A collection of recreations of fonts from classic video/computer games, all built brick-by-brick on FontStruct.
This collection is curated by FontStructors Patrick Lauke (redux) and goatmeal. Please contact either of them (sign in required!) if you find, or have fontstructed, a candidate for this set.
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Recreation of the pixel font from Compile/Irem's "The Guardian Legend" (aka "Guardic Gaiden", 1988) on the Nintendo Famicom / NES. It combines the characters from the North American/European release and the original Japanese one.
This font includes a full set of hiragana and katakana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Similarly, in the password entry screen the game includes various characters with an umlaut/diaeresis, which are rendered as a separate tile in the preceding line. In this recreation, these have also been pre-combined. The game itself also uses some non-standard combinations (such as a "k" with an umlaut) - these have not been included, as they don't map to any standard unicode character. Lastly, to avoid confusion, the numeral "0" in the password entry screen uses a slash. This has been mapped to the "Latin Capital Letter O with Stroke" character (U+00D8).
Beyond this, only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the pixel font from Konami's "Getsu Fūma Den" (1987) on the Nintendo Famicom.
This font includes a full set of hiragana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
The font also includes a set of box drawing characters, mapped to the "box drawings light" glyphs (U+2500, U+2502, U+250C, U+2510, U+2514, U+2518). Note that because the font is now taller than 8 pixels due to the dakuten/handakuten characters, these will only line up if explicitly set to an 8 pixel high grid.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the small pixel font from the japanese release of Sonic! Software Planning's "Shining Force II" (1993) on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.
Compared to the european/north american release, the alphanumeric and punctuation characters are all shifted by one pixel to the left, and one pixel down. The font also lacks a lowercase.
This font includes a full set of hiragana and katakana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
This is a clone of Shining Force II (Small)Recreation of the small pixel font from the european/north american release of Sonic! Software Planning's "Shining Force II" (1993) on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the small pixel font from the european/north american release of Climax Entertainment/Sonic! Software Planning's "Shining Force" (1992) on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.
This font is unusual, as each character not only comprises two tiles (for its height), but also features characters that are wider than the maximum 8px tiles. In the game's tile set, this was achieved by using a custom encoding, where a single tile contains the combined values for two horizontal tiles.
See this short Twitter thread for a little dissection of the tile set.
The width of each character is also variable and encoded in the bottom tile for each character. Unfortunately, I was unable to work out the logic behind the width information bits - so, for characters used in the game, the correct width was matched manually, and for any characters not encountered (yet) in any of the dialog boxes, I took an educated guess...
Due to the complexity of this encoding, I won't tackle the hiragana/katakana large font from the japanese release.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included
Recreation of the small pixel font from the japanese release of Climax Entertainment/Sonic! Software Planning's "Shining Force" (1992) on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.
Compared to the european/north american release, the alphanumeric and punctuation characters are all shifted by one pixel to the left, and one pixel down. The "U" is also different, and the font lacks a lowercase.
This font includes a full set of hiragana and katakana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
This is a clone of Shining Force (Small)Recreation of the small pixel font from the european/north american release of Climax Entertainment/Sonic! Software Planning's "Shining Force" (1992) on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the large (16x16) pixel font from LJN/Software Creations' "Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage" (1994) on the SNES and Sega Mega Drive / Genesis. Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the pixel font from Now Production/Hudson Soft/NEC's "Be Ball" (1990) - oddly renamed "Chew Man Fu" for western release - on the PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16.
This font includes a full set of hiragana and katakana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the pixel font from the japanese release of Nintendo's "Zelda no Densetsu: Yume o Miru Shima" (aka "The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening", 1993) on the Game Boy.
This font includes a full set of hiragana and katakana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Note that in the original, the "?" and "!" feature very subtle antialiasing. This has been "flattened" for this recreation.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the pixel font from Nintendo's cartridge re-release of "Zelda no Densetsu: The Hyrule Fantasy" (1986), renamed/numbered as "Zelda no Densetsu 1: The Hyrule Fantasy" (1994), on the Famicom.
The re-release uses that same alphanumeric characters of the North America/Europe release of "The Legend of Zelda" (1987), but otherwise all characters remain the same. Note that the dakuten is used in the initial story screen as a double-quote character (which oddly is also the case in the North America/Europe version, even though these have a separate double-quote character).
This font includes a full set of katakana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the pixel font from Nintendo's original "Zelda no Densetsu: The Hyrule Fantasy" (1986) on the Famicom Disk System.
This font includes a full set of katakana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
This is a clone of Zelda no Densetsu 1: The Hyrule Fantasy (CRT)This magical typeface was lovingly hand-cloned from the Commodore 64's construction platformer "Ultimate Wizard", using the game's exact sizing and spacing. I've added square brackets and a backslash, which are not actually present in the game.
Recreation of the pixel font from Enix's "Dragon Quest" (1986) on the NES, later released in North America as "Dragon Warrior" (1989) (but with a different main font, obviously).
In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten for the hiragana and katakana are separate tiles (with one exception), and positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Apart from these changes, only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the pixel font used on the title screen of Enix's "Dragon Quest" (1986) on the NES, later released in North America as "Dragon Warrior" (1989). In the tile set, the "5" was missing one pixel - this has been fixed here. Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the pixel font from the remastered "Pac-Man" "arrangement" version from the "Namco Classic Collection Vol.2" (1996). Note the smaller "u" and "p" in the lowercase. Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the pixel font from Jaleco's "Saiyūki World II: Tenjōkai no Majin" (1990) on the NES, which was re-themed for the US market as "Whomp 'Em". A fairly standard font, but with a few nice quirks (particularly on the "X"). Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the large pixel font from Capcom's "Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara" (1996). This font is used primarily for the dialog boxes and the chapter names shown at the start of each level. Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Update (August 2019): added the missing special/accented characters.
Recreation of the pixel font from Konami's "Wai Wai World" (1988) on the Nintendo Famicom.
The original was only released in Japan, and contains a complete set of katakana, with a handful of latin characters (used mostly on the start screen). This recreation includes additional characters to complete the set of uppercase latin characters.
In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten for the katakana are separate tiles, and positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Apart from these changes, only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the pixel font from Aikom/Vic Tokai's "The Mafat Conspiracy" (1990) on the NES.
This font contains an almost complete set of hiragana and katakana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, and positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Apart from these, only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the primary pixel font from Sunsoft's "Gremlins 2: The New Batch" (1990) on the NES, used primarily in the shop sequences.
This font contains an almost complete set of hiragana and katakana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, and positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Apart from these, only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the pixel font from Data East's "Silent Debuggers" (1991) on the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16.
This font contains an almost complete set of hiragana and katakana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, and positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Apart from these, only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Recreation of the primary pixel font from the Red/Naxat/Hudson Soft game "Air Zonk" (aka " PC Denjin Punkic Cyborg!", 1992) on the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16.
This font contains an almost complete set of (very quirky/stylised) hiragana and katakana characters. In the game's tileset, the dakuten and handakuten are separate tiles, and positioned in the line above the character they relate to. In this recreation, these characters are pre-combined into a single glyph.
Apart from these, only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Taken from the story screens from Capcom's 1989 arcade brawler Final Fight. (Interestingly, this font can also be found in the tile set from the Street Fighter 2 arcade game). Accented letters are completely custom.