificiality. The unreality of one medium helps to make the other
of prominent effects such as sprite flicker and CRT glow from feel subjectively “real”.
many of today’s re-imaginings of 8-bit aesthetics shows how
selective and subjective such a project is. Remediation also happens “locally”: as a medium evolves, its
earlier stages begin to be remediated within it. The emphasis on
Nonetheless, it is equally interesting that a meaningful exploration legitimization or realism fades, and remediation drifts from a
of “8-bit” design can result from studying fake 8-bit software. La- fallback to a conscious stylistic choice, a tactic for evoking and re-
Mulana’s lack of comprehensive platform fidelity hasn’t affected interpreting the medium’s past, an expert vehicle for the homage,
its reputation in the slightest, even amongst hardcore, hobbyist the parody, or the genre revival. This is where remediation meets
MSX programmers, where there is a perception that La-Mulana is retro. The technique is relatively new to gaming, but it is richly
a better “MSX” game than many actual MSX games (present and developed in other media like film and music. For example, in the
past): “I do think it would be great if something just as good film Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998), two present-day teenagers
would be made for MSX” [13]. And the game’s developers are are transported into a black and white, suburban 1950s-style
similarly lauded for their well-balanced MSX color choices: alternate reality. The monochrome presentation of the world
“some good techniques can be found” in the graphics of La- evokes its mid-century American naïveté, and as viewers we
Mulana, noting their superiority to the very game which inspired understand this connection because of our familiarity with actual
them, Maze of Galious – “the background of [La-Mulana] is television shows of that period. The original, technical
usually dark’ish [sic], whereas [Maze of Galious’s] background is requirement of black and white film and broadcasting is long
very colored. A single color sprite could do well as long as they gone, but in our historical memory it is closely associated with the
show-up clearly in front of the background. It’s why lots of MSX1 content it represented. The twin sociological and technological
games have a black background: so that a single color sprite looks transitions of the past five decades become the backbone of the
ok” [13]. film’s symbolism: as elements of 1990s modernism slowly seep
into 1950s innocence, the world is literally colorized, one
Had the developers desired, La-Mulana could (with some modest
character, building, and flower at a time. La-Mulana extends this
changes) have been a native MSX game, as is The Cure. But logic from film hardware to game hardware: it is an MSX
unlike 8-bit homebrew programmers, the deep technical challenge platform remediation, and as we’ve seen, evocation through
of such a task was not their primary motivator. While they are technological aesthetics is similarly central to its origins.
unabashed fans of the MSX platform (by all accounts amongst its
biggest), they were more concerned with making an aesthetic But in terms of both aesthetic presentation and formal ambitions,
statement about technology and game design. Not to mention the perhaps a more apt film comparison than Pleasantville would be
severe distribution limitations of compiling your game for an 8-bit avant-garde filmmaker Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the
platform (this hasn’t stopped impressive games such as the recent World (2003). Shot in a varying pastiche of early film tropes,
Knight ’n’ Grail, a non-linear platform-adventure similar to La- including black and white (with some color sequences), heavy
Mulana but written natively for the Commodore64, from offering film grain, and fuzzy iris lens-induced edges, the plot centers on a
commercial distribution through a digital download store) [5]. The bizarre musical competition set in 1930s Winnipeg, and “evokes
modern PC was simply a more appropriate target platform for Busby Berkeley musicals, silent melodramas and Depression-era
their ultimate goals. studio fantasies of wealth, romance, and intrigue” [15]. Most
notably, a shock of temporal displacement marks the critical
5. PLATFORM REMEDIATION reception of both Saddest Music and La-Mulana, with reviewers
in each case expressing the disorienting (and undeniably striking)
La-Mulana’s 8-bit mimicking is a highly specific example of the
simultaneity of a technologically dated presentation paired with a
broader phenomenon of technological remediation for aesthetic
contemporary sensibility:
purposes – a strategy to which games are no stranger. As 3-D
game technologies advanced in the mid-1990s (most notably on La-Mulana: “You get the feeling that the history of video
the PC and Sony’s PlayStation console), graphics programmers games went awry about 20 years ago, and that La-Mulana
looked for ways to bring an aura of “realism” to their images. One somehow came to us through a wormhole from a beautiful
effect they often used was the “lens flare”, the blinding white parallel universe” [14].
starbursts and concentric rings that form when an optical lens
catches a bright light source. These were especially popular in Saddest Music: “[S]eems to pop out of an otherworldly time
leading titles with urban settings, like Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec capsule. It is a tribute to, and a sendup of, old movies that
(SCEA, 2001) and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar Games, never quite existed…. delving into a past that never was to
2002). For awhile, lens flares were the game graphics state of the prophesy an alternative vision of the future of movies” [15].
art, part of the ecosystem, from the evaluative criteria of game That the retro mode created by the remediation of La-Mulana and
reviewers to the selling points of third-party game engine The Saddest Music in the World is expressed in science fiction or
licensers. The irony, of course, is that lens flares are the artifacts mystical terms of “time travel” belies the degree to which we
of curvature in physical optics, an old media signature injected historicize the aesthetics of our technologies. This notion of
generative retro views the past neither reverently nor quaintly, but same techniques. It’s also possible that La-Mulana, which
instead, as Elizabeth Guffey says, with an “unsentimental predates each of these by three years or more, may have helped to
nostalgia” [2]. Retro is delineated from the more classical form of inspired them.
revivalism, which while taking great pleasure in the past
nonetheless considered it from a detached perspective, as a
“completed” protocol rather than as a still viable branch of
evolution. This retro strategy is to mix up recognizable
components of past aesthetic styles and genres, reassembling them
into previously unseen forms.
From these examples, we see retro as a unique subset of artistic
inspiration and influence: retro carries with it a source of
discontinuous influence, resemblance coupled with temporal
distance. This is distinct from the more generally incremental
nature of game design, such as the step-by-step evolution of the
“matching tile” puzzle game genre over more than 20 years,
traced by Jesper Juul from Chain Shot! (Kuniaki Moribe, 1985),
to Dr. Mario (Nintendo, 1990), to Bejeweled (PopCap Games,
2001) [4]. Retro media, on the other hand, is not that which
innovates upon its direct parents, but rather those ancestors which
are unequivocally “outdated”. Of course, the determination of
currency vs. obsolescence is itself imprecise and up for debate.
But broadly speaking, creative industries that are structured upon Figure 7. In the WiiWare version of La-Mulana, the graphics
cyclical change have a particular predilection to retro as are re-drawn without the “8-bit” constraints.
phenomenon and rhetoric. This is no doubt why fashion was at the
center of the term’s establishment by 1970s French critics [2]. So there is no small irony that in joining the ranks of the
Gaming hardware may not be quite as pliable as fabrics and commercial world, La-Mulana is doubling back on itself,
colors, but the break-neck leapfrogging of technology and undergoing its own “retro remake”. That is not to say that La-
periodic turnover of game consoles provides a built-in Mulana’s “effectiveness” or success as either a piece of art or an
obsolescence that almost guarantees the emergence of retro enjoyable video game must suffer when it is re-incarnated on
gaming. The aesthetic potential of a game platform is only WiiWare. Nor are there signs of anything but enthusiasm from the
beginning to be understood by the time it is discontinued game’s developers, who appear re-invigorated at the opportunity
commercially. to return to their work anew (La-Mulana was their first project
together, and is now four years old). A telling comment about the
forthcoming version comes from The Independent Gaming
6. CONCLUSION: LA-MULANA COMES Source, which has tirelessly raised awareness of the original
TO WIIWARE game: “less alienating graphics wouldn’t be a bad idea” [6]. The
A fascinating turn of events is that La-Mulana, an amateur-made game’s MSX-styled visuals have always engendered a divided
game with a strong cult following, is now being remade for response from players, and for all those who appreciate its 8-bit
Nintendo’s WiiWare downloadable game service – but with a pedigree, many simply find them too arcane to be comfortable.
change that goes to its core: the graphics are being re-drawn (and Some of the “8-bit” gameplay elements, such as the scrolling
the sound re-composed) without the 8-bit constraints, in a higher transitions between discrete rooms, may lose their coherence and
resolution and full 32-bit color palette that matches current 2-D context when the associative graphical waypoints are removed.
technology. From a theoretical perspective, one of the most But La-Mulana has always been something of a “time warp”, and
intriguing aspects of the original La-Mulana is the way in which I suspect its re-configured patchwork of styles will bring its 8-bit
its 8-bit MSX platform remediation turns what usually passes for influence and design philosophy of contemplative difficulty to a
“retro” in commercial gaming inside-out: it has been neither the wider audience – it may simply induce a different form of
simple re-publishing or emulation of older titles that we find on disorientation when presented primarily as a “contemporary”
Nintendo’s own Virtual Console on the one hand, nor the re- game.
packaged, graphically updated games often seen on Microsoft’s
Xbox Live Arcade on the other (the re-drawn Prince of Persia 7. REFERENCES
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