Impulse Tracker fonts
The music creation programs Impulse Tracker 2 and Schism Tracker use raster (bitmap) fonts with characters of fixed eight-by-eight size. Electric Keet has created several of these, many of which were packaged with the official Impulse Tracker distribution. All the fonts are available in a single package, but previews are shown here for those disinclined to install either of those programs to see them in action.
- ALTAI • “Altaica” is a narrow, stencil-like font with a corresponding FontStruction.
- ANGLE • Oblique letters go a long way toward breaking up a monospace grid.
- BEANS • This short, highly rounded font also has a corresponding FontStruction.
- BINGO • Exaggerated thickness makes for a fun diversion from the everyday grind.
- LOSS • An experiment to see how much could be removed from a letterform while leaving it distinct enough to be read revealed this.
- MAC • Who hasn't had at least a brief love affair with the classic Macintosh system font, Chicago?
- PIPED • Joints and pipes are partially the inspiration for this very modern font.
- PIPER • The above font is strengthened – and made more readable – with a thicker stroke.
- RACER • Inspiration struck from watching a friend play an old game with a similar font on the Atari 800.
- RIVET • Mechanical, serifed, modern, and somewhat steampunk – this is a personal favourite.
- SKOOL • “Skoolhaus” has a certain basic, geometric, childlike appeal.
- SLIDE • Instead of smaller, why not make the lowercase... lighter?
- SOLST • Save for extended characters, “Solstice” is converted directly from the NES game of the same name (and thus is not covered under the Creative Commons licence).
- SPACE • My very first Impulse Tracker font. Not exciting, but also not distracting.
- SPELL • Making music... on a Speak&Spell? (Note: the song “Spell Machine” came first.)
- TEK • “Space” made angular, this is tied with “Rivet” for frequency of use.
- TEMP • This broken serifed font, a mutation of “Rivet”, never got a better name.
- TI81 • This is precisely, pixel-for-pixel, the font used on the TI-81 graphing calculator (and thus is not covered under the Creative Commons licence).
- TI994 • This is precisely, pixel-for-pixel, the font used in the TI-99/4A home computer (and thus is not covered under the Creative Commons licence).
- VGAME • Its uppercase comes from most early NES games, and its lowercase comes specifically from Metroid (and thus is not covered under the Creative Commons licence).
- WINTR • “Winterfresh” is stark, square, and just chilly enough to be crisp.
- ZELDA • This font is converted from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (and thus is not covered under the Creative Commons licence).
