Horizon Wave
Capturing the aesthetics of 7th and 8th generation of Nintendo Consoles!
Summary
Horizon Wave is a project that aims to replicate the aesthetics and visual environment of the 7th and 8th generation of Nintendo consoles such as the Nintendo DS, DSi, 3DS, Wii, and Wii U. This was done through the construction of a desktop theme engine that had support for custom viewport overlays which video games could be run through. This gave the end user the ability to play video games with the looks and sounds of consoles such as the Nintendo Wii. Said games could range from Steam titles to MAME arcade titles and anything in-between that a PC can run. All of the components of this project can be viewed through the Horizon Wave YouTube Playlist where Arcmaevotix is home to the original versions and Nehrpsyznet is home to the remade versions.
Process
Horizon Wave is one of the longer legacy projects of the exhibitions and is the direct successor to Aurora Carpet, the original version of the desktop theme engine project. The project got its start around 2017 shortly after the Nintendo Switch was released. The goal was to replicate the interface experience of a game console within the environment of a PC operating system such as Windows. This was achieved primarily by leveraging all of the features and avenues of customization that the Windows OS offers natively with some light third party support being added in later for additional effects and functions. Production of the project started as a one time experiment that was existing more as a proof of concept than anything else. Eventually the project kept growing and the package became more robust and refined as time passed on. By the time that Aurora Carpet has transformed into Horizon Wave around the turn of the decade, Horizon Wave TV (the feature that largely inspired the name change) came into production and served the purpose of offering custom overlays and viewport frames that mimicked the aesthetic of the Nintendo Wii and Wii U. The name, Horizon Wave TV, was directly inspired by the replay sharing feature of Mario Kart 8 known as Mario Kart TV. By 2023 Horizon Wave was sporting its second version and by the end of 2024 it was sitting at version 2.5 with a sizable amount of features and customization options.
Reflection
Horizon Wave, which now is known as Prisxane, helped reinforce a lot of my skills in relation to UI / UX design and graphic design. Building various docks, icon libraries, color scheme packs, and more demanded me to brush up on my studies of graphic design, interface design, product marketing, product design, and a few other areas of interest. Despite Horizon Wave not being the oldest project within the exhibition, it has been one of the most impactful in my career as an Experiential Multimedia Design Developer since it has allowed me to sharpen my skills in so many different departments.