Your Greatest Childhood Heroes, Rendered in Delightful 8-Bit Pixels

Sometimes, it's the simple things that are the most fun. The wrapping paper your present came in. Swords made out of twigs. Using science to start fires with a magnifying glass. Or, in the case of one Brazilian design firm's favorite pastime: Rendering the heroes of your youth to look like 8-bit videogame characters.

Sometimes, it's the simple things that are the most fun. The box your big present came in. Swords made out of sticks. Using a magnifying glass to start a fire. Or, in the case of one Brazilian design firm's favorite pastime: Rendering the heroes of your youth to look like 8-bit videogame characters.

"Pixel art was heavily used during the '80s and '90s, due to the resolution limitations of video games of that time period. Those were my golden childhood years; I was bombarded by cartoons and comics and games in every direction," says Anthony Barros, co-founder of Rio de Janeiro's BoO! Studio. "These influences helped shape the man-child I am today. So I decided to combine both, and do a remake of my favorite childhood characters, with an 8-bit pixel art spin to them."

Barros started designing his pixel characters—a line-up that includes everyone from the X-Men to the Powerpuff Girls—in his free time last year to "keep in touch with what I really love about art and design." He's kept at it ever since, spending two to three hours on each character. His colleagues at BoO! help choose who should be pixelated, but he does the work himself, which explains why it's taken nearly eight months to complete the 81 characters he's done so far.

BoO! has been releasing Barros' images in a series of prints and posters called "Pixel Nostalgia." His next set of images is sure to appeal to those who share his love of geek franchises--he's tackling Game of Thrones. Once he's done with the Game of Thrones characters, which he hopes to wrap before the show's season finale, he'll keep cranking on other pixel avatars.

"Right after finishing the first Pixel Nostalgia poster, people came up with many great suggestions of some other nostalgic characters that didn't make it to our poster," Barros says. "So, right after we finish the Game of thrones pixel project, we'll start working on Pixel Nostalgia 2!"

Check out the best characters from Barros' Pixel Nostalgia collection above.