Looking for two video game art sites

December 11, 2005 6:33 PM

There are two things on the internet that I would like to find again, both art pages related to old video games.

1. A website that had "Nintendo tabs", modelled on guitar tabs, showing a sequence of buttons that win a particular game. There were accompanying videos showing only the controller (video game audio in the background) as somebody pressed the buttons, playing the game.

2. An artist who took assembly code from old arcade games (arranged in 16-byte code blocks, I think) and drew a path over the code showing where the GOTOs and loops went.

posted by Lirp to media & arts (7 comments total)

For #2, is it Cory Arcangel?
posted by hooray at 6:39 PM on December 11, 2005

It wasn't Cory Arcangel (unless I'm missing something on that site), but I'm glad you linked to him. His 'simplified' roms are pretty awesome.

The code trace thing resulted in images, kind of reminiscent of Lorenz attractors, but more complex.
posted by Lirp at 7:01 PM on December 11, 2005

I'm think #2 is distellamap from Ben Fry.
(And, I only know of this site, because I happen to see it on my favorite video games blog the other day.
posted by yeoz at 7:05 PM on December 11, 2005

distellamap is exactly right. (And it looks like joystiq found it via we-make-money-not-art, which I bet is where I first saw it.)

Now how about those Nintendo tabs?
posted by Lirp at 7:18 PM on December 11, 2005

RSG-SMB-TAB
posted by staggernation at 9:22 PM on December 11, 2005

Excellent. A top-notch effort all around. Thanks!
posted by Lirp at 10:32 PM on December 11, 2005

It looks like the tabs were produced by the same art collective (or whatever) that Cory Arcangel is in. Neat!
posted by Lirp at 10:38 PM on December 11, 2005