ROM Color

Expanding on the ideas started by people like Ben Fry and numerous emulation authors, ROM Color visually maps the data of Nintendo Entertainment System ROMs. However, instead of only constructing sprite data, ROM Color paints a picture of the entire ROM contents; the sprites, music and logic of an entire game.

NES sprite data is composed of two sets of sprite "tiles". One can think of these as "positive" and "negative", that when put together create a third space, a "neutral" space that's a combination of the two tiles. While code and music data do not share these same properties, using the same effect on them gives interesting results. Add unique colors for each type of space, and you have a 4-color visual representation of the exact game that's playable on a regular NES.

Along with playing the original games, ROM Color is yet another means of experiencing them, in a way that was never intended by the original authors. While the output is not something one could interact with, the method for creating it is the same; computation done on machine code to produce visual output of said code.

ROM Color has been featured in the book Gamescenes: Art in the Age of Videogames by Matteo Bittanti and Domenico Quaranta.