Turn images into legit Commodore 64 pixel art

Just one of my favorite photos.

The high resolution version is here.

The utility I used actually creates prodos files as well as png simulations. Itā€™s been a while since Iā€™ve used an apple emulator-- Iā€™m not sure that any of the simulate the process well enough.

IIRC, Lord British hand edited the graphics to avoid pixel fringingā€“though few others were that perfectionist.

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Pretty sure most emulators do the fringing, since itā€™s a software thing rather than a video artifact. I had a proper green monochrome monitor at home so I didnā€™t mess with color too much back then.

(I do remember being absolutely stunned when I first saw this though:)

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The spectrum was well-understood as the crappier of the two. The fight, such as it was was between the C64 and the Amstrad CPC. The CPC had a more colorful palette and a much faster CPU, but (in a nutshell) lacked hardware sprites and scrolling, meaning that while it often looked better in screenshots, it played worse in the arcade-style titles that generally prevailed. And the C64 had SID on its sideā€¦

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Thereā€™s an iPhone app that produces very decent output - ZXCam I think itā€™s called. A cool feature is that it can also output the generated image as a loading signal, for you to feed to an actual spectrum via your headphone jack.

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They arenā€™t arbitrary - they are just the colours you get when each of the three RGB channels is either fully on or fully off. It makes the display logic very simple. Itā€™s all about keeping costs down - you have to remember it cost about a third of the price of the C64.

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I hope youā€™re feeling properly guilty, @beschizza!

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Are you sure you havenā€™t missed an ā€˜Nā€™ out of that sentence?

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I didnā€™t want to be the first to point that out. Because: expected.

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