Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/07/fantastic-tv-commercial-from-m.html
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I’m losing my edge.
I hear that you and your band have sold your Atari 2600s and bought Intellivisions.
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I don’t remember that ad, but I had I think 3 of those games, Star Strike, Night Stalker, and Tron Deadly Discs.
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There’s something about watching a digital movie, broadcast in NTSC, and replayed on youtube with a source that has film artifacts that makes me happy.
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Star Strike…as see in TVPixxx by WPIX in the 1980s.
Anyone else think the male broadcaster in the still shot looks like a 1980s Bill Murray?
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“ColecoSmurf”
Huh. Username checks out.
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I’d be fascinated to find out how this was produced in 1982. There’s definitely rotoscoping going on, but beyond that I’m not sure if this is some advanced-for-82 computer animation going on, or cel animation pretending to be computer-generated (like TRON).
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Oh yeah. Let’s make the black guy do the sports report.
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My vote would be for straight-up rotoscoping. Traditional cels but traced on a fixed grid. It is VERY precise and smooth. If it was truly digital it would have been way ahead of its time.
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That’s what I’m guessing too. I mean who knows… but it also made me think of these gears from The Great Mouse Detective… cel animation traced over digital lines I believe… I know that’s different… its actually rendered in 3D rather than rotoscoped over film of actors… still kinda neat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLjj0SJTuSM
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That’s what I thought too, but it still makes for a cool effect!
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No disagreement there, it is very cool.
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Ooooh I’d forgotten about Star Strike until I saw it just now.
This a bit random but has anyone managed to get Intellivision games to work on an emulator? Supposedly it can be emulated but the controller was this odd number pad and I haven’t been able make it work with an ordinary controller.
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Those gears were pretty precise, weren’t they, not the “traditional” freehand of the characters. I’m not complaining.
There’s no real wobble in the advert which makes me think it’s gridded, and there’s no gradation in colours or boundaries, unlike “A Scanner Darkly” which is deliberately fluid and floaty.
Either way, still cool, and I may be looting the idea a little. 
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Another Mattel Electronics product I played the shit out of
Doesn’t look as impressive nowadays though 
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In the future everyone’s voice will reverberate thanks to advanced concepts that would seem like magic to our primitive minds.
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Yeah that looks very much like rotoscoping but i’ve got to admit i’ve never seen this particular type of rotoscope look before and i really love it. A short film or a movie done with this plus some pixelart backgrounds and i’d be in heaven.
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That could be awesome. I’m sure it is easier these days, there’s probably just a filter out there, but for the vintage it is really quite something.
Kinda makes the in-game stuff look bum though… 
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Likely most of the heavy lifting could be done automatically with a computer and refined by hand frame by frame. But i would genuinely be excited to see a low-fi animated feature, maybe 16 or 32bit.
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I remember I downloaded an emulator and futzed around one time, but it was played on the keyboard with the PC.
There is a re-released Intellivision Flashback that has a bunch of games on it and the old school game pad. Not sure if one can hack it to add the other licensed games.
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