Thread by @mattgemmell

Every year or two I remember what’s probably the most scarily/stunningly impressive linguistic feat I’ve ever seen. Every time, I think I must be mistaken, then I read the thing, and I just shake my head in disbelief. It’s been twenty years. Let me tell you about it.

Two of the things I like most are writing and video games. I especially like reading things people have written about games, which includes game guides. The most amazing thing I’ve ever read is a guide to the SNES game Super Metroid. Stay with me here, ok?

The guide is pretty good, and complete. There are plenty of spelling errors, but nothing that gets in the way. The content isn’t the thing, though. That’s not what makes it unbelievable. And 99.99% of people would look at it and never even see or understand the genius/madness.

I’ll link to it now. You can have a look. But come back to this tweet thread so I can explain. Here it is: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/snes/588741-su…

Lots of game guides are in plain text, by the way, like this one. No fancy formatting. That’s a clue. When it hits you, I think you’ll remember it always. You don’t have to scroll down at all in the guide, by the way. It’s everywhere. Explanation starts in next tweet.

See how virtually all the paragraphs are like solid blocks on their left and right edges? In typography that’s called “fully justified”. In word processors etc, it’s accomplished by evenly distributing extra spacing throughout lines of text, and also by hyphenation.

But in that guide, it’s not done with hyphenation or variable spacing. It’s monospaced text in a monospaced font.

It’s a plain text complete guide to Super Metroid, which is _manually_ fully justified… via word choice.

Just because the author could.

Kaboom.

You couldn’t produce the required diligence for that feat, on that scale, just as a prank or an easter egg, or on a whim. You are looking at the work of a Mozart. One who thinks that the word ‘missiles’ is spelled “missles”, but a Mozart nonetheless. Gives me chills every time.

The best, most delicious part is that untold thousands (tens of? hundreds of?) of people will have read it during the past two decades, and NONE OF THEM CAN SEE IT! It’s right there in plain sight, but invisible to almost everyone. I just find it so thrilling.

The thrilling thing is that life is packed with that stuff. Genius and art and ludicrous feats that we don’t see because we don’t pay attention, or don’t have the domain knowledge. A guide for Super Metroid, of all things! I hope it lifts your heart as it always does mine. 🤩