Another Year, Another 35MM HD Transfer Of An Old Atari Commercial
Hey, first post for 2021! Well, first new post of 2021; earlier today I had to republish something from Tumblr, circa 2015, mostly for the sake of a tweet (more on that later).
Anyhow, someone over at an unofficial Discord for the Internet Archive shared the video above, which is from the same source in which I previously shared another old Atari commercial that looked equally gorgeous, because it too was originally screened at movie theaters (so a 35mm print was scanned at an ultra-HD resolution).
And just like that last time, we’re treated to a mini movie of sorts, with absurdly impressive production values for a “commercial”. The standout feature are the costumes, naturally, but it is once again great seeing 2600-grade pixels captured on film stock. All thanks, which as also previously stated, a war for the small screen, i.e. television sets in living rooms, that had spilled over to the big screen, i.e. movie theaters across the country.
Alas, that’s been the only video game centric clip that’s been uploaded since last checking in with the source. But I went through the archive, just in case, and did notice something that’s somewhat video game adjacent; a trailer for Laser Tag…
[UPDATE: 1/26/21] BTW, when I was scanning the channel’s previous uploads, there was something I expected to see yet did not; my initial fear was that it has been pulled or the like, but turns out, it was posted by another channel, as seen in a Tumblr post from a few years back (that was reposted around here, several years later). But as Stuart McPherran would point out, FT Depot would upload their own copy of the Mattel Intellivision theatrical trailer, not long after the publication of this write-up…
… If you do a side-by-side comparison with the aforementioned previous upload, you’ll notice that the newer version is a tad bit more cleaned up and is also slightly less warm, color-wise.
Also, unlike Activision’s effort at the very top, as well the one seen last time for Atari, Mattel’s is chock of actual gameplay. Well, actual gameplay that had been traced and reanimated, via rotoscoping. Which to be honest, is hardly a shocker; Intellivision did have superior graphics when compared to the Video Computer System, as George Plimpton famously explained.
Alas, the following is not in HD, but it is a super HQ transfer from what I’m guessing was a U-matic tape…
Now, the thing is, I was either too young to remember Plimpton’s Intellivision TV spots or they didn’t air them in South Korea, where I was at until age 5. But I was made aware of the campaign years later, via this classic segment from SCTV (fast forward to the 8:22 mark)…
Oh yeah, so may as well mention this now: the reason why I decided to republish The Best of Bit för Bit, Part 1 was because over at Twitter I mentioned how it’s part of the debut broadcast of yet another streaming initiative I’m doing, on the part of Wonderville, this one being FORT90 TV! The first broadcast is this Monday, January 18th…
