It was a dark and pixellated night.

July 14, 2012 11:12 AM

8-bit illustrations of opening lines to classic short stories by Kafka, Bukowski, Barthelme, and others. Oliver Miller, the creator of the series, writes: I... love short stories. I was an English major, and then I got an MFA in writing. Before that, I was a nerd who huddled in a basement, with his nerd friends, clicking with a mouse to play Bard’s Tale II. So basically, making 8-bit drawings of short stories encapsulates my whole life and, I hope, yours as well.
posted by Cash4Lead (9 comments total)

I really, really, really don't get the whole '8-bit' nostalgia.
posted by nightwood at 11:37 AM on July 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

             
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

posted by "Elbows" O'Donoghue at 11:43 AM on July 14, 2012 [4 favorites]

After that, I was a nerd who huddled in a basement, with his nerd friends, clicking with a mouse to play Bard’s Tale III.
posted by Ideefixe at 11:55 AM on July 14, 2012

I really, really, really don't get the whole '8-bit' nostalgia.

Nor do I, and I'm kind of tired of the assumption that everyone on the Internet has it. I didn't grow up with video games. If anything, I have a nostalgia for early 32-bit games. As a stylistic choice, I'm fine with pixelated graphics, but I don't think these are actually very good.
posted by Zarkonnen at 12:30 PM on July 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

"...Thus to be lost in the night."

Kafka really knew the depths of humanity.

I could do nothing last night as a group of SAPD "officers" beat a woman down... after having stopped her from driving.

"Someone must watch, it is said. Someone must be there."

.
posted by PROD_TPSL at 1:23 PM on July 14, 2012

I really, really, really don't get the whole '8-bit' nostalgia.

Do you get nostalgia of any kind?
posted by stebulus at 1:24 PM on July 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

One can only be nostalgic for what one experienced. I find these charming.
posted by Isadorady at 4:15 PM on July 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yes, I have nostalgia for many things, and yes, I played these games back in the day. But I was very happy when graphics got better and never felt the urge to go back.
posted by nightwood at 5:52 AM on July 15, 2012

Ok, I see.

Now I'm wondering about the factors that go into making effective nostalgia.

For my part, my video game nostalgia is completely untriggered by these images — I find them ugly and found the original games in this style ugly at the time, I think — but is very well triggered by Ultima IV, which is roughly contemporaneous and was produced under similar graphical constraints.
posted by stebulus at 10:39 AM on July 16, 2012