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[CopperPuppy]

Thread was over before it started.

Holy shit, OP. That font is unreal.

 

[Roldan]

Final Fantasy mobile remakes. Looks very amateurish and cheap.

so are my eyes

 

[black070]

 

[MrBadger]

Megaman X iOS seriously looks dreadful

The menus and stuff in the Five Nights at Freddy's games have always looked very amateur to me as well.

 

[Nazo]

I remember the font for Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts was pretty bad, It was basically comic sans at the smallest possible size.

Dead Rising 1 was not too great either if I'm remembering correctly.

 

[Übermatik]

This is just awful design in general.

 

[nillah]

Saturday Morning Cartoon font

BIG fan of the font in Bioware games

 

[data]

What does it look like in the JPN version? for comparison?

 

[rhandino]

Tales of Symphonia

nah that font is hideous. which font? all of them.

I'm kind of triggered because I absolutely adore the menus on the XIII series because they look so stylish and it's incredible functional and the fonts were very readable in my old TV.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Revolting. I couldn't tell you what I think of the fonts because I can't bear to look at any screenshots of that game's menus for any length of time

 

[Prelude.]

What does it look like in the JPN version? for comparison?

 

[super-famicom]

Dammit, I want to buy Stranger of Sword City but that font looks like shit.

 

[mushrambio]

Loved the game, but Dark Cloud's text was awful.

 

[Not_Mario]

Not the look, but the size:

I really like the font they chose for the localization but sometime it is so small that it feels like at a 720p resolution some letters get all smeared and hard to read. This happens mostly at the top right corner where it says your location.

 

[ShadowElliot]

Modern Warfare 2 was a nightmare with so many fonts being used on the hud.

Time for this image to be brought back!

 

[Pyrrhus]

The SNES version of Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen had a perfectly acceptable sans serif font with upper and lowercase characters and proportional width spacing. In addition to better music and graphics, the PS1 version gave us horrendous loading time and this fucking gem of a display font.

They used this for dialogue and all messages on the main screen. I can't even fathom what they were thinking here.

 

[Herne]

The font in most of the AD&D Goldbox games was pretty difficult to read. I do find it dramatically easier on the eyes using an HQ upscaler, though it's still pretty gnarly. All caps and too much pizzazz. I suggest actually clicking the first image to get a full-sized view, since the garishness of it is minimized when scaled down and filtered.

Ah, the good old SSI AD&D games. It's not a great font, but it certainly is readable. I don't remember having problems with it on my C64, and that ran at a much lower 320*200 at four colours, or even 160*200 with sixteen colours most of the time.

 

[Aeana]

Tales of Symphonia

Shadow Hearts

Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song

Breath of Fire 4

Brave Story

Me crying

 

[Ludger Kresnik]

The Hyperdimension Neptunia games on PS3 had some pretty terrible fonts. mk2 especially.

 

[2+2=5]

I've seen some hideous fonts in games throughout my years, specially for japanese games that have been localized, but today I've found one that really grinded my gears:

The game is Stranger of Sword City, for the Vita. It's coming out March 2016 and it's been one of my most anticipated games, but when I saw that font... Who thought that was a good idea?

Honestly i like it, it's weird and unique hence it fits the artstyle imo, especially the first screen, i imagine that character with the mask to have a weird way of talking reflected by the font.

 

[boyshine]

I hate how so many Japanese games use Times New Roman for their menus.

Japanese games tend to use a ridiculous number of different fonts at dofferent sizes on intrusive and overbearing UI's. Generalising here though.

Most of the japanese games have awful fonts. (MGS, FF etc.)

I've been thinking about this, if I were to make a game for Japan I would have no clue as to what style of text/font would be best suited for the game. I guess japanese developers have a similar challenge. Letter spacing seem to be the biggest problem. Lots of games with fixed width text, which does not look good.

 

[Shin-Ra]

"FAST GLIDE"

I really hate this font.

Japanese developers love this font.

 

[JaseMath]

Chrono Trigger DS had terrible UI issues because of the font.

Just another reason that the SNES OG cart is the best.

 

[cyress8]

.

EDIT:Beaten

Forgot the Moutain Dew garbage can.

 

[Aeana]

I hate how so many Japanese games use Times New Roman for their menus.

Can you name any? I can't think of a single one.

 

[Pyrrhus]

Tales of Symphonia

While I'm at it, what was the name of this hellbeast of a font and why did second stringers like it so much in the early aughts?

"FAST GLIDE"

I really hate this font.

Japanese developers love this font.

Wind Waker put this ridiculous thing everywhere, didn't it?

 

[Aeana]

Chrono Trigger DS had terrible UI issues because of the font.

Just another reason that the SNES OG cart is the best.

I hacked the game to fix that font because I hated it so much.

 

[VanquishUK]

.

EDIT:Beaten

LOL do they ever reuse a font?

For me it has to be almost every Japanese game I've played. They always manage to find the worst possible font.

 

[Coulis]

Comic Sans in XIII. At least it was fitting!

 

[Business]

God of War is pretty bad.

 

[Aeana]

While I'm at it, what was the name of this hellbeast of a font and why did second stringers like it so much in the early aughts?

It's called Fuuuntai.

 

[data]

why is there so much space between the characters.....

 

[The_Hitcher89]

Modern Warfare 2 was a nightmare with so many fonts being used on the hud.

Its funny, when I see a screenshot of it now its pretty overbearing how crammed the HUD is with all kinds of different information, all using different fonts.

But I played it for hundreds of hours, and never noticed it at the time. Something about those games that just crawls into your limbic system and makes you blind to what you'd assume would be an information overload.

In fact, I'd go so far as to call it a genius piece of game/UI design. It flows so quickly, and is presented so readily, that you get all the information you want and need when you want and need it, without even noticing that it is taking up a lot of the screen and is a big distraction when you see it in still shots rather than playing it.

 

[Phediuk]

Why is it that Japanese games always use such unusual fonts?

Like, you can instantly tell if a game's Japanese or not just by looking at some text.

 

[Matush]

Modern Warfare 2 was a nightmare with so many fonts being used on the hud.

 

[Aeana]

why is there so much space between the characters.....

It's monospaced... which is something that hasn't been particularly common in Japanese games since the GBA.

 

[c0de]

The text in Shenmue looks like a default western alphabet for many Japanese companies to use.

 

[Edwards_Omatic]

I wish every game gave you the option to turn all text into comic sans ...
Come on devs step up, make it happen.

 

[Aeana]

Why is it that Japanese games always use such unusual fonts?

Like, you can instantly tell if a game's Japanese or not just by looking at some text.

They often use the alphabet characters from Japanese fonts, which is why you wouldn't see them normally.

 

[DoctorFling]

I hate the Fallout 4 font, can't explain why.

 

[Seda]

Wild Arms 2

This would be my pick.

 

[Phediuk]

They often use the alphabet characters from Japanese fonts, which is why you wouldn't see them normally.

Ah ha.

 

[massoluk]

Not the look, but the size:

Even a bit more ridiculous is that they put in gamepad functionality in there but the decision makers didn't stop to think "You know this is borderline illegible when playing on the gamepad."

 

[Bjoern the Smexy]

Not the look, but the size:

I second this.
75% of the text is close to unreadable when played on the Wii U Gamepad. That alone should've been a sign to Nintendo's QA that they have to make the text bigger.
Even when played on the TV the text is still almost too small to make out when not sitting at most half a meter in front of it.

EDIT: Hell yeah, massoluk!

EDIT2:

Tales of Symphonia

Interesting to see that the PAL version had a different font from the US version:

Still not the best but at least more readable than the US font.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

Final Fantasy mobile remakes. Looks very amateurish and cheap.

Fits everything else about those mobile remakes

 

[CecilRousso]

Mount&Blade - the thread.

The game is fun, but the UI is really really ugly. I do hope it gets some serious improvements in the sequel.

 

[whiteninja]

Ive always hated the font they used in Wild Arms 2. Kept hoping someone would come out with a font patch but alas it never happened.

 

[Sami+]

Sonic Adventure 2's infamous Comic Sans font in the Dreamcast and Gamecube versions.

They changed it for the HD port.

Came to post this. lol, fucking Comic Sans of all things, they went with Comic Sans. 😂

 

[Hibiki Kurosawa]

Oh god, yeah that's hideous font, alright.

 

[Steel]

Mount&Blade - the thread.

The game is fun, but EVERYTHING is really really ugly. I do hope it gets some serious improvements in the sequel.

Fixed.

Spoiler

Seriously, I love the game to death, but there's not a single thing I can call pretty in it.

That being said, Bannerlord seems to improve the visuals a lot.