What Character Sets and File Formats Do Cava's Pixel Resources Fonts Include?

Updated

Cava's Pixel Resources fonts are expanded recreations of classic video game pixel fonts. Each font starts from the original game's pixel or bitmap design and adds common special characters, numbers, diacritic variants, and game-specific glyphs. The files ship in web-ready formats: TTF, OTF, EOT, WOFF, SVG, and CSS. Coverage varies by font—some include full Cyrillic and Japanese kana sets, while others are limited to Latin-based characters and symbols. Check the individual font page before committing to one for a project that needs non-Latin text.

What Every Font Includes

According to the site, the designer rebuilds fonts from old-school games and then expands each character set beyond what appeared on screen. The standard additions across the collection are:

  • Common special characters and punctuation
  • Numbers
  • Diacritic variants (for accented Latin letters)
  • Unique, game-specific glyphs
  • Webfont-ready files for use on a website

The fonts are recreations based on the original designers' pixel or bitmap work, not original type designs. The site states this directly, which matters if you need to credit or license the typeface for anything beyond personal use.

File Formats

Each font is distributed as a package containing:

Format Typical Use
TTF Desktop install, general design work
OTF Desktop install, print and design apps
EOT Legacy web font embedding (older Internet Explorer)
WOFF Modern web font embedding
SVG Web font embedding, some design tools
CSS Stylesheet to wire the webfont files into a page

Because CSS and WOFF/SVG files are included, you can drop a font into a retro-styled webpage without converting formats yourself. The site describes the files as "webfont-ready."

Character Coverage Varies by Font

Not every font has the same breadth. The Altima font, recreated from Final Fantasy Tactics (PlayStation, 1997), is the fullest example on the page:

  • 1,043 characters total
  • Complete Cyrillic base character set
  • Complete original Japanese hiragana and katakana sets (from the Japanese version of the game)
  • Additional special characters, zodiac signs, and unique glyphs
  • Proportional spacing, 16px base size, version 1.2

Other fonts, such as Arcology (from Shadowrun on SNES), are described as expanded with "countless additional special characters, diacritic variants, unique glyphs," but the page does not list Cyrillic or kana for them. Treat the Altima feature list as the exception rather than the rule.

How to Decide If a Font Fits Your Project

  1. Identify the scripts you need. If your text is Latin-only, most fonts in the collection will work. If you need Cyrillic or Japanese kana, start with Altima and verify the specific font page for others.
  2. Check the character count and base size. Altima lists 1,043 characters at a 16px base with proportional spacing. Smaller counts or fixed-width spacing may not suit dense UI text.
  3. Confirm the format you need. All packages include TTF, OTF, EOT, WOFF, SVG, and CSS, so desktop and web use are both covered.
  4. Review the license before use. The fonts are free under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Commercial use requires contacting the designer for a commercial license. If your project is commercial, plan for that step before building around a font.

Common Pitfalls

  • Assuming full Unicode coverage. The expanded sets are generous but font-specific. A font with rich Latin diacritics may still lack Cyrillic or kana.
  • Mixing pixel sizes. These are pixel fonts with defined base sizes (16px for Altima). Rendering them at non-multiples of the base size can blur or distort the pixel grid.
  • Skipping the license check. "Free" here means non-commercial with attribution and share-alike terms, not public domain. Commercial projects need a separate license from the designer.