“I think I need to re-emphasize the detail on the sesame seeds”

April 23, 2023 1:20 PM

“Four-Byte Burger” is a mellow video by Stuart Brown (@XboxAhoy on Youtube, but going by the shorter “Ahoy”) about his favorite piece of pixel art (“Four-Byte Burger” by Jack Haeger), how the original image file is “lost”, and his process for creating a “copy”.
(Haeger is still alive and was working for American Pinball as of 2021. The video doesn’t mention this, and he may have the original.)
posted by Going To Maine (9 comments total)

Would be great if a copy of the original did exist, and we could compare it to the reconstruction!

I didn't enjoy this video as much as Ahoy's other essays, but it was still an interesting dive into the tech and design behind OG pixel art.
posted by sudasana at 1:38 PM on April 23, 2023

This is fascinating!
posted by Wretch729 at 2:44 PM on April 23, 2023

I'm really hoping some image analysis nerd somewhere is currently busy writing code to extract a pixel-perfect version from the photo. It looks hard with all the curvature and distortion and whatnot, but not impossible.
posted by grahamparks at 2:51 PM on April 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

The video explains why Haeger having the original is unlikely if not impossible (there was no save function in the paint program at the time the photograph was taken).
posted by Random_Tangent at 2:56 PM on April 23, 2023

Important point: you can sing "Four-Byte Burger" to the tune of The Cherry Poppin' Daddies' "Zoot Suit Riot".
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:57 AM on April 24, 2023

I am surprised to find that Graphicraft understood IFF files, I thought it predated them.

I only ever experienced its later incarnation as Aegis Images. Which I think came with several of Haeger's images on the disc. Not the burger though. But probably the hot dog. I feel pretty convinced that I saw the hot dog's landscape color cycling on my own monitor at some point about forty years ago.

fuck I'm old.
posted by egypturnash at 8:11 AM on April 24, 2023

I am surprised to find that Graphicraft understood IFF files, I thought it predated them.

IFF (and ILBM, which is what most people are talking about when they say IFF) was a system-wide format on the Amiga, and Graphicraft (which I was unfamiliar with, probably because it was quickly overshadowed by EA's Deluxe Paint) was created by Commodore, so it would be weird if it didn't.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:30 PM on April 24, 2023

I might be confusing myself because of remembering that EA had a big hand in creating the Interchange File Format, as well as the various sub-formats for images/samples/animations/etc.
posted by egypturnash at 7:19 PM on April 24, 2023

Jack showed up and commented on the video:

"How do you thank a total stranger from across the Atlantic Ocean who selects an obscure and irrelevant piece of art you did years ago and turns it into an Archaeological-Techno Adventure Park Ride? (allow me to wipe tears from my eyes) And he got everything RIGHT! - Thank you Stuart."

posted by JoeZydeco at 9:21 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]