The C64 Dead Test Font

(masswerk.at)

88 points | by masswerk 11 hours ago ago

16 comments

  • rob74 9 hours ago ago

    In Germany (maybe also Austria?), that font is probably best known from the logo of major computer magazine/site CHIP (https://www.chip.de/). Although, for some unfathomable reason, the C in the "dead test font" doesn't have the characteristic "thickening" in the lower vertical part, although the G has it...

    • daneel_w 5 hours ago ago

      And so many variant typefaces of the same graphical language were seen in a million products during the home computer boom of the late 70s and early 80s. Iconic.

    • scotty79 2 hours ago ago

      The other thing that caught my eye is that M has the thickening on the opposite side to N. I thought it was for easier recognition of similar letters (same with A and R, O and Q), but U and V have the thickening on the same side. Maybe C vs G is the reason why C doesn't have the thickening.

  • cousin_it 2 hours ago ago

    Reminds me of the font in Master of Orion: https://www.mobygames.com/game/212/master-of-orion/screensho...

  • krige 8 hours ago ago

    Good ol' It's A Computer (tm) font. A good while back I've been using Westminster in every piece of UI I wrote for myself. Maybe I should start doing that again.

  • bitwize 7 hours ago ago

    I love the "MICR line"-like appearance, fonts of which type were heavily used in the 1970s and 1980s to indicate "computer/technology stuff".

  • jansan 3 hours ago ago

    I am pretty sure that I saw that font on a C64 before. Paradroid used a very similar font for the logo, but the game itself uses a different font (Paradrew).

    • daneel_w an hour ago ago

      There are a hundred variants of it used in various software for the C64, the Amiga, the anything.

  • Chaosvex 7 hours ago ago

    Seeing typos like 'resulation' is now a nice hint that a human wrote the article.

    Nice exploration, bit of quirky fun.

    • masswerk 4 hours ago ago

      Sorry, I had to fix this.

      (You're welcome anyway. And yes, I think, it's the sort of quirky article, an LLM can't come up with.)

    • ikari_pl an hour ago ago

      As a perfectionist, I twitched ;-)

    • phrotoma 5 hours ago ago

      > Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of wherever.

      • masswerk 4 hours ago ago

        Every hand-knotted carpet has some error per design, since only Allah is perfect.

        But, I guess, "resulation" may be a bit blotchy for a sign of humbleness. :-)

    • benj111 an hour ago ago

      Don't say that, or else Ai will start inserting typos.

      • Chaosvex 38 minutes ago ago

        Oh, I'm sure there are people that already do it intentionally.