Console Sans is a typeface created with emulator frontends in mind. It's designed to replicate the look and feel of the fonts used in Nintendo's home consoles, but updated for modern interfaces to be legible and functional.
Design and Features
Based on the originals
Console Sans mimics the look and feel of two of Nintendo's go-to UI typefaces directly: FOT-RodinNTLG (used from the Gamecube to the Wii U) and A-OTF UD Shin Go (used from the Switch onwards). The best features of both typefaces were combined and harmonzied into Console Sans, whose metrics are based off Rodin directly.
Make it your own
Console Sans comes with a few stylistic features to play around with, the most prominent being a hyperlegible set (inspired by Atkinson Hyperlegible) with raised ascenders and more disambiguous letterforms.
A numbers-only sidekick
Console Sans has a peculiar but useful partner, Console Sans Ext. With a clean and simplistic design for displaying numerical values, it pairs perfectly with Console Sans to display info like the date and time (as seen in the navbar) or score and point counters.
Built-in button prompts
The feature attraction of Console Sans is built-in button prompts. Using the power of OpenType, button symbols can be queued up like Discord emojis, turning {btn_b} into {btn_b}, saving tons of work on needing to manually make button icons.
A full guide on how to use the button prompts can be found in the Symbol Index.
It's a freebie!!
Console Sans is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, meaning it's 100% free to use, modify, and redistribute regardless of the project.
Plans for the Future
At the moment, Console Sans is rather small, with six styles containing the bare minimum GF Latin Kernel character set. But if the demand is high, I have plans for expansion. Although, you can help by forking the project on Github.
Soon to come:
- Bigger character set, supporting many Latin languages.
- Even more buttons, keyboard keys and possibly support for Nerd Fonts to increase the icon range.