Simply the Best

image from IC14259379/TinkerCAD

I'd like to offer a late but nevertheless heartfelt toast to Hiroshi Ono, who recently died of unspecified causes. Known affectionately in his native Japan as "Mr. Dot-Man," Ono created the bulk of the sprites in Namco's most memorable arcade games. Who gave the world Goro and the Mewkies, the gang of felonious felines from Mappy? Ono did! Who drew each frame of your ship spinning wildly as it's caught by the enemy forces in Galaga, without the benefit of hardware scaling or rotation? Ono did! Who faithfully recreated the cast of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Pac-Man in the side-scrolling action game Pac-Land? Ono did! Who used a mirror to project video game spirits inside a toy mansion, resulting in the hauntingly tangible light gun shooter Golly! Ghost!? You'd better believe it was Hiroshi Ono, shown here dressed in his best Rick Sanchez cosplay.

image from Playstation Lifestyle

Ono's sprite work ranks up there as some of the absolute best from the arcade industry's 8-bit era. Only Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto was as talented, but he was nowhere near as prolific. As you'll note from this memorial on Retronauts, Ono did the artwork for a dozen different arcade titles... really important arcade releases like Pole Position and Xevious and Dig Dug, that were the keystones for Namco's long-term success as a video game developer. 

The polished artwork that reached beyond the limitations of early 1980s technology was a huge part of the appeal of these games, and it's doubtful that they'd be as captivating without their fiery explosions, their screen-filling, bullet-spewing battleships, and the endearing way those subterranean monsters get flattened under rocks, or filled to bursting with an air hose. (I don't know how he managed this, but those Pookas and Fygars just die so adorably.)

So I guess what I'm saying is this... thank you, Hiroshi Ono, for forty years of putting your dots in all the right places.