this post was submitted on
1,970 points (56% like it)
8,288 up votes 6,318 down votes
shortlink:

gifs

unsubscribe350,510 readers

627 users here now

Links to amusing, interesting, or funny .gifs from the web! .gif format submissions only, please!

How to make your own animated gifs?

Please try not to repost and post reaction gifs in /r/reactiongifs.

Looking for a specific gif? Try /r/gifrequests

Direct image links preferred! Avoid pages that have other extraneous material besides the gif like headers, banners, ads, etc. And please, no blogspam. URL-shorteners are NOT allowed!

Witty titles optional. nsfw when necessary; this implies the comments within will be too.

Nudity and obscene material goes into /r/nsfw_gifs - No exceptions. If it can get you fired then it should not be here. Failure to comply will result in removal of post and banning.

a community for
to anything interesting: news article, blog entry, video, picture...
message the moderators

MODERATORS

reddit is a source for what's new and popular online. vote on links that you like or dislike and help decide what's popular, or submit your own! learn more ›

1969
1970

Awesome 16-bit Forest Scene (imgur.com)

submitted ago by futuramadog

all 147 comments
sorted by:
best
best
top
new
hot
controversial
old

[–]0x80085 183 points184 points ago

The gif has been taken from this site: www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/

Lots more of it behind the link.

[–]BONER_PAROLE 20 points21 points ago

I thought I recognized it. Good ol' palette cycling.

[–]StupidButSerious -4 points-3 points ago

Maybe you recognized it cost it was posted less than a week ago.

[–]heartless559 -2 points-1 points ago

Yeah I know for a fact that it was at least on /r/woahdude within the last few days / week and even then it may have been a x-post.

[–]Rapptz 10 points11 points ago

Wow. Mountain Stream - Night is so pretty.

[–]Nick-Cage 5 points6 points ago

It can't be that pr- HOLY-

Also Mirror Pond- morning.

[–]random_herpderp 0 points1 point ago

Also haunted castle ruins-night is awesome!

[–]doctor_robocop 3 points4 points ago

Thanks for this! It's awesome.

[–]redditvlli 3 points4 points ago

All of those scenes are from Magic the Gathering: Battlemage, released in 1997.

[–]hakdragon 0 points1 point ago

To be fair, the guy who did the color cycling page did give credit to the original artist.

[–]pooprscooper 0 points1 point ago

This gif has better color-contrast than BF3.

[–]1RedOne 1 point2 points ago

How the hell does color-cycling account for something like this gif of snow falling?!?!

Sorry, turns out my LINK_FUU is failing me. I'm referring to Winter Forest - Snow.

[–]TrepidationNation -1 points0 points ago

You should post this in r/woahdude.

[–]ericshogren 0 points1 point ago

He got this from /r/woahdude.

[–]majik122 1 point2 points ago

I want these all to be games!!

[–]Accipehoc 0 points1 point ago

Oooh, I like it.

[–]pisspoorpeter 0 points1 point ago

There should be a r/pixelporn

[–]1q2w3 0 points1 point ago

The sounds kind of ruin it; would be awesome if there were 8-bit sound effects.

[–]soundsof 62 points63 points ago

A whole collection of these were posted a while ago.

Lemme see if I can find it...

Got it! http://imgur.com/a/oR8HS

EDIT: Link to post

[–]Dalek-SEC 2 points3 points ago

I recognize two of them. One from Samurai Shodown IV and the other from SVC Chaos.

[–]tortus 7 points8 points ago

first one: from Garou Mark of the Wolves (Neo Geo)
second: King of Fighters 99 (Neo Geo)
fourth: The Last Blade (Neo Geo)
sixth: The Last Blade (Neo Geo)
eighth: Samurai Shodown IV (Neo Geo)
ninth: SVC Chaos (Neo Geo)

The Neo Geo is home to lots of awesome pixel art.

[–]beardedboywonder 2 points3 points ago

god damn these are awesome! I'll be storing these away.

[–]lolindeed 2 points3 points ago

there's something about the 16 bit that makes me feel, alive, young and naive. Damn i cannot be objective about these things

[–]Nj_all_day 0 points1 point ago

Ok, this is a longshot, but is it possible to have something like this as a desktop background? I mean actually animated of course.

[–]fscktheworld 0 points1 point ago

You need "Windows 7 DreamScene Activator" and convert the gif to a wmv, that is if you have Windows Vista or Windows 7. Probably ways to do it with XP also but not sure.

There's lots of converters out there but this one's free and I'm told it works well. Download the Movies13 link.

[–]lurker_becomes_lurkd 12 points13 points ago

Why are we calling it 16 bit?

[–]ANakedBear 7 points8 points ago

because some people do not remember games form this time and just assume.

[–]Dreamtrain[!] 3 points4 points ago

Cause they "look" like what games under 16-bit systems looked like

[–]lurker_becomes_lurkd 5 points6 points ago

To be honest they don't. They look like a step between 8 and 16. Remember, 16 was the beginning of smooth sprites. Like Super Mario World and Sonic the Hedgehog. This is just pixel art. It's not really comparable to 8 bit or 16 bit.

[–]Dreamtrain[!] 2 points3 points ago

For the untrained eye I meant, hence "look" with quotes lol

[–]EmpiresBane 0 points1 point ago

From the source, it's actually 8-bit. However, in this .gif, it has blending turned on, meaning that the transitions do not preserve the 9-bit color pallet.

[–]gthing 25 points26 points ago

These things make me so nostalgic.

[–]Noobtsar 1 point2 points ago

That feel, right in the nostalgia.

[–]frsp 0 points1 point ago

My feels.

[–]gthing 1 point2 points ago

For my happy.

[–]OnmyojiOmn 21 points22 points ago

No "16-bit" system could have produced anything close to this, in terms of resolution, number of layers, number of colors, etc. I'm not knocking the artist at all, but I'm sick of people throwing around "8-bit" this and "16-bit" that when they clearly haven't played a game from those eras in fifteen years.

[–]myztry 15 points16 points ago

Depends if you consider the Amiga to be 16 bit as some people do.

The original 68K Amiga had 32 bit registers, 24 bit address bus and a 16 bit data bus.

It could utilise 6 bit planes with Half Bright mode giving it a palette of 64 colours (32 being half the brightness of the first 32).

There was also a dual playfield mode which split the max bitplanes in two lots 3 giving 8 colours on each playfield (colour 0 on the foreground playfield acted like a chromakey to make the scene transparent.)

Then on top of that, you had the copper list so you could change the colour pallet on any vertical or horizontal positions on the screen.

Then you could also overlay sprites for some additional animation but that is outside of pallete/colour cycle.

TLDR; piss easy if called the Amiga 16 bit. Mind you that animation shown likely has as least as many pixels as a fullscreen oldskool display.

[–]bionicOnion 6 points7 points ago

The only thing that matters is word size (e.g. the number of bits in a given machine code instruction). Judging by a quick glance at Wikipedia, the 68K had a 32-bit word size, thus making it a 32-bit system.

[–]myztry 0 points1 point ago

Agreed. Although a LONG (32 bits) was fetches as two WORDs (16 bit). 68020 upwards fetched a LONG as a single 32 bits which is where I think the confusion sets in.

The more tricky one was the 6809e from the Tandy Coco. It had both 8 bit (A & B) and 16 bit register (X & Y). But it also had a 16 bit D register which was A & B combined.

I think the data base was only 8 bit but the address bus was 16 bit.

[–]notsureiftrollorsrs 1 point2 points ago

Dang, you beat me to it, and with more information too. At least we agree!

[–]notsureiftrollorsrs 6 points7 points ago

Don't get me wrong, I get bothered by the people claiming stuff that is plainly not 8-bit to be 8-bit too, but this is not all that far off. I mean, for example, the Amiga 500 which used a 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 could do graphics almost like this, especially with HAM mode.. Hell, even some of the games looked pretty stunning-

The pictures in OP look more like Neo Geo though, as someone noted.

[–]MentalAtrophy 3 points4 points ago

Weird. I was actually going to pop in here and say this was an 8-bit image not a 16-bit one, based on color depth. I wasn't even thinking about console CPUs.

[–]Athene_Wins 10 points11 points ago

I love 8/16 bit graphics... so beautiful. Wish there were more modern games that stuck with the style (but added modern advances)

[–]dxinteractive 6 points7 points ago

http://www.swordandsworcery.com/

[–]zen_nudist 0 points1 point ago

Thank you for reminding me about this game. I had intended on checking it out.

[–]Timisaghost 0 points1 point ago

It's amazing.

[–]TheAdAgency 4 points5 points ago

I love them because the work required to produce this sort of thing and make it look good back then was ridiculous.

[–]boxmore 0 points1 point ago

Maybe that's why they looked so good: constraint breeds creativity.

[–]myztry -4 points-3 points ago

Borderlands 2 is a bit like that.

A lot of effort seems to have been put into making the game have a more cartoon like retro feel with a limited palette.

[–]BlazeOrangeDeer 0 points1 point ago

Cartoon is not the same thing, BL2 has high resolution textures everywhere

[–]Timisaghost -1 points0 points ago

cartoon

[–]BlazeOrangeDeer 0 points1 point ago

what?

[–]Timisaghost -2 points-1 points ago

Calling borderlands a "cartoon" is just as bad as comparing it to 16 bit.

[–]BlazeOrangeDeer 0 points1 point ago

What would you call it? I don't think it's just cel-shading, and cartoon style covers a wide range that I think includes whatever borderlands is. Edit: wikipedia uses "cartoon-style" in the borderlands article...

[–]myztry -2 points-1 points ago

Resolution isn't the key factor. It's colour depth and limited palletes which is where oldskool bares a resemblance to cartoons, and vice versa.

[–]Epsilon123 6 points7 points ago

Reminds me of Secret of Mana.

[–]liars_and_frauds 12 points13 points ago

I love this. I wish I had a huge version of this so I could stare at it while smoking and listening to RainyMood or something similar.

[–]FUCK_WIZARD 2 points3 points ago

F11, ctrl + scroll wheel up, close enough? Or do you mean 16:9

[–]liars_and_frauds 1 point2 points ago

16:9 but I did that earlier because it was too good an idea not to act on.

[–]AnonymousSkull 1 point2 points ago

It's already the background on my phone, unmoving of course. Looks amazing.

[–]Darke 4 points5 points ago

As awesome as it is, I think your version of the gif has a missing frame.

[–]hbdgas 4 points5 points ago

This "16-bit" scene uses 8-bit color and requires 18 bits to address all the pixels...

[–]deliciouskittens 11 points12 points ago

Good pixel art, but reminds me of those incredibly tacky animated paintings you can buy from tacky gift shops.

[–]idrink211 3 points4 points ago

From what game?

[–]futuramadog[S] 8 points9 points ago

Not from a game. It was made just for art's sake.

[–]idrink211 10 points11 points ago

Then what's 16-bit about it?

[–]futuramadog[S] 10 points11 points ago

It looks like 16-bit games. Same way that this is called 8-bit art. I just thought this scene looked similar to 16-bit games.

[–]idrink211 7 points8 points ago

OK, sorry for giving you a hard time.

[–]futuramadog[S] 6 points7 points ago

No worries, friend.

[–]rated-r 5 points6 points ago

Source appears to be an 8-bit image that has its color palette cycled. It's not clear if the source palettes were 16-bit or 24-bit.

[–]Khaze 1 point2 points ago

I'm pretty sure he mean's 16-bit CPU, not 16-bit color depth.

[–]redditvlli 1 point2 points ago

Actually, these scenes are from Magic the Gathering: Battlemage, released in 1997.

[–]match451 0 points1 point ago

They were used in Magic the Gathering: Battlemage, I believe.

[–]futuramadog[S] 2 points3 points ago

X-posted from /r/PixelArt

Check it out for more!

[–]rorykane 4 points5 points ago

also x posted from /r/woahdude

[–]Blue_Bi0hazard 1 point2 points ago

would it be possible to make a game with this much detail?

[–]goatlll 1 point2 points ago

Demon Blade Muramasa, hell most of the Vanillaware games have a great deal of detail such as this.

[–]GEN_CORNPONE 1 point2 points ago

This looks for all the world like one of those moving waterfall clock mirror things hanging on the wall in some Chinese restaurants.

[–]TheAdAgency 1 point2 points ago

Except far more tasteful.

[–]Killzonintaing 0 points1 point ago

that is pretty awesome

[–]HobKing 1 point2 points ago

Reminds me of the great art in Pitfall.

[–]KissesWithSaliva 0 points1 point ago

So just making sure, 16-bit means it has 216 colors? Or do they mean something else by "8/16/32-bit"

[–]scy1192 2 points3 points ago

16-bit is actually even less significant than that. It refers to the CPU word size, which basically means the CPU can only count to 216 . Back in the 90s that's all consumer-class CPUs could do. It just so happened that the graphics processing power on CPUs of the day was lesser, too. Referring to graphics (and audio) as 16-bit is usually a misnomer. 16-bit PCs, which were much more powerful than the consoles, had 3D graphics, and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between 16-bit and 32-bit PCM audio.

edit: also: the Xbox 360 has "only" a 32-bit CPU. And the N64 had 64 bits. That's how pointless the bit wars were.

[–]MWozz 0 points1 point ago

Is this really 16-bit? The color palette seems unnaturally large.

[–]Basilisc 0 points1 point ago

According to the site it's only 8bit. I don't know though...

Also, 16 bit is a lot more colors than you'd think, about 65,000 of them iirc.

[–]Corn89 0 points1 point ago

This picture plus http://www.rainymood.com/.

[–]Prcrstntr 0 points1 point ago

The orginal website has that already

[–]oneXnine 1 point2 points ago

Curse of monkey island was my first thought... Some seriously awesome games.

[–]Nc525 0 points1 point ago

http://www.rainymood.com/

[–]HugoM 0 points1 point ago

Some of the colors seem generated. Looks like colors a sprite artist wouldn't purposely use, like in the tree. Also, odd-numbered height? How often does that happen with 16-bit scenery?

[–]clearlyreading -1 points0 points ago

Anyone else reminded of Chrono Trigger?

[–]charpops 0 points1 point ago

This reminds me of Bayou Billy.

[–]czerniana 1 point2 points ago

I clicked and it sat there for a minute so i was just like 'cool, great pixel work.' Then it started moving.

pretty damned cool. I don't have the patience for it, so i'm envious of that kind of skill.

And before you ask, yes my internet connection is a tin can with a bit of twine. Or in other words, expensive yet shitty satellite internet.

[–]buddahmonk 0 points1 point ago

I wish you could set animated gifs as your wallpaper in windows 7, like you could with XP.

[–]teh__sukc 0 points1 point ago

Secret of Mana?

[–]BigNeek 1 point2 points ago

Is 16-Bit the new 8-Bit?

[–]estate8143 0 points1 point ago

How were these scenes drawn?

[–]usedtowork 0 points1 point ago

I doubt there's more than 8 bits of colour in that scene since it's all shades of green

[–]balraj_01 0 points1 point ago

ive seen this same link 10 times and im not tired of clicking on it or yelling repost

[–]PhattiG 0 points1 point ago

I love things like this, games were way more fun! I would totally buy games made like this in a heartbeat. Instead, I've collected up ones I missed back the the day. Any good ones you particularly loved? Monkey Island!!

[–]viralkat 0 points1 point ago

I wish I could beadsprite this.

[–]johnrkennedy 0 points1 point ago

Posted about 24 hrs ago. Title was " multilayered gif"

[–]MaxieRodriguez 0 points1 point ago

I remember like two years ago there were a bunch of these as free live wallpapers. They would shift the time of day with your clock. But I can't find them anymore and I'm to much of a noob to make my own.

[–]derekdanger 1 point2 points ago

someone needs to make some of these amazing 8-bit scenes into some android live wallpapers

[–]Chaxie 0 points1 point ago

For some reason i was reminded of myspace..

[–]mages011 0 points1 point ago

Theres something sad about it, I think its a beautiful image.

[–]tokeabow 0 points1 point ago

How do i set a gif as my desktop background?

[–]leksikon 0 points1 point ago

Reminds me of the intro to Secret of Mana. I loved that game beyond words.

[–]classy_stegasaurus 0 points1 point ago

That looks like a lot of bits

[–]stewmeat 0 points1 point ago

Anyway to make that into a desktop?

[–]FourAM 0 points1 point ago

GIF has a limited palette of 256 colors. Therefore, 8-bit; if anything.

[–]81toog 0 points1 point ago

This gives me a craving for a circa 1993 video game.

[–]djmachx 0 points1 point ago

Reminds me of this....

http://constantlycalibrating.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/2-lsl3-larry-hes-back.jpg

[–]Caticorn 1 point2 points ago

Awesome! Makes me very nostalgic of the old King's Quest games.

[–]LemonScentedDirt 0 points1 point ago

yeyeye

[–]xnoybis 0 points1 point ago

GUYBRUSH!

[–]krakatoareturns 0 points1 point ago

The Neo Geo was marketed as 24-bit, though it was technically a parallel processing 32-bit system with 24-bit addressing and a 16-bit data bus with an 8-bit Zilog Z80 as coprocessor.

Wikipedia.

The geek in me fills with rage when people equate anything with pixels as 8/16 bit.

[–]do_hickey 0 points1 point ago

Reminds me of one of my favorite childhood games, ever, Blackthorne.

Also, I just found out that it was developed by Bilzzard, cool!

[–]CanDelightUs 0 points1 point ago

Reminiscent of childhood video games on SNES.

[–]Firefoxhero 0 points1 point ago

mmhhh dat 16 bits

[–]GoodLookinGuy 0 points1 point ago

This gif makes me feel at peace with the world. A lot for such a small animation.

[–]BassBlend20 0 points1 point ago

werid, when I was looking at that I could hear the rain even though my speakers are muted

[–]loudmusicofthesky 0 points1 point ago

i love this

[–]voguole 0 points1 point ago

Dude. Whenever I saw scenes like this in a King's Quest game I thought. "Shit, these are some fucking AMAZING graphics."

[–]zublits 0 points1 point ago

this NEEDS to be my live background on my phone. How can I make it so!?

[–]launcherofcats 0 points1 point ago

This is more relaxing to me than it would be in real life.

[–]Vegadyr 0 points1 point ago

Add music/sound effects... I'd have eye and ear gasms.

[–]thegendler 0 points1 point ago

Is there anyway to make gifs into live wallpapers for android?

[–]thegendler 0 points1 point ago

i was able to make a livewallpaper out of this but i can't get the resolution to fit my phone. i have the galaxy s3. i edited the individual files but still no change. anyone else know perhaps?

[–]The_Insyder 0 points1 point ago

I find this incredibly easy to masturbate to.

[–]Paultimate79 0 points1 point ago

Its shit like this why I lamented the 3D revolution. 3D games look good now, but the pixel perfect beauty of a 2D sprite based RPG will never be matched by 3D.

[–]ILIKECHEEZ411 0 points1 point ago

This is 256 color not 16bit...

[–]k0sTi 0 points1 point ago

I miss games looking like this

[–]avengepluto 0 points1 point ago

Paired with this, it's even awesomerer.

[–]mindfckr 0 points1 point ago

I don't know why but this reminds me of LOOM. Not sure if anyone remembers that game.

[–]tPRoC 0 points1 point ago

Thank you so much for not calling it "8 bit" just because it has pixels.

[–]InvaderDem 0 points1 point ago

I'd say more like 24 to 36 bit. 16-bit was the first few years of games for the SNES lifespan. This looks like this could be in the later years, where games were 24/36-bit.

[–]scy1192 1 point2 points ago

...what on earth are you talking about

[–]skeddles -4 points-3 points ago

The animation is not bad, neither is the composition, but pixel art aspect really isn't that great.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. © 2012 reddit inc. All rights reserved.

REDDIT and the ALIEN Logo are registered trademarks of reddit inc.

π Rendered by PID 2636 on app-181 running e103ce9.