Tag: Voxel

A couple of years ago we got a peek at what several NES games might look like if they were rendered in voxels instead of pixels, courtesy of deviantART member John Buonvino. Programmer ProcyonSJJ was inspired by John’s renders and decided to take them a step further, making a voxel engine for the NES emulator FCEUX.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to one and all! While here on Earth, your presents should have been delivered under the tree by a fat, bearded man who came down the chimney and ate your cookies (boy that sounds a bit creepy when I say it that way), if you happen to live in the Mushroom Kingdom, Santa has a unique way of delivering presents.

Mario fans looking for a fun way to dock their smartphones, look no further. What we have here is a phone dock modeled after Super Mario Bros.’ iconic green warp pipe.

I’m not sure if this is a cube-based builder with shooting elements or a first-person shooter with building elements – and frankly I don’t care. The results are awesome. When you combine Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 with Minecraft, you have a winning concept in my book.

I like Assassin’s Creed and I’ve played it a bit, but I also like retro games. Maybe I would have liked it better if Assassin’s Creed were an 8-bit game on the NES. Check out this sweet animation that was created to showcase just this.

John Buonvino’s user name on DeviantART says it all: “NES–still-the-best”. He paid homage to his favorite console by making 3D voxel renderings of many popular NES games. Buonvino considers his Super Mario Bros. render below to be his “final 8-bit magnum opus”:

We already featured Metin Seven’s Steve Jobs bust. Here’s his take on Apple’s other Steve: Who wouldn’t be cheered up by that pixelated smile? I personally would rather have this than Jobs’ scowling mug. Woz’ smile and chubby face remind me of those smiling Buddha statues.

…and by that, I mean he gets his likeness carved into a bust. In this case, I’m talking about a fun retro-pixel art bust you can put on your desk alongside your shiny new iToys. Designed by Dutch artist Metin Seven (who also created the awesome Technabob voxel mascot), this Steve Jobs bust not only looks cool, it’s made with a high-tech 3D printing process, thus completing the circle of geek life.

Like many football fans, I was caught up in the World Cup fever and didn’t realize how cool this installation was when it first made the rounds a few months back. This 65-foot sculpture was on display in a shopping mall in Johannesburg, South Africa and was made by Ratcliffe Fowler Design for Nike.

In a war between snowboarding and old school video games, my bet will always be on the video games. There’s just no two ways about it. Lasers will destroy snowboards and skateboards, no matter how cool you try to look.

When I see art that’s made out of big pixels, I always tend to take off my glasses to see how they look when they are blurry. Sure enough, since I’m nearsighted, usually they look pretty good.

While World Cup mania has started gripping the world, I’m amazed at this Coke Man that was constructed in Johannesburg recently to celebrate the World Cup. The blocky design makes it look like voxels, which are basically pixels shown in 3D space.

I’m just going to get this out of the way up front. I LOVE these 3D pixel illustrations of classic video games by artist Metin Seven of Sevens Heaven, and I want an entire wall covered with them.