alt Hacker NewsUnseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production
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I was a huge fan of the Activision remake, and the Battlezone 2 sequel. The mixture of FPS and RTS was really appealing to me.
I had to beg my parents for an ATI Rage LT Pro AGP 8MB card to play the sequel.
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.
Fun fact - Atari threatened to sue me for my “clone” of Battlezone.
> Atari’s primary coin-op manufacturing and headquarters facility was located at 1265 Borregas Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089 during the key 1976–1984 period. Another critical site in the immediate area was 1196 Borregas Avenue, used during the subsequent Tramiel era
I don't think these buildings exist anymore.
Similar footage from the era, taken at Bally/Midway during production of Ms Pac-Man.
What a nice time capsule. All praise to the cameraman for doing long steady shots and not replacing the audio with music or commentary.
Are there any articles on how vector graphics were developed for arcade games?
I vaguely remember there was also one home game console that attempted vector graphics but cannot remember the name
Was fascinated with it at the time but with only access to a TRS-80 such things were impossible to learn back then
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.
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.