Black and grey traditional flash sheet on a wooden table, showing video game themed designs including a castle, bomb, ghost, shy guy, tombstone reading GAME OVER and a pin-up figure.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Video game themed flash sheet in black and grey

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A flash sheet of video game inspired designs drawn with bold black outlines and solid black fills. The designs include a burning castle, a bomb character, a ghost with a banner reading BOO, a shy guy with a banner reading DIE, a skeletal figure beside a tombstone reading GAME OVER, a pin-up figure and small flowers. The sheet is shown in greyscale on a white page resting on a dark wooden surface, with the designs spaced evenly across the page.

Traditional Castle Ghost Tombstone Skeleton Pin-up Flower Banner Video game Flash sheet

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Wren,

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The cabinet came up the canal on a salvage barge yesterday, lashed under a tarpaulin like something nobody wanted to claim. Mr Adeyemi paid two tins of lentils for it and a promise to fix the speakers, which I have not yet done, so you will have to imagine the noise. The side art has worn to ghosts. A castle that used to burn in bright orange has faded to a pale smear, and a little round bomb with feet has lost one eye to a thumb.

I spent the first night with a soldering iron and a bowl of cold tea, scrubbing the glass until the attract screen came up. It is the same screen we played at the Sixpenny Arcade, the one where a shy fellow in a hood holds out his hands as if begging you to stop. Beneath him sits a stone reading GAME OVER, and a skeleton leans on it as though he has all the time in the world. Every time the loop restarts, I half expect him to wink at me.

I had forgotten how badly the ghosts in this thing want you to stand still. They shout BOO, hide their faces when you look at them, then slip behind you the moment you turn away. Mr Adeyemi says that is the whole game. You turn back, they hide, you turn back.

Last night the cabinet finally woke. The screen flickered, the little plumber in his red cap bounced onto the first floor, and I laughed out loud, alone in the damp kitchen, because I had not heard a sound like that since you left. Come and see it when the water drops. Bring your own coins. The machine takes anything that clinks.

Love, Tomas