You're gonna go up the street 12 pixels, hang a left, then straight 44 pixels to 77th street...

July 9, 2010 4:30 PM

8bit Cities: Amsterdam - Austin - Berlin - Detroit - London - New York - Paris - San Francisco - Seattle - Washington, D.C.
posted by BeerFilter (17 comments total)

New York, London, Paris, Munich
Everybody talk about pop musik
Talk about, pop musik
Talk about, pop musik
Pop pop pop pop musik

Bet that will stick in your head the rest of the day.
posted by bwg at 4:35 PM on July 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

GO NORTH, WEST, SOUTH, WEST TO THE FOREST OF MAZE CENTRAL PARK
posted by vorfeed at 4:36 PM on July 9, 2010

It's been so long since I've thought about King's Quest 2!
posted by Some1 at 4:36 PM on July 9, 2010

Previously, although then it was NYC only.
posted by mhz at 4:36 PM on July 9, 2010

Neat, but the businesses that are chosen for appearance on the map are really seem really oddly chosen, at least for Seattle. I wonder if there's an advertising angle there?

The sushi place across the street from where I work is visible at a pretty low zoom level, but almost nothing in the downtown core of my neighborhood is shown at all.
posted by gurple at 4:38 PM on July 9, 2010

Previously, although then it was NYC only.

The domain has changed, but that shouldn't have mattered. Descriptive tags are important!
posted by BeerFilter at 4:42 PM on July 9, 2010

You know this is useless to me unless you can project it into the upper right corner of my glasses like an overworld map, right?
posted by The Whelk at 4:44 PM on July 9, 2010

Call me pixelated [sic] but I love these. Especially Seattle!
posted by bearwife at 5:05 PM on July 9, 2010

Copied from the site, for your information:

How?
This web map was created using a custom rendering engine, with help from several excellent open source software and data packages. The underlying geometry for map features such as roads & parks comes from OpenStreetMap, © by contributors, CC-BY-SA. The snazzy pixel fonts are by the artist Miffies (some have been modified). The map graphics are assembled in Python: for each 16x16 pixel tile, a series of spatial tests are performed via SQL/PostGIS. Based on the results (what's here: a road, a park, a lake?), the appropriate bitmap tile is selected. The bitmaps are then tesselated into larger 256x256 pixel tiles, and served to your browser.

Why?
The 8-Bit Cities project, which started with 8-Bit NYC, is an attempt to make the city feel foreign yet familiar, smashing together two culturally common models of space: the lo-fi overhead world maps of 1980s role-playing and adventure games, and the geographically accurate data that drives today's web maps and GPS navigation. I hope to evoke the same urge for exploration, abstract sense of scale, and perhaps most importantly unbounded excitement that many of us remember experiencing on the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Commodore 64, or any other number of 8-bit microcomputers. Maps offer us visual architectures of the world, encouraging us to think about and interact with space in particularly constrained ways. Take some time to think about your surroundings a little differently. Set out on a quest. Be an adventurer.

I kind of wish he used other tiles, something to give a more urban feel. As it is, it's as if there are no buildings, just different sorts of grasses, trees and water. Also, I feel like there should be some monsters wandering around.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:07 PM on July 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

I wish there were little minigames scattered around. Like a version of Pipes where you could make subway connections.
posted by oinopaponton at 5:21 PM on July 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

HAR HAR DETROIT IZ ALREADY 8-BIT
posted by joe lisboa at 5:40 PM on July 9, 2010

HAR HAR DETROIT IZ ALREADY 8-BIT

[Cue title screen, terrible MIDI of "Lose Yourself"]
posted by ormondsacker at 6:41 PM on July 9, 2010 [3 favorites]

Well played!
posted by joe lisboa at 7:50 PM on July 9, 2010

Okay, I found the Statue of Liberty, but I still can't see it.
posted by yhbc at 9:32 PM on July 9, 2010

Medina Park in the Seattle map is in the wrong place (says the only person who will notice that).
posted by mrnutty at 12:25 AM on July 10, 2010

Wow. You have to zoom in on Amsterdam really far before it starts to make any kind of sense. Guess us dutchies are too sophisticated to be captured in 8 bit!
posted by bjrn at 1:33 AM on July 10, 2010

My road in London is on there! As is where I work - even the local Wasabi is marked off.
posted by mippy at 6:56 AM on July 12, 2010