#cover4

Only a few days left till the shmup Hyper Echelon, formerly known as Thyrian Defenders (which has nothing to do with the shmup Tyrian, hence the name change to avoid confusion), launches its Titan star fighter onto an unsuspecting alien horde of the Cyan Galaxy.

The artist on the game is none other than Raymond ‘Slynyrd’ Schlitter whose excellent pixel art tutorials I’ve been meaning to tout since forever, but haven’t gotten around to yet. As a long-time supporter of his Patreon it’s been nice to follow his journey, both with the learning resources as well as the ramping production of Hyper Echelon assets, which are an embodiment of the art style and approach from his tutorials.

In his latest Patreon post we finally also received the release trailer in the anticipation of the November 11 launch on Steam (macOS, Windows). I’ll let it speak about the gameplay for itself.

The 10th anniversary of Retronator (the blog) is coming up tomorrow!!! I’ll write a special post for the occasion then, but I thought it’d be interesting to see the most liked and reblogged posts I published on Retronator over these 10 years.

1. The United Pixels of America: 8-bit Map of the USA

January 2019, 18k notes

Compared to other top 10 posts that have been gathering notes for half a decade already, the feature of Danc3r’s detailed, animated map of the United States is pretty much a baby. Still, Tumblr did what Tumblr does best and showed that even in the post-NSFW-apocalypse years of 2019/2020, there are plenty of fans of gaming, art, and pixels (and USA) alive on the site.

2. Paul Robertson artist feature

October 2014, 17k notes

Speaking of the NSFW apocalypse, the feature of @probertson​​​’s work didn’t make it past the nude filters. Even though nudity in art is allowed on tumblr and they’ve been very good at restoring wrongly tagged posts in the past, Paul’s boobies-filled artworks somehow didn’t get approved. So yeah, no link for this post.

3. No Bullshit Pixel Art Tutorial

March 2014, 14k notes

This tutorial tried to condense all the basics of how to get started with pixel art into just 7 images (and seven accompanying 10 sec videos). I later extended it into the Getting Started Guide and eventually turned into gameplay of my game Pixel Art Academy.

4. Fool artist feature

March 2015, 13k notes

There were times when Fool a.k.a. Yuriy Gusev didn’t need an introduction on the pixel art scene. But it’s not the 2000s anymore, so to all of you who haven’t come across his work yet, he’s one of the very best pixel artists of all time, period. Well worth exploring his work.

5. Waneella artist feature

July 2015, 12k notes

I wrote a longer article about @waneella​​ to accompany this post in Retronator Magazine, where I covered her journey from spaghetti-legs Lost Vikings to emerging themes of city skylines that hinted at the magnificent urban illustrations we know Waneella by today.

6. Amplitude Problem

May 2015, 11k notes

@valenberg​​ is well known for his cyberpunk pixel arts and the GIFs he did for YouTube videos of musician Amplitude Problem lended well to the GIF-loving Tumblr crowd. Just recently, Valenberg’s game VirtuaVerse came out, so definitely check that out.

7. Witchmarsh

May 2014, 9k notes

I posted about many pixel art games on this blog and the one that was shared the most was Inglenook’s @witchmarsh​​. It’s now been 6 years since its Kickstarter and we’re still patiently waiting for our beloved 1920s jazz-era RPG. Good things are worth waiting for! Also, their tumblr devlog is still actively updated, so good job guys.

8. The Last Night

October 2014, 7k notes

Second (and final) game on this list is The Last Night, the winning entry for the CyberPunkJam, made by brothers @timsoret​​ and @adrien-soret​​. You might have heard about it … Well, at least the full game that went into development following the prototype’s very positive reception. Seeing the old GIFs now, it’s just crazy to think how far the art direction has been advanced (and I’m sure we haven’t seen anything yet as even the trailer is 3 years old by now).

9. Rocks

May 2017, 6k notes

Finally another post that’s not from what seems to be the 2014–2015 golden area of this blog. People like rocks, I guess, and the trio of tutorials—including one from the incredibly popular Pedro Medeiros of @studiominiboss​​—served some good knowledge on the topic.

10. Vierbit artist feature

February 2014, 6k notes

This is the post that started the whole Artist Feature series, so I guess I have Vierbit’s insanely gorgeous art style to blame for inspiring me to start actively posting about other artists on the blog. From that point on Retronator became less my personal portfolio/brainfart diary and more the journalistic-pixel-art-newspaper that it aspires to be today.

There you have it, the tip of the iceberg of 1,700 total posts from 10 years of Retronator.

I have a backlog of beautiful games I wanted to post about, some of them already achieving release since the time I added them to my to-do list. Children of Morta is definitely one of them.

The art direction takes some cues from Hyper Light Drifter, including epic overhang scenes—a welcome trick to add depth and perspective to an otherwise orthogonal top-down viewpoint. The mood and colors have so much of their own personality though, they make Children of Morta really a thing of its own. The story and character treatment are also the game’s strength and with the very positive reception it received since its September 2019 launch, it seems the 5 years of development following the 2015 Kickstarter were all worth it.

You can get the game for PC (macOs, Windows), Xbox, Playstation, and Switch by following the links from the game’s website (currently costs around $22).

I made a post like this ages ago, so you can check that for start.

There are definitely some new entries to be added since 2013 when I made that. I follow 800+ blogs so forgive me if I’ll leave some of you out (I love you all!).

Pixel art aggregators (blogs that feature other artists)

Great for discovering new games and artists.

@pixelartus (curated by @pixelprospector)

@pixel-archive (accepts submissions, so lots of new art)

@pikselpost / @pixeloutput (they link to each other but the first seems to be a bit more selective)

Artists

These are some new follows that are bringing me much happiness lately:

@kldpxl (watching his progress through 2017 was truly inspiring)

@studiominiboss (art and awesome tutorials by Pedro ‘Saint11’ Medeiros, MVP of the scene at the moment)

@romaincourtoisgames (newcomer to Tumblr, but boy do I love his art)

@6vcr (discovered her via YouTube, awesome scenes and creative in general)

@8pxl (love her color choices)

And of course there are a lot of my existing favorites: @pixelshuh, @kirokazepixel, @orange-magik, @weilarddrake … Too many to list them all, but I’m guessing you’re following my posts where I always scream about people and projects I like.

Random stuff

@indieretronews (homebrew scene a.k.a. new games for old systems with plenty of ZX Spectrum in the mix)

@bipolarowls (because I’m bipolar and they have great memes)

@metropolisoftomorrow (concept art of sci-fi cities)