I worked in a restaurant in 81 while in HS. Next door was a convenience store that had Defender and Battlezone. I think I spent half of what I made on those two games for a few weeks. I would sneak out for a game. An addiction. I can still hear those Battlezone sounds in my head 45 years later.
The periscope style vector CRTs use in the arcade Battlezone were a claustrophobia and panic-inducing experience. Glowy unpixellated 3d, narrow field of vision. Unforgettably cool.
I believe these are AI-generated photos, and perhaps content.
Look at the back of Dave Compton’s shirt carefully, and you’ll notice that the left side starts to have garbled text.
It’s very impressive, though. If I’m wrong, and these are real, then I’m very interested why Dave was wearing that shirt.
Back in the day, it wouldn’t have been normal to have a custom shirt like that with different font sizes with your own name on the back stating what you’re doing in an obscure way.
People have a lot of misconceptions about the pre-internet era. The past was plenty sophisticated, it just wasn't /digital/. We certainly had things like high resolution video (on analog film) and novelty tee shirts with fun fonts (laid out manually in fixed sizes). There was just more manual work involved in creating, duplicating and distributing these things.
I'd find it easier to believe this comment is AI generated, given that the account is only 53 minutes old. The text on the t-shirt looks totally normal to me.
The fact that this blogger, whose blog I'm reading for the first time today, has been posting archive footage and imagery, using a pretty similar format, from the same factory since at least 2019 (https://arcadeblogger.com/2019/12/26/atari-coin-op-archive-f...), and also the fact that the new post is his first blog post in 18th months, makes me think it's highly unlikely that this the post AI generated in any way.
I don't think so. Perhaps AI-upscaled? The footage looks legit and would track with the tube cameras that would have likely been used at that time. Although it sucks that it's deinterlaced to 30fps. Video like this really needs to be preserved without immediately throwing out half of the motion
Yeah, this doesn't look like AI generated. It was probably filmed on super 8 film stock. The clothing, hair cuts, manufacturing process all scream early 80s.
I could see a cheap restoration introduction artifacts as a more likely reason for the look.
I agree with the normalcy comment re screen printing. But the video does seem too high resolution from what I would expect. And why doesn't author discoose the source or a reason video was taken. Odd that there's very little chatter between employees but they were in front of a camera. Otherwise very interesting video. We loved battlezone.Way cooler than any other game at the time.
> But the video does seem too high resolution from what I would expect.
Completely depends on what they were shooting on, the state of the media, the scanning methods used, any post-processing, etc. At first glance this does not look AI generated to me but hey, could be wrong
I don't think that's likely, claiming forged historical footage is real would be a very stupid way to torch one's reputation in a niche field. But it is a bit concerning that the author doesn't declare the source of the video. Especially since they're claiming it hasn't been put online before.
It totally would have been normal to have a custom shirt like that back in the day. I had a few.
In the late 70s and early 80s, there were custom "iron on" T-Shirt shops in most malls. They would have a wall of larger iron-on decals, primarily logos of sports teams and rock bands, but they also had custom letters, usually in the Cooper typeface. You'd tell them what you wanted, the size and color of your shirt and lettering, and they'd go in the back room and iron what you wanted on your new shirt for a few dollars. This was especially popular with youth sports teams in lieu of professional uniforms, families who wanted to match for a big trip (often with custom names like this), and, as you can see here, jokey custom workplace team shirts.
If you watch a late-70s or early-80s episode of The Price is Right, you'll almost certainly see contestants or audience members in these custom iron-on shirts - same font, same slightly disjointed look.
The left-hand text on Dave Compton's shirt is slightly blurry and unreadable given the resolution, not garbled. But it's not some AI nonsense.
DAVE
COMPTON
(King?) OF PACKERS
(He'll?) PUT IT IN ANY BOX
This isn't just a rah-rah team spirit shirt or something obscure, it's a peculiarly '70s innuendo combining thoughts about his job... and his sexual prowess. Sure, that kind of shirt would cause a modern workplace to, uh, send him packing. As they say, it was a different time.
18 comments:
I worked in a restaurant in 81 while in HS. Next door was a convenience store that had Defender and Battlezone. I think I spent half of what I made on those two games for a few weeks. I would sneak out for a game. An addiction. I can still hear those Battlezone sounds in my head 45 years later.
Similar footage from the era, taken at Bally/Midway during production of Ms Pac-Man.
https://youtu.be/62s_BIYg5Gs
What a nice time capsule. All praise to the cameraman for doing long steady shots and not replacing the audio with music or commentary.
Fun fact - Atari threatened to sue me for my “clone” of Battlezone.
https://youtu.be/bf7Ert1wkg4
The periscope style vector CRTs use in the arcade Battlezone were a claustrophobia and panic-inducing experience. Glowy unpixellated 3d, narrow field of vision. Unforgettably cool.
I believe these are AI-generated photos, and perhaps content.
Look at the back of Dave Compton’s shirt carefully, and you’ll notice that the left side starts to have garbled text.
It’s very impressive, though. If I’m wrong, and these are real, then I’m very interested why Dave was wearing that shirt.
Back in the day, it wouldn’t have been normal to have a custom shirt like that with different font sizes with your own name on the back stating what you’re doing in an obscure way.
People have a lot of misconceptions about the pre-internet era. The past was plenty sophisticated, it just wasn't /digital/. We certainly had things like high resolution video (on analog film) and novelty tee shirts with fun fonts (laid out manually in fixed sizes). There was just more manual work involved in creating, duplicating and distributing these things.
I'd find it easier to believe this comment is AI generated, given that the account is only 53 minutes old. The text on the t-shirt looks totally normal to me.
The fact that this blogger, whose blog I'm reading for the first time today, has been posting archive footage and imagery, using a pretty similar format, from the same factory since at least 2019 (https://arcadeblogger.com/2019/12/26/atari-coin-op-archive-f...), and also the fact that the new post is his first blog post in 18th months, makes me think it's highly unlikely that this the post AI generated in any way.
I don't think so. Perhaps AI-upscaled? The footage looks legit and would track with the tube cameras that would have likely been used at that time. Although it sucks that it's deinterlaced to 30fps. Video like this really needs to be preserved without immediately throwing out half of the motion
Yeah, this doesn't look like AI generated. It was probably filmed on super 8 film stock. The clothing, hair cuts, manufacturing process all scream early 80s.
I could see a cheap restoration introduction artifacts as a more likely reason for the look.
I agree with the normalcy comment re screen printing. But the video does seem too high resolution from what I would expect. And why doesn't author discoose the source or a reason video was taken. Odd that there's very little chatter between employees but they were in front of a camera. Otherwise very interesting video. We loved battlezone.Way cooler than any other game at the time.
It seems exactly like what you’d get from a decent “prosumer” video camera then.
> But the video does seem too high resolution from what I would expect.
Completely depends on what they were shooting on, the state of the media, the scanning methods used, any post-processing, etc. At first glance this does not look AI generated to me but hey, could be wrong
I don't think that's likely, claiming forged historical footage is real would be a very stupid way to torch one's reputation in a niche field. But it is a bit concerning that the author doesn't declare the source of the video. Especially since they're claiming it hasn't been put online before.
It totally would have been normal to have a custom shirt like that back in the day. I had a few.
In the late 70s and early 80s, there were custom "iron on" T-Shirt shops in most malls. They would have a wall of larger iron-on decals, primarily logos of sports teams and rock bands, but they also had custom letters, usually in the Cooper typeface. You'd tell them what you wanted, the size and color of your shirt and lettering, and they'd go in the back room and iron what you wanted on your new shirt for a few dollars. This was especially popular with youth sports teams in lieu of professional uniforms, families who wanted to match for a big trip (often with custom names like this), and, as you can see here, jokey custom workplace team shirts.
If you watch a late-70s or early-80s episode of The Price is Right, you'll almost certainly see contestants or audience members in these custom iron-on shirts - same font, same slightly disjointed look.
The left-hand text on Dave Compton's shirt is slightly blurry and unreadable given the resolution, not garbled. But it's not some AI nonsense.
DAVE
COMPTON
(King?) OF PACKERS
(He'll?) PUT IT IN ANY BOX
This isn't just a rah-rah team spirit shirt or something obscure, it's a peculiarly '70s innuendo combining thoughts about his job... and his sexual prowess. Sure, that kind of shirt would cause a modern workplace to, uh, send him packing. As they say, it was a different time.
Here's a thread on Reddit about one of those mall custom iron-on t-shirt shops: https://www.reddit.com/r/70sdesign/comments/hf6f0q/tshirt_ir...
It seems like the kind of thing you’d get at a company party then, say for meeting a milestone.
This site has become completly insufferable with the incessant AI accusations IN EVERY SINGLE THREAD, often over the most benign posts.
Having some shirts screen-printed for your employees strikes me as a totally normal workplace behavior.