NES_Colorizer

Nostalgia | Nintendo | Lo-Res | Bitcrushing

The Nes Colorizer is an experimental photo-processing tool that swaps an images colour palette to the limited palette of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Released in 1984, the japanese entertainment giant released the NES, which had a limited 64-color (or 4-bit) palette (eight of which were black). The piece is not really an artwork, it is more of a simple photo-processing tool that reduces a photograph to a glitchy and bitcrushed version of itself. I was initially inspired by the painterly still images that made up cutscenes in early videogames - non-interactive moments between the action that drove the plot of the videogame.

Stills from Ninja Gaiden (1987) and Terminator (1988) on the NES.

The project is currently offline only, although I plan to make a site version where you can upload your own photos to be crushed into the Nes Palette. There is an as yet unreleased app (built in processing/java) that is semi-stable on android, and the source code is available. Some examples of the output are shown below.