Three panels from a strip that ran on January 20, 2004 (http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=040120)

8-Bit Theater is a Sprite comics are web comics that use video game sprites and backgrounds for their artwork. Sprites are pixelated renditions of video game characters that are taken from ROMs, through computer emulators. There are animated sprite comics as well, where each strip is a separate mini-movie, some utilizing Flash for... sprite comic created by Brian Clevinger is the author of the popular webcomic 8-Bit Theater, and Nuklear Age which is a satirical novel involving superheroes. He is known primarily as a humorist, and tends to write jokes with long intricate setups. See also: list of webcomics Categories: People stubs ... Brian Clevinger based on the game Final Fantasy (Japanese: ファイナルファンタジー Fainaru Fantajii) is a popular series of role-playing video games produced by Square Co., Ltd., now Square Enix. The franchise originated in Japan in 1987 and has seen subsequent releases in North America, Europe and... Final Fantasy by A square as a geometric shape is described and illustrated at square (geometry). There are other concepts derived from it: the geometric unit square; the square units of measurement, such as the square mile, square meter, square kilometer, square inch, and square megameter; the square waveform. But a square is... Square. The comic was launched on March 2 is the 61st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (62nd in leap years). There are 304 days remaining. Events 986 - Louis V becomes King of the Franks. 1717 - The Loves of Mars and Venus became the first ballet performed in England. 1791 - Long distance communication was... March 2, 2001 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. By strict interpretation of the Gregorian Calendar, 2001 is also the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millenium. Popular culture, however, often views the year 2000 as holding this distinction. 2001 is also the year... 2001. (It has been stated by the author, however, that the comic was started between mid-late January of the year 2001 (http://forums.nuklearpower.com/showpost.php?p=258916&postcount=2).)

Those who have played the original Final Fantasy will note that 8-Bit Theater follows the storyline of Final Fantasy, but the places traveled to and the enemies fought are the only real similarities. For example, Garland, the first boss in Final Fantasy, is pictured as horribly un-evil for a nemesis. This is derived from the fact that Garland is a fairly easy boss in the original game. Also, the comic has a really unique sense of humor (http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=010425).

Art

In general, the art in the comic is taken from the game Final Fantasy, particularly the characters and most of the foreground scenery. However, some backgrounds and objects are taken from different sources. The comic author has previously stated that most are obtained from Googles main pages unusually spartan design, uncluttered appearance and quick loading time have contributed greatly to the sites mass appeal. Google is a U.S.–based search engine owned by Google Inc. whose mission is to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible... Google.

All editing of the backgrounds and addition of word balloons and text are performed in Adobe Systems ( NASDAQ: ADBE) is a computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California that was founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke. They founded Adobe after leaving Xerox PARC in order to further develop and commercialize the PostScript page description language. Adobe played a significant role... Adobe Adobe Photoshop is a bitmap graphics editor (with some text and vector graphics capabilities) published by Adobe Systems. It is the market leader for commercial bitmap image manipulation. It is usually referred to simply as Photoshop. As with most of other Adobes applications, Photoshop is available for Mac OS... Photoshop. The sprites used in the comic are a mix of Final Fantasy (Japanese: ファイナルファンタジー Fainaru Fantajii) is a popular series of role-playing video games produced by Square Co., Ltd., now Square Enix. The franchise originated in Japan in 1987 and has seen subsequent releases in North America, Europe and... FF1, This article is about Final Fantasy II, the Famicom title. For information on the SNES title, see Final Fantasy IV. Final Fantasy II (FF2) is a Japanese console role-playing video game developed and published by Square Co., Ltd. in 1988. Originally released for the Nintendo Family Computer (known internationally... FF2j, and Original game packaging This article covers the RPG released in 1990 for the Nintendo Family Computer. For information regarding the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game, see Final Fantasy VI Final Fantasy III is a Japanese console role-playing game developed and published by Square Co., Ltd. for Nintendo Family Computer... FF3j sprites, as well as an additional assortment of sprite edits and artifical sprites created with Corel PhotoPaint is a bitmap graphics program sold by Corel, a software company with headquarters in Canada. PhotoPaint does not have a large market share but is comparable with Photoshop in features. Its often used by non-Microsoft users as subsitute for Photoshop. PhotoPaint is included in Corels... Corel PhotoPaint 3.0, a Microsoft Windows is a range of commercial operating environments for personal computers. The range was first introduced by Microsoft in 1985 and eventually has come to dominate the world personal computer market. All recent versions of Windows are fully-fledged operating systems. Windows was developed for IBM PC compatible computers... Windows 3.0/3.1 art program.

Characters

The events in 8-Bit Theater revolve around four central characters—the Light Warriors—and a number of minor ones. These characters are quite obviously exaggerated This article is about traditional role-playing games. See video and computer role-playing games for their digital counterparts. A role-playing game (RPG) is a type of game where players assume the roles of fictional characters via role-playing. In fact, many non-athletic games involve some aspect of... RPG stereotypes.

Main characters (the Light Warriors)

• Fighter McWarrior – At a young age, the swordsman was expelled from Fighter's Camp '86 for failing to answer correctly the question "How many schools of Zodiac Kenshido are there?" After leaving the camp, he was about to "give up the blade and embrace my true calling in life—short order cook!", before literally running into Black Mage and immediately bonding with him, oblivious to the other's attempts to stab him, first in the back, then in the front. Fighter is a skilled warrior/idiot savant with an almost singleminded A sword (from Old English sweord; akin to Old High German swerd lit. wounding tool, from the PIE *sver- to wound, to hurt) is a long edged bladed weapon, consisting in its most fundamental design of a blade and a handle. The blade is normally of metal and often ground... sword fixation. More intelligent than he appears, but is also able to lower the intelligence of those around him with his sheer incompetence. He's also the idealizer/creator of the sword-chuck, a weapon consisting of two Swords is also the plural of Sword. Swords is the name of a suburban town located to the north of Dublin City in Ireland. Originally a separate town, it has become integrated into the citys urban sprawl and in 1994 it became the capital of Fingal County a subdivision... swords attached to each other by a chain extending between the two—a combination of twin swords and a A nunchaku (Chinese: 雙節棍 shuāng jié gùn, 兩節棍 liǎng jié gùn, or 三節棍 sān jié gùn), also called nunchucks or nunchuks (sometimes hyphenated as nun-chucks or nun-chuks or spaced as nun chucks or... nunchuck. The joke is that you would likely cripple yourself using it, since you wield nunchucks holding their ends; however, after seeing Black Belt's dropped nunchaku, he realizes that the Zodiac Kenshido school is the sword itself, and successfully uses them to fight the six-armed Fiend of Fire, Kary, to a standstill, leading to her defeat. He has severe arachnophobia, and goes into a gibbering panic when told a spider is near or on him. One of his recent destinies was to find the legendary "Armor of Invincibility". He found out that Matoya had it, and inquired to have it from her. Due to a mishearing, Matoya gave Fighter the Armoire of Invincibility.
• Black Mage Evilwizardington – Black Mage ran into Fighter after being expelled from wizardry camp for answered the question "How many 5th level spells can an experienced wizard cast?" with "More than enough to destroy you all and your families." Immediately confused by Fighter's declaring them best friends, his attempts to stab him are blunted by the warrior's armor. Black Mage is a chaotic, egotistical, power hungry, murderous wizard who hates everyone in the group/in general, especially Fighter, but keeps him around anyway--both as a meatshield, and because he just has trouble killing the armored fellow. He was once killed by Lich and sent to Medieval illustration of the Mouth of Hell Hell is, according to many religious beliefs about the afterlife, a place of torment, of great weeping and gnashing of teeth. The English word hell comes from the Norse Hel, which originally referred to the goddess of the Norse underworld. The original meaning... Hell. There, he overthrew the rulers of Hell and became the most powerful immortal being. He went back to Earth, also known as the Earth or Terra, is the third planet outward from the Sun. It is the largest of the solar systems terrestrial planets, and the only planetary body that modern science confirms as harboring life. The planet formed around 4.5 billion (4.5×109) years... Earth to join his compatriots and destroy his original body so he could not be overthrown. Before he could, though, Lich, having been dragged to Hell because he killed Black Mage in the first place, overthrew Black Mage, leading to Black Mage creating the only instance of the word " Fuck, a word connected to sexual intercourse, is among the strongest and most controversial vulgarisms in the modern English language. When the word was expelled from polite usage, becoming profane, is unclear. Some evidence indicates that, in some English-speaking locales, it was considered acceptable as late as the 17th... fuck" in the comic's archives. His " Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991) was a highly popular and immensely successful arcade game created by the Japan-based company Capcom. It centers around two characters, Ryu and Ken (the two main characters from the original Street Fighter), facing the evil villain M. Bison (Vega in the Japanese... hadoken" attack, usable once a day, is powered by For the 1960s band, see Love (band). The term is also used in tennis. True Love Love has many meanings in English. It can mean an intense feeling of affection, an emotion or emotional state. In ordinary use, it usually refers to interpersonal love. Love is one of the most... love; specifically, it drains love from the universe when used; Black Mage claims the Divorce or dissolution of marriage is the ending of a marriage, which can be contrasted with an annulment which is a declaration that a marriage is void, though the effects of marriage may be recognized in such unions, such as spousal support, child custody and distribution of property. In developed... divorce rates shoot up with every Hadoken cast.
• Thief, Clan Khee'Bler – A diabolically skilled thief and lawyer who is also Prince of Elfland. Early in the storyline he stole to fund a cure for his father's illness; once this was resolved, he continued stealing because he could. Being a prince, he has command of a group of law- Shinobi or Ninja (忍者, literally, One who is concealed) were agents of espionage and assassination, trained in the Japanese art of ninjutsu (roughly the art of stealth). Ninja, like samurai, followed their own special code of conduct, called ninpo. According to some modern practitioners of budo ninjutsu, the ninja... ninja which help him enforce the various binding contracts he has over the team.
• Red Mage – Second name undisclosed, this character fully understands he is in a stat-based RPG, and acts accordingly and fully within the rules of such reality, often to the continued befuddlement of the team. The strategist of the group, his plans often fail horribly due to the general laws of physics and other people. Red Mage's special talent is manipulating his stats at a moment's notice, through his character sheet. Whether these actually do anything, or whether he is simply scribbling notes on his character sheet is debatable.

Allies (kind of)

• White Mage – A priestess, she is on a mission to help the Light Warriors succeed, apparently to accomplish her Destiny concerns the fixed natural order of the universe. It is the invincible necessity to which even the gods must accede, as the Sibyl of Delphi confessed. Destiny is fate, personified in Greek culture by the three Moirae (called the Parcae by the Romans), with a Nordic counterpart in the... destiny. There is ongoing tension with Black Mage's lustful attraction to her, and her prompt responses (often with her hammer), although it may be revealed that he cannot control himself. She was sent to the beginning of time by Sarda the Sage and inadvertently created the universe. Currently, she is struggling to reconcile her newfound dietyhood with her religious beliefs.
• Black Belt – A martial artist, he is capable of defying the laws of physics by misunderstanding them, leading to getting lost while walking down a straight corridor by warping the fabric of space and thusly creating a clone with a 5-second time differential. Assigned to guard White Mage on her mission, and killed when ordered to attack Kary, the Fiend of Fire. According to Brian, he is permanently dead, much to the dismay/denial of the character's fans.
• King Steve – The King of Corneria, the father of Princess Sara, and a lunatic who rules his country as a capricious despot out of pure madness, though he's more a simpleton than anything else. Among other things, he's devastated his country in an attempt to drill for mana (regardless of the fact that you can't find mana that way), issued laws preventing anyone from criticizing his perfect rule, and had babies skinned in order to make leather for his shoes. He was the one who first recruited the Light Warriors, although his original plan was simply to send every applicant into the dangerous wilds to be slaughtered, with the survivors being the "true" Light Warriors. He was tricked by Black Mage into appointing the group with four recently-removed lightbulbs, being told that they were "hot with destiny!", but that their destiny was cooling off quickly.
• Matoya – Blind witch, she sends the Light Warriors on a A Side-quest, in the context of an RPG (Role-playing Game), is an adventure secondary to the main objective of the game. Side quests are typically optional and are useful in gaining rare items or experience. ... side-quest to regain her Seeing Orb and feeds them poisoned cookies to ensure they do, promising them an antidote if they return with it; beforehand, she grants Fighter the Armoire of Invincibility, due to a mishearing.
• Sarda – Omnipotent wizard and A wizard did it is a phrase used to denote a suspiciously evasive answer to an inqury, usually with the implication the question is either being purposely avoided or is in fact silly or overthought. The phrase, like AYBABTU, was widely propagated through Internet message boards, frequently as a catch... the Wizard Who Did It; accidentally sent White Mage to the beginning of the universe, stopped time, and unsuccessfuly spent 734 years trying to teach Black Mage the concept of "self-sacrifice."
• The "Real" Light Warriors – Made up of a Knight, a Red Wizard, a White Wizard and a Ninja (one of whom is named Barry). These four warriors were apparently supposed to be the real Light Warriors of Destiny, as each possesses an actual Light Orb. They got passed over for the job by King Steve however, because their orbs weren't "even lukewarm with destiny," unlike Black Mage's lightbulbs. Since then they've always been one step behind the heroes. Recently, the Light Warriors stole their boat, leaving them stranded on a lifeless ice sheet.

The Dark Warriors

• Garland – First villain faced by the Light Warriors; is not very self-confident, and overanxious to please and serve his supposed "enemies"; he had to be assisted by Evil Princess Sara, the other side of the princess who he had kidnapped. After his first failed encounter with the Light Warriors, he formed the Dark Warriors and began a propaganda campaign against the Light Warriors. Garland is currently wrestling with trying to control his various phobias concerning forest imps, the weakest creatures in the world. Though therapy has convinced him that forest imps do not exist, the beasts still secretly torment him.
• Bikke – The pirate captain who attacked Pravoka, and a very cheap man, having killed his crew by feeding them nothing but Cheetos until they succumbed to scurvy, then surrendered his poorly maintained ship to the Light Warriors and spent the saved money gambling. Second to join the Dark Warriors, he desires to be called "the Claw", despite having two functional hands. Despite being a captain, he cannot swim and sinks like a rock.
• Drizz'l – A Dark Elf, he is a sword master equal to Fighter, fighting him to a standstill. He trained and controlled the spiders of the Marsh Swamp (including the deadly camel spider, which sent Fighter into hysterics), and was the third to join the Dark Warriors after being mauled and left for dead by the Light Warriors, and considers himself the most intelligent one. He is also a parody in name of fictional dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden. His swords were stolen by Fighter, and named Slashy and Stabby. They would later be used for Fighter's sword-chucks.
• Vilbert the Vampire – A This article is about the contemporary goth subculture. For the Germanic peoples, see the Goths. Goth is a modern subculture that gained visibility during the early 1980s within the gothic rock scene, a sub-genre of post punk, and continues to this day. It is associated with gothic tastes in... goth vampire and final member of the Dark Warriors. He is equal to Red Mage in role-playing intensity, although he prefers live-action roleplaying, as compared to RM's stat-based lifestyle. After being somehow resurrected from having the Armoire of Invincibility driven through his heart ("The mightiest stake in all the land!"), he was invited by Garland to join the Dark Warriors.

Enemies

• Evil Princess Sara – The other side of Princess Sara; sharp, assertive, and very short-tempered, she is a sword-master and the grudging assistant of Garland until his defeat, after which she returned to Corneria and her father. Evil Princess Sara also runs an infrequently updated advice column.
• King Astos of the Dark Elves – Father of D'rizzl, tried to steal Elfish throne by poisoning Thief's father and bribing the doctor to hide the truth; died of a heart attack due to a pre-battle taunt by Black Mage ("Astos? Mo' like your ASS is TOAST!")
• Lich King – Lord of Death, Earth Fiend, holder of the Earth Orb, and Father of Vilbert; killed Black Mage and was later dragged into Hell because of it.
• Kary – six-armed, psychotic half-snake/half-woman, blade master/pyromancer, Fire Fiend and holder of Fire Orb; killed Black Belt and was afterwards stuffed in a Bag of Holding, completely frozen, and then shattered.
• Mrr'grrt– An evil Piscodemon.
• Lzh'lhe– Another evil Piscodemon. They all have tea parties.

External links

• 8-Bit Theater website (http://www.nuklearpower.com/index.php)