December 2025 sees the fifth year of my Advent of Fonts project where I published a 24-day advent calendar of 8x8 pixel on Mastodon.
Many will be original designs or significantly-extended and make it into my ZX Origins but the straight ports and conversions are listed here as they are not part of that collection.
Those ports needed a home, so as usual they are presented here.
- Day Out
- Disney's Mulan (Gameboy)
- Kilonova
- A Rock Star Ate My Hamster
- Clear Plan
- Great Giana Sisters (C64)
- Expedition
- Robocop (Arcade)
- Magchrome
- Hevetica9 (GEOS)
- Saucer
- The Muncher (ZX)
- Bubble 07
- Typewriter (GEOS)
- Forwardslash
- Stop (GEOS)
- Crossed
- Dan Dare (ZX)
- Crossed
- Street Rod 2
- ZX Space Highway
- Slaine
- NLQ
- The Untouchables (ZX)
- Pixelbricks
Day 2 - Disney's Mulan (Gameboy)
This brush font taken from Disney's Mulan on the Gameboy exudes character with its rough brush strokes.
Originally only upper-case I extended this with my own lower-case attempt and missing symbols!
Day 4 - A Rock Star Ate My Hamster
The side-scroller Leander from Psygnosis bears more than a resemblance to their Shadow of the Beast and while the in-game fonts are okay it's the title font that really stands out with it's stylish curves and serif-induced strokes.
Here's a conversion of the title font with some extra glyphs to round it off.
Download A Rock Star Ate My Hamster font
Day 6 - Great Giana Sisters (C64)
Tempted by the success of Super Mario Bros Rainbow Arts comissioned Armin Gessert & Manfred Trenz to create a Mario-like game.
The result was Great Giana Sisters which although similar to Mario had different enemies, characters, maps & powerups.
It was not different enough for Nintendo...
I've added my own interpretation of a lower case to round it off again.
Download Great Giana Sisters (C64) font
Day 8 - Robocop (Arcade)
Data East's 1988 side-scrolling shoot-em-up had some reasonable home conversions but only the arcade featured this font (and a couple of others)
Stark, angular and a little rough it embodies the distopian corporate decay rather well and unusually (for an arcade font) includes lower-case!
Download Robocop (Arcade) font
Day 10 - Helvetica9 (GEOS)
This 9 point - presumably unofficial version - was found in Glenn Holmer's GEOS font catalog PDF likely from one of the many disks he generates that from. (There are also larger sizes but they don't fit in 8x8)
Obviously designed as proportional typeface the screenshots don't quite do it justice!
The FZX file included in the ZIP has a proportional variant.
Download Helvetica9 (GEOS) font
Day 12 - The Muncher (ZX)
Beam Software mostly remembered for The Hobbit and Way of the Exploding Fist but back in 1988 they also released a curious tie-in...
The Mucher is an arcade city-destroying romp featuring the T-Rex from ... The Chewits Adverts (a UK sweet/candy) .
The game was colorful and quite but importantly for us the Speccy version features a unique and on-point font!
Download The Muncher (ZX) font
Day 14 - Typewriter (GEOS)
Another lost gem found among the sectors of floppy discs for GEOS this American Typewriter inspired 8x8 oozes character and pushes the pixels to the very boundary of the box.
If you use this one at least an extra pixel or two of vertical space between rows would be advised!
Download Typewriter (GEOS) font
Day 16 - Stop (GEOS)
My first encounter with this typeface was probably Datel (of Action Replay fame) ads in Crash and Your Sinclair but it actually goes back to 1970 and was really made popular by Letraset.
I've done a couple of Stop-like fonts (including one called Datel Tribute) before but this one, recovered from GEOS floppies by way of a PDF, is a much more faithful adaptation!
Day 18 - Dan Dare (ZX)
A regular strip in British comic The Eagle, this brave "Pilot of the Future" is usually battling evil Mekon - a green alien with a giant head.
The game involves exploring a space station, opening doors, battling enemies and solving puzzles.
Importantly for us is the dashing comic-book style font which I've extended here with small-caps for the lower-case and additional symbols.
Day 20 - Street Rod 2
This 1991 DOS and Amiga game sees you attempting to acquire and then modify 1960s street hot rods and race them with plenty of engine tuning and under-the-hoot changes.
The font is a clean, easy-to-read one that is a little unusual in that it is both narrow and features a light touch of serifs for a bit of class.
Unlike most games of that time which are made available online in a legally gray state of "abandonware", an enterprising freelancer called Marco Kleijer acquired the copyrights simply to make them freely available online again.
You can find the games and plenty of information over at https://www.streetrodonline.com/
Day 22 - Slaine
Martech Games' 1987 release takes the 2000 AD comic character Slaine on a tricky-to-play atmospheric adventure.
The game actually features three fonts - a sharp digital one on the title screen, a small one for dialog and an old-style one used for the main interface which I've converted here.
The same in-game fonts were used on the CPC, C64 and ZX versions.
Day 24 - The Untouchables (ZX)
Ocean gave us this 1920s prohibition romp based on the star-studded movie of the same name in 1989.
Interesting for us are the two art deco fonts - this one being the 8x8 that uses every available pixel.
I've added a lower-case in the same style and created a "Revised" version that applies the same treatment to the numerics & symbols.
Pictured here on the ZX Spectrum (also uses on the CPC and C64 I believe - the Amiga and ST used a more ornate large-font and totally different small font).
Well I've converted it and that 16x16 is now over at FontStruct as my pipeline and system is only setup for 8x8's.
Download The Untouchables (ZX) font
