When a game's display area doesn't fill the entire screen, the developers need to fill the remaining space with something. Unless they just go with black bars.
In the early days, it was not always possible to fill the screen with the action of the game. The main window had to be reduced in size, and something was needed to fill the extra space. In some cases, the best the programmers could come up with was to place the game logo and an abbreviated set of instructions in the remaining space. This was also common for ports to home systems of games designed for a tall screen.
During the 1990s and the 2000s, this was done for accessories that let players play handheld games on the TV screen, since the resolution of the handheld was much smaller than the resolution of the display. The Super Game Boy for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Game Boy Player for the Nintendo GameCube would both have a selection of pre-made borders, but the former would also theme designs for games made with such functionality in mind (potentially changing based on location or other factors). With the Nintendo DS's and Nintendo 3DS's touch screen and other gimmicks making such accessories impossible, or their aspect ratios also going widescreen like with the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita, or just straight-up hybrid consoles like the Nintendo Switch, doing so became pointless.
Today, this is frequently used for emulators and modern ports of older games and their systems, due to their 4:3 display areas not properly fitting on modern 16:9 displays. The same goes for 1-to-1 direct ports of vertically oriented phone games to other systems, as can sometimes be seen on for instance Apple Arcade. This often results in a pillarbox border surrounding the sides, mostly from left and right, but sometimes from above and below as well if the game fills the vertical space. The border usually incorporates some elements from the game, like the characters or locations, similar to a wallpaper. Developers usually offer players the option to scale the game to fit both the top and the bottom or just go widescreen, but as the aspect ratio change makes the game look distorted, many players consider it a suboptimal solution.
Note that this does not include cases where the developers put the stats, menu, and interface on the extra space (as is often done with vertical Shoot 'em Up games, where they're called Gadgets). This is purely about non-gameplay affecting decorations related to the game.
Examples:
- Steve Turner's 8-bit games Avalon, Dragontorc and Astroclone all have a 16-pixel border round the playing area. Avalon and Dragontorc fill this with fantasy-themed images, Astroclone with the game title and a relief design resembling circuitry.
- The Last Ninja (1987) is a corner case due to its functional border, showing status information to the bottom and right of the main game window. However, the bottom-right corner is a simple logo, replaced in the sequels to show the top of the ninja's head.
- The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening: Playing the DX version on the Super Game Boy (not an optimal way to play due to the Color Dungeon) gives the game a border that shows Koholint Island, the sea, and the sky.
- Bubble Bobble: Playing the Classic release on the Super Game Boy gives it a border filled with bricks, with the logo at the top as well as Bub and Bob on the sides.
- Dot Arcade: Each game has borders on the left and right for the leftover space that are meant to resemble retro arcade game designs (a knight on a snake for Mr. Snake, the character Speck for Dodge Club, and a race car with a pit girl for Rally Driver).
- Snake III: There's a leafy border around the gameplay window.
- MacVenture: The 8-Bit Adventure Anthology release of the games adds a border related to their setting on the sides (skeletons in the halls for Shadowgate, city buildings for Déjà Vu (1985), chapel walls and candelabras for Uninvited).
- Beyond Shadowgate (2024) follows suit, putting decorative borders on the sides that change to reflect what sort of area Del Thornburrow is currently exploring.
- Ghost Trick: Because the original game is on the Nintendo DS's 4:3 screen, the 2023 remaster adds decorative pillarbox backgrounds to the sides of the screen. Each side can be customized separately.
- Shuihuzhuan: Liangshan Yingxiong: In the initial version, the screen is badly compressed within a bronze Oriental-style frame
(with the stage's title written on top), probably due to it being a low-budget game. A re-release a year later removed the frame.
- Blackthorne: In the MS-DOS version of the game, the sprite and tile graphics were based on those used in the SNES versionnote , and had the same sizes as measured in pixels. However, whereas the SNES version ran using a screen resolution of 256 × 224, the MS-DOS version ran using a 320 × 240 screen resolution instead, leaving a thin border at the bottom of the screen and a much wider border at the right side of the screen.note The MS-DOS version displayed the item inventory within the right-side border and the name of the currently-selected item within the lower border, whereas the SNES version (which didn't have any on-screen borders) put the item inventory in a menu that was accessible by pressing the Select button but which was not visible the rest of the time.
- Arcana Heart 3 was one of the last fighting games designed for a 4:3 aspect ratio SD display. The PlayStation 3 releases added animated sidebars to preserve this aspect ratio when playing on a widescreen HD display, along with a trophy for seeing all possible variants of the sidebar animations. Averted in the eventual Steam release, which was instead rebalanced for widescreen play.
- Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior has decorative snakes on the left and right. The snake's heads are animated when the player takes a hit, and the rest of the top border has functional elements.
- Guilty Gear wasn't designed for a 16:9 aspect ratio until Xrd. Thus, ports of older entries to widescreen systems, such as the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita, and HD systems added decorative sidebars to keep the fighting in a 4:3 aspect ratio.
- Killer Instinct: Playing the Game Boy release on the Super Game Boy makes the border a purple void with Spinal in the top-left, Fulgore on the right, and Orchid in the bottom-left.
- Mortal Kombat 4: Playing the Game Boy release on the Super Game Boy puts four skulls on the sides and the game's logo at the top.
- Shaq Fu: Playing the Game Boy release on the Super Game Boy makes the border a Chinese dojo with the letter "S" on top.
- Street Fighter II: Playing the Game Boy release on the Super Game Boy makes the game use what the stage the characters are fighting on would have looked like on the SNES to fill in the leftover space, with Ryu's stage also being used for the menu.
- Around one-third of Cyberdillo is framed, mostly on the left and bottom, with excessively large icons to depict your health and "funk" meter.
- Doom (1993):
- The 3DO version always has a brown border around the action. This is done not due to gameplay not taking up enough space, but because the port's quality results in the game lagging at larger screen sizes. The two highest options have to be enabled with a cheat code, and the largest has some brown on the sides.
- Earlier versions of the 2019 Unity ports of Doom and its sequel initially used a background border based on the intermission screen used for No Rest for the Living due to the games not being scaled correctly to a 4:3 aspect-ratio. Later patches addressed incorrect aspect-ratio while retaining the border up until September 3, 2020 update which implemented official 16:9 widescreen presentation with the option of 4:3, however, the unused space in the latter with the game's IWAD background similarly to the original DOS version with a smaller viewport.
- Duke Nukem 3D allowed shrinking the playfield for performance reasons, leaving a border with the green "alien nest" texture around it.
- The DOS game Island Peril both averts and plays this trope straight by having black bars at the bottom and sides of the screen, but the top has grey ornamentation that touches the top of the screen.
- The first Marathon had a huge decorative HUD that took over half the screen. It was possible to go full screen, but that tanked performance even on the best machines at the time. note
- The Game Boy version of Animaniacs features a Super Game Boy border depicting an old TV set, dotted with portraits of the Warner siblings, Pinky and the Brain, and Ralph Theodore Guard.
- Conker's Pocket Tales: Playing on the Super Game Boy fills the borders with differently colored balloons and presents, alluding to the game's plot being about Conker's birthday party.
- Dizzy: Treasure Island Dizzy has a border. Outside the border are palm trees outside the border on the left and right, ground below the game window.
- Donkey Kong:
- Donkey Kong (1994): Playing on the Super Game Boy fills the borders with a cabinet that resembles the original arcade, but with small tweaks to use colorized in-game graphics instead.
- The Donkey Kong Land games feature their own custom borders when playing the games on a Super Game Boy, done in the pre-rendered pseudo-CG style of the SNES games. The first game features a row of palm trees, the second game features a wall of bananas, and the third game features a wall of stopwatches (which serve as the game's main collectible).
- Kid Icarus: The 3D Classics release on Nintendo 3DS has a border that looks like an inside part of an old brown book.
- Kirby:
- Kirby's Adventure: The 3D Classics release on Nintendo 3DS has a pink-white border and the logo in the bottom-right corner.
- Kirby's Dream Land 2 features a custom Super Game Boy border depicting Kirby, Rick, Coo, and Kine against a green checkerboard backdrop.
- Kirby's Dream Collection: The game features emulated versions of Kirby's Dream Land, Kirby's Adventure, Kirby's Dream Land 2, Kirby Super Star, Kirby's Dream Land 3, and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. Because Dream Land and Dream Land 2 were Game Boy titles, they're too small to fill up even a 4:3 monitor; consequently, playing these games brings up a specially-designed border depicting sprites from them against a pink backdrop. A baby blue version of this border is also used when playing Adventure, Super Star, Dream Land 3, and 64 on a 16:9 display (as they were designed for a 4:3 one).
- Mega Man: The Legacy Collection series all have unique borders for each game to fill in the space left by the original 4:3 games.
- Mega Man (Classic): While the first Mega Man Legacy Collection only offered a single border design for each game, Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 has four border designs for each game.
- Mega Man: Based off of the Japanese box art, featuring artwork of Mega Man as well as Dr. Light and Roll with Wily's Castle in the background.
- Mega Man 2: Based off of the Japanese box art, featuring artwork of Mega Man and Dr. Wily, with a "2" in the upper right corner of the border.
- Mega Man 3: Based off of the Japanese box art, featuring artwork of Mega Man and Proto Man, with a "3" in the upper right corner of the border.
- Mega Man 4: Based off of the Japanese box art, featuring artwork of Mega Man as well as Dr. Cossack and his daughter Kalinka, with a "4" in the upper right corner of the border.
- Mega Man 5: Based off of the Japanese box art, featuring artwork of Mega Man and Beat, with a "5" in the upper right corner of the border.
- Mega Man 6: Based off of the Japanese box art, featuring artwork of Mega Man and Mr. X, with a "6" in the upper right corner of the border.
- Mega Man 7: The first border design uses artwork of Mega Man using the weapons of each of the game's eight Robot Masters; the second border design uses artwork of each of the Robot Masters themselves; the third border design is based on the game's stage select screen; and the fourth border design uses artwork of Mega Man, Proto Man, Bass, and Treble.
- Mega Man 8: The first border design uses artwork of Mega Man, Proto Man, Rush, Bass, Treble, and Duo; the second border design uses artwork of the game's eight Robot Masters; the third border design is based on the game's stage select screen; the fourth border design uses artwork of Mega Man, Dr. Wily, Proto Man, and Duo.
- Mega Man 9: The first border design uses artwork of Mega Man using the weapons of each of the game's eight Robot Masters; the second border design uses artwork of each of the Robot Masters themselves; the third border design is based on the game's stage select screen; and the fourth border design uses artwork of Mega Man, Proto Man, Dr. Wily, Roll, and Dr. Light.
- Mega Man 10: The first border design uses artwork of Mega Man using the weapons of each of the game's eight Robot Masters; the second border design uses artwork of each of the Robot Masters themselves; the third border design is based on the game's stage select screen; and the fourth border design uses a dynamic design that uniquely scales with the game itself rather than filling the full screen.
- Mega Man (Classic): While the first Mega Man Legacy Collection only offered a single border design for each game, Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 has four border designs for each game.
- Pac In Time: Playing on the Super Game Boy puts the game's logo, Pac-Man, three ghosts, and pellets on a blue border.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Playing a game in Classic mode in Sonic Origins fills the leftover space from the 4:3 aspect ratio with rings and shapes, a picture and colors representing one of the six major characters, or sprites and colors representing one of the four games in the collection.
- The Sonic N release of Sonic Advance lets players choose between the N-Gage's unusual 11:13 and a scaled-down 4:3 ratio. For the latter, the game fills the borders with blue, plus Sonic and his name at the top.
- The SEGA AGES releases of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 have borders based on their respective Japanese box arts, with artwork of Sonic being on both and artwork of Tails being on the border for the latter.
- Wario Land II sports a custom Super Game Boy border depicting Wario and his riches at the top as well as the location he's currently in filling the rest. If you're playing the Flagman D-D minigame, it uses a Game & Watch console as its background.
- The macOS and Apple TV versions of the Apple Arcade game Disney SpellStruck were based on the simultaneously released iOS version, including the vertical interface. As such, very large banners were added on the left and right that have purple-pink starry skies slowly moving around.
- Kirby's Star Stacker features two Super Game Boy borders, both depicting Kirby and the Animal Friends. The first border features them against the various blocks that appear in-game, while the second depicts them, a bunch of stars, and a rainbow against a blue checkerboard.
- Mole Mania: Playing on the Super Game Boy fills the borders with dirt, with Muddy's arms in the bottom corners and the logo at the top.
- Panel de Pon: Because the playing field occupies only the centermost vertical area of the screen, the rest of the display is used for borders themed around the various characters, with the score and time limit being placed there as well. The Game Boy version of Tetris Attack (a Dolled-Up Installment themed around Yoshi's Island) even features Super Game Boy borders that replicate the ones seen in the SNES release.
- Puyo Puyo:
- Puyo Puyo (1992): The SEGA AGES release has a border with artworks of Arle, Carbuncle, the opponents, and the Puyos.
- Puyo Puyo 2:
- The Game Boy port has a custom border when played on a Super Game Boy, with the name of the game's port, Pocket Puyo Puyo 2, as well as artwork of Arle, Draco, and Carbuncle.
- The SEGA AGES release has a border with artwork of the game's many opponents (and Carbuncle).
- Puyo Puyo Sun: The Game Boy Color port has a custom border when played on a Super Game Boy, featuring an image of the sky as well as the game's title being written on it.
- Deltarune: Console releases feature a decorative border around the screen, thanks to the game using a 4:3 display as part of its retraux aesthetic. The border's contents dynamically change based on what area of the game the player is in.
- Hoshi wo Miru Hito: The Switch release fills the leftover space with a wallpaper that has pixel art or illustrations of the playable characters.
- OMORI has a dynamic border that changes depending on the level, as the game was originally displayed in 4:3. It even updates itself to reflect plot points, such as the Headspace border depicting constellations of the cast replacing one of them with a flower after the other party members are made to forget Basil.
- Quest: Brian's Journey: Playing on the Super Game Boy makes the game fill the borders with many copies of the Quest (or Holy Magic Century if you're playing the Japanese version) logo and two pictures of Brian.
- Pokémon:
- The Generation I games and the early Generation II games feature custom borders when playing on a Super Game Boy. Red, Green, and Blue feature various Pokémon against a backdrop whose color matches that of the game's titlenote . Yellow features various Pikachu playing against a green backdrop. Gold and Silver feature a Poké Ball pattern against a colored backdrop matching the game's title.
- The Pokémon Stadium games include a Game Boy Tower feature, which allows the player to use the Nintendo 64 Transfer Pak to play the mainline games in Super Game Boy mode, complete with custom borders. Pokémon Crystal is incompatible with the Super Game Boy, but is compatible with the Game Boy Tower; as such, it uses the Super Game Boy's default border.
- Undertale: There are several border options on consoles, thanks to the game using a 4:3 display as part of its retraux aesthetic. The dynamic option switches it based on the location the player character is in. There are also several optional borders unlocked for doing specific tasks, but those depend on the version.
- The first three Ys games all place a border around the gameplay, as well as a large HUD on the lower half of the screen. These measures were necessary to improve performance on the PC-88, where the games originated, but the console ports retained them, due to Grandfather Clause. They are also present in Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys'', even though it is a console exclusive.
- Radiant Silvergun: The HD ports of the game features decorative wallpapers to occupy the sides of the screen due to the game being pillarboxed to a 16:9 while the game screen is still 4:3 with the option to replace the original pixel art HUD with an HD one that also keeps track of color chains and weapon levels. In single player games, the right side of the screen also features an in-game reference sheet for the buttons and their corresponding weapons.
- RAY Series:
- The Windows 95 port of RayForce has the game's HUD move to the right side of the screen due to the game screen itself being screen crunched to fit in a 640x480 display resolution, with decorative borders separating the players' score, lives, and lock-on indicators, while the high-score in the middle between the two players.
- The Ray'z Arcade Chronology compilation features optional border artwork based on the respective games to fill the unused space along with real-time gameplay data and information gadgets.
- Ridiculous Fishing: Similar to with Disney SpellStruck further above. While their EX versions were otherwise 1:1 perfect ports of the simultaneously released iOS EX version, the Mac and Apple TV versions added massive banners on the left and right sides with wave-like patterns, to pad out that the entire game's interface was still vertical akin to vertical scrolling shooters.
- TwinBee: The 3D Classics release fills leftover space thanks to the 3DS's larger screen ratio with a red curtain.
- Xevious: The 3D Classics release adds cloud layers at the sides to fill the leftover space added by the 3DS' wider screen.
- Power Punch II: The Steam release fills leftover space with two images of Tough Guy from the box art.
- Bloons Tower Defense 5: Playing the Steam version at a wide aspect ratio gives the game a border with eight artworks of various towers.
- Nintendo Wars: Playing Game Boy Wars Turbo and Game Boy Wars 2 on the Super Game Boy gives the game a border with a sepia map of the game world, with the latter also showing some units.
- Ace Attorney: The Wii ports of the original trilogy fill the leftover space with a colored background and many copies of the game's logo flying by.
Other Games
- 3-D Dinosaur Adventure: On screens like the museum, the theater, and the "Save The Dinosaurs" minigame that feature videos and/or interactable content, the main display area will take up about half the space while being surrounded by a stony border featuring fossil imagery (and in the case of the theater, curtains and the tops of a row of seats to make it seem like you are watching the videos in an actual theater). Given the game first came out in the early 1990s, the developers had to compress the actual video footage and would not have been able to fill the whole screen with it without looking grainy.
- Beauty and the Beast: A Board Game Adventure: Playing on the Super Game Boy gives the game a border of the castle walls and roses.
- The various Castlevania collections have several selectable borders for the games, which were originally released for various consoles such as NES, SNES, Game Boy Advance, and the Nintendo DS.
- The Disney Afternoon Collection by Capcom puts the selected game's box art (with a specific color filter for each) in the background.
- The first three Game & Watch Gallery games feature dynamic Super Game Boy borders based around the various included games. Playing them in modern mode presents borders depicting lush landscapes, many of which imitate the visual style of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Playing them in classic mode, however, bring up borders based on the original Game & Watch devices. The original Game Boy Gallery, meanwhile, only features the Classic borders.
- Kirby's Block Ball features a custom Super Game Boy border depicting King Dedede and Kirby's Spark, Burning, Needle, and Stone abilities against a lavender checkerboard.
- Since Mario Party 8 was designed for 4:3 televisions, with only a small amount of game modes supporting 16:9 displays, the original release features decorative borders with a blue tartan pattern if the Wii's display mode is set to 16:9. The borders were removed on later copies after players complained that the patterns caused screen burn-in.
- Monopoly: Playing the Japanese Game Boy Color release on the Super Game Boy gives the game a border with a brick wall, GB Monopoly graffiti at the top, and the official Monopoly logo at the bottom.
- Nintendo Switch Online: The Nintendo Classics applications all use a border design that consists of the grey edges fading into the black center (where the game screen is) with an alternating dot pattern, with the player profile icon(s) in the upper left corner of the border. Only a handful of games have proper widescreen support that can be enabled in-gamenote that would in turn disable the border while playing them.
- Certain Sega Master System games in the Sega 3D Classics Collection and Sega 3D Reprint Archives 3 cartridge compilations on Nintendo 3DS have a border on the left and right based on the console design of the Master System (in the international versions) and Sega SG-1000 (in the Japanese version). Games known to have those borders include Maze Runner, Champion Boxing, Girl's Garden, and Fantasy Zone.
- Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics is a commercial compilation of emulated games — players may either play by watching a simulated TV or switch to a full-screen mode — but the aspect ratio is different for modern computers. Instead of vertical black bars, the sides of the screen are filled with a grid.
Non-Video Game Examples
- Pan and Scan prints of some movies add borders to the opening or end credits, as opposed to either cropping out or distorting the names.
- The work of American artist Jim Fitzpatrick involves the creation of graphic novels based on Celtic Mythology. His interpretation of the first Irish mythological cycle, The Book of Conquests, has the artwork on every page surrounded by beautiful ornate scrolled borders, in imitation of Irish monastic books such as The Book of Kells.
- In Japan, Transformers: Animated was aired with a border depicting several of the characters alongside the series logo thanks to the aspect ratio. It's part of the reason the Japanese DVD releases are considered an inferior version, since not only are the live-action Otoboto Family skits cut out (resulting in Orphaned Punchline and Orphaned Setup situations), the aspect ratio still wasn't fixed for the DVD releases.
- Some Let's Play videos on YouTube will have borders around their gameplay, usually because the game's original aspect ratio doesn't fit on a 16:9 display, with these borders sometimes filled with relevant statistics or art. This is most evident on playthroughs of games on the Nintendo DS or Nintendo 3DS, where after both screens are fitted onto a single horizontal video, the remaining negative space will be filled out by custom borders.
- Some Let's Play streams also used borders, although in this case the border is usually for the purpose of keeping the screen neat and making sure the elements don't overlap (for example, a few Twitch streamers do not like it when their chat and Webcam feed blocks out portions of the game screen).
- Gladys Knight's music video for "Licence to Kill," theme song to the James Bond movie of the same name, is presented letterbox-style. Occasionally a video girl appears in the top margin, laying across the screen seductively.
- Caillou was originally made in 4:3 before making the jump to 16:9 widescreen HD. Individual segments were typically only around 4-6 minutes long, so episodes of the show were typically made of several segments grouped together around a particular theme from a mix of new and old material. Therefore, later episodes presented in HD would show the older segments in letterbox format with colorful, child's wallpaper-type decorations in the borders.
- Disney Animated Canon movies released to both theaters and Blu-ray in the 4:3 Academy ratio, aside from the post-Bambi package films, came to Blu-ray and Digital HD with a "Disney View" option, replacing the black bars with patterns corresponding to each scene.
- The Cat in the Hat (1971) Deluxe Edition DVD and Blu-ray surround the Sing-Along Mode with relevant patterns or new animations.
