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MiSTiGRiS 2026
Theme: the only theme is that there is no theme!
Release date: 08/29/2026
And here we are, another August, and with it, another unthemed Mistigris
underground computer artpack! Cthulu got lucky this year and managed to
somehow avoid overwriting his infofile notes with the announcement for his
alternative accordion festival, so all of the mad wisdoms being dropped here
are going to be fresh, even if not necessarily particularly phresh.
We are all collectively very taken with the concept of a themed artpack, a
collection created by a community deliberately moving in the same direction
together. Its inspiring! But what do you do when your creators stubbornly
shoot off in their own direction, working on personal projects and only
travelling where their weird muses take them? Well, thats what unthemed
artpacks are for. Granted, prior to the Blocktronics era, practically every
artpack was unthemed, so its not like were letting down the tradition. If
you go through the appropriate mental contortions, the scattered passion
projects absence of a theme can in fact be the theme, one of chaos and
randomness! Not much of a theme, granted. Maybe more of an anti-theme.
In a nutshell, we are here before you to showcase the work the members of our
community are producing, not to divert and derail them into kissing the ring
of our curatorial genius while stifling their dreams. So lets let them have
a little air and enjoy things!
So yes, the overarching theme of this collection is nothing more than heres
something we thought it might be fun to make. The only way to find out for
sure is to go ahead and do it! Zen Render, for instance, has finally gone
ahead and done it, contributing a moody soundscape made with Nouscentric
after sitting on the sidelines for over 30 years. j33p33, also, suddenly
remembered that it can be fun to create. Its been a very long time and were
very glad that he remembered!
One of the fun things we platform here are Blippypixel going on another
graffiti safari in London and stumbling across an eclipse along the way.
Cthulu felt that Mist had been getting a little alienated from its intensely
90s area code 604 roots, so he made an effort to enshrine some specifically
local pheonomena that his compatriots would instantly appreciate and which the
rest of you, he hopes, will good-naturedly humour. TeletextR shares two
teletext screens on an intensely thematic wavelength, celebrating the Clapton
electoral campaign of Count Binface. Zeus IIs theme is assorted screens he
has been commissioned to draw for BBSes and door games, oddly frequently ones
on an anime theme. And VileRs annual piece, though singular, is entirely
concerned with variations on a theme, including references to clocks and
timepieces found in over a dozen classic video games. You are not going to get
them all!
Also, after all this time you might think you know what to expect coming out of
The Green Herring, but this month we collectively learn that they make vintage
computer music, too! Is there nothing this emerald fish cant do? As often
occurs during unthemed artpacks, we also feature a generous helping of tunes
by Melodia. In all, we offer over three quarters of an hour of music here!
Returning to shooting off in their own direction, we simply must encourage
you to also go check out Mozzs recent solo artpack! He shares a handful of
works in this collection but they are just warming you up for the MOZZ-01
ASCII art collection, released earlier this month.
Many thanks to Darokin for drawing us the swell FILEID.DIZ used in this
collection, and thank you to CoaXCable for the incredible fluffy pink
infofile header were using here. What on earth is its significance? We
really cant presume to speculate!
Thats all for now, but well catch you at the next artpack!