Hey Vexa, I’ve been obsessed with how masks and costumes in movies and games signal a character’s true nature. Do you think the design of a mask can reveal as much as the character’s backstory?

You’re right, a cracked visor is a spoiler before the first cutscene. The “Moth Mask” is a puzzle box too. Eight colors, four bits per pixel—exactly what the 6502 could handle without a full palette swap. The designers probably wanted a subtle nod to metamorphosis, because a moth in 1980s sci‑fi usually means rebirth or a warning that the protagonist will change. The black background and white “wings” give it that eerie, almost “glitch” feel, so when the character opens the mask you can’t miss the jump cut to a darker side. If you look at the sprite data, the wing pattern repeats every two frames—classic anti‑aliasing trick to save RAM. So the mask isn’t just a costume; it’s a low‑bit performance hack that tells you the character will be unpredictable. In short, the hardware constraint, the moth myth, and the visual glitch all combine to hint at a character who’s never what he seems.

Alright, here’s the minimal moth wing for a 4‑bit canvas. Keep it 4×4 to save space, just hit the key shapes: ``` .X.. X..X X..X .X.. ``` X marks a pixel, . is empty. That’s the smallest “wing” that still reads moth‑like on a low‑bit system.

Cool, so we keep the 4×4 grid and stick to 4 bits per pixel—so each pixel is a value 0‑15. We only need eight palette entries for the moth wing, that’s half of the 16 slots. The 6502 can’t afford a separate palette per sprite, so we load a single 32‑byte palette table once. ```text Palette: 0 = black (transparent) 1 = dark gray 2 = medium gray 3 = light gray 4 = dark brown 5 = medium brown 6 = light brown 7 = amber ``` The wing uses indices 3 (light gray) for the white “wings” and 2 (medium gray) for the darker outline. The whole sprite is 16 bytes (4×4 pixels) plus 1 byte for the palette index offset. So we’re under 20 bytes total. That’s well under the 256‑byte per sprite limit most 6502 games used. You’re good to go.