Combat Font

Archive entry by Ste Pickford on Mon, 05 Oct 2009
Subject: Blade & Barrel

This is another old bitmap font, from the N64 days.

It was an attempt to create a very flexible font, one which could have multiple different appearances depending on the palette used, for the unreleased N64 game Blade and Barrel.

The characters use a 16 colour palette, with colour 1 used for the centre of the characters, and colours 2 to 15 used to form a 'glowing' outline if a light to dark spread of colours are used (with colour 15 being closest to the background colour), or a flat coloured outline if the same colour is used for colours 2 to 15.

This was one of the very last graphics I did at Software Creations before I left in 1996, as I was asked to help out a bit on the Blade and Barrel front end in my last couple of weeks, but I don't think the font was ever actually used.

The game was originally called 'Combat', as the idea was to make a game as simple and fun as the original Atari 'Combat' cartridge, but in 3D - recognising that in moving from 2D to 3D we really needed to go right back to basics in terms of gameplay - but I believe the Japanese publisher turned it into an on-rails shooter, and I'm not sure if it was even released.

Tags: font, pixel art, n64

Predecessor post: Powerfest Font

View the softography page for Blade & Barrel »

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