You don’t have to be a nerd to love maps, but we hear it helps. If you do happen to be a map-loving nerd, prepare yourself for awesome overload: a genius named Brett Camper has made an 8-bit map of NYC. He combines the high-tech interactive functionality of today’s online maps with the fantastically retro pixellated graphics that we all knew and loved on our old-school gaming platforms. Using a map like this to navigate would be enough to make anyone feel like Link setting off of a new adventure.

Understandably entitled 8-Bit NYC, the map was created using data from OpenStreetMap. It’s fully interactive, just like Google Maps, and lets you zoom all the way out to view the entire city or zoom in on a single address. Camper hopes that by re-casting the common map into a familiar yet abstract 8-bit format, he can encourage people to look at their surroundings a little differently.

But the fun won’t stop with New York – Camper has already created an 8-bit Austin map just in time for SXSW 2010. He hopes to create at least 15 city maps in the same style. He’s asking for donations to help buy web hosting and Amazon EC2 time to develop the remaining maps on his list.