In a background made of pixels
An italian plumber is jumping
Hey kids, welcome to another newsletter. This week, as you might have understood from my IG stories, we’ll deal with videogames. Aah, yeah.
I’m a big videogame fan, since my childhood I have always played and collected them. The only issue is that I’m not so good at them, I lack in brain-hand coordination 🦥.
When collecting material for this newsletter I realized there is really a lot to talk about. I had to do a severe selection, so there will be a second part soon. We’ll deal with the simple use of geometry in some videogames, but we’ll also deal with architecture rip-offs and simple homages.
My name is Federico and welcome to Representations of Architecture #10.
Insights
I have to be completely sincere with you, I’m not totally sure that these drawings are legit. I mean, they are, they were published on the Super Mario Maker artbook included in the Wii U version. But at the same time they don’t look legit because it’s clear some photoshop intervention to make them look more analogic (plus the sketches on the side are photoshopped as well).
This consideration doesn’t give less importance to the fact that Super Mario Bros. was designed on graph paper. That’s really something extraordinary. It was better shown in a video that for some reason is not available anymore, but on this website there are some screengrabs where is possible to get an idea of how the original drawings looked like.
When watching these drawings I wondered how Tezuka and Miyamoto intended the view of Super Mario. Is it an elevation? Not quite. Is it a section? Not quite either. It has all the features of a section, but it is not sectioned. So I tried to draw it and that’s the result:
Basically Mario is stucked between two glass walls, and he can do nothing but proceed. On his left a fake world made of cardboard bushes and mountains. On his right some weirdos staring at him and controlling him. Yeah…
I discovered Egor Orlov a couple of years ago and I was blown away by his complex drawings. These drawings up here are part of his series Cybertopia. They really look like a platform videogame, and the definition that he gives of his project is not too far from it. I love also the fact that it’s a cyber space but it’s completely drawn with analogue instruments. Discover more on Orlov’s website.
Very beautiful links
The first image of the newsletter, as written in the caption, is a grab from a videogame called Mother. The game was produced by Shigeru Miyamoto (the father of Mario) and directed by Shigesato Itoi. It’s the story of Ninten, a kid with ESP powers that has to save the world from an alien menace. The game is rusty in some mechanics, but it is also highly suggestive and well-written (and so is the sequel, Mother 2, known also as EarthBound).
Up and down some zoom-outs of a couple of scenarios from the game. If you want to see the complete map just click here.
It seems that The Sims is still a thing. And people are having a lot of fun building famous architectures.
The use of brutalism in the videogame Control and a ridicoulous misspelling HERE.
Ico is a wonderful videogame with a gloomy metaphisic atmosphere.
In this video a quick explanation on why Ico is such a great game.
Talking about dioramas, the father of Final Fantsy is developing a game (named Fantasian 😕) where the sceneries are actual dioramas.
Empty is a quick and enjoyable game where you can play with the point of view and complete puzzles. You can play it also from your browser without installing anything.
This NFTs thing is driving me crazy. But yeah, it seems that we’re just arrived to the point where digital artworks cost exactly as physical ones. That excalated quickly.
Sweet IG pages
Gregorios Kythreotis is an architecture graduate turned game designer. He is currently developing a videogame called Sable. From the videos it looks sick for two reasons:
1. The cel-shading, the colors and the atmosphere recall overwhelmingly the comics by Moebius (check a previous newsletter where I talked about him), and that is good.
2. He is using a lot of references to real architectures (check his twitter), so exploring the Sable world will be a pleasant and good-looking experience.
It will be released during 2021 so maybe we’ll have the chance to talk about it again in the next months. Here a nice interview on Elle Decor.
Misc
Enjoy this artefact of the old internet. It’s Paranoid Android by Radiohead but composed on Mario Painter Composer. The video dates back to 2009 and just read the description to be carried away by a wave of nostalgia. (Get to 03:00 and cry)
Matteo Salvini is an italian politician. He is just a undercover fascist, and hearing him makes my hears bleed. BUT, if you use his chatter made of nonsensical lists as lyrics for a chilling music for studying, it becomes instantly pleasant. The best comment under the video is “What music do you listen?” - “It’s complicated”.
Uh so… the first phase of this newsletter is coming to an end. It was an alpha testing to see how to structure it and develop it, and it seems to work in a way (if you have any feedback please let me know!). The second phase will be more social and open to a dialogue with other people. How? Thanks to what young people call “Take-over”, so a guest will be in charge of writing the newsletter, presenting her/his own work (but also talking about some other’s work), linking some beautiful websites and videos, suggesting some IG pages and writing freely.
So we’ll start next week with the first guest 🏌.
Take care, ciao,
Federico