GameBarcodes distill games down frame by frame

Journey’s is the best

A couple weeks ago an was floating around the Internet showing various films with each frame reduced to its average color a💧nd represented as a single vertical line in what turn out to be often vibrant barcodes. This is not exactly that same process, but .

ripped frame data from Let’s Plays of various games. He gives a tutorial how to do it on his site. Instead of taking the average color, his algorithm tabulates all of the colors and arranges them into a vertical slice, giving it more of a painted look than a hard barcode look, but it’s still striking.

My favorite of the bunch is Journey‘s, because it works as a retelling of the game. You can see how it starts in the deserts, treks through the underground, and ends on the snowy peaks, all from one image.

Others are not so pretty. For all the praise Bloodborne gets, it makes for just about the dullest, drabbest barcode. 0rbitalis is also a strang🤡e choice, considering how much of it takes place against a blac⛄k background.

If you like to be surprised, you ✱can browse the images in the gallery below and right-click -> Save As to see which games they come from. Otherwise, hit the for labeled images.