Top 10 of 10 years of Retronator
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
@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.
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.
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).
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
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.
Now excuse me while I go make some (pixel) cake for tomorrow.
