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Japanese Twitter obsessed with app that revives the VHS camcorder recording quality of the ‘80s

Dale Roll Aug 24, 2019
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The app turns your high quality smartphone camera into a handheld VHS camcorder!

Ahh the ’80s. Big hair, neon-colored clothing, sweatbands, synthesizers…What a time it was to be alive! Well, I wouldn’t know, since I was born at the tail-end of the ’80s, but it sure does look like it was a wild ride. And the technology of the time is simply nostalgic! Videos on VHS, music on cassette tapes, boom boxes, corded telephones, Famicom and other retro gaming consoles. People love to reminisce about the old days, but do they really want to go back to that technology? After all, who would want the blurry, fuzzy, lined, and jumpy video quality of VHS tapes?

Everyone, apparently. Especially Japanese netizens! When Twitter user @knushi22 shared a video that they took while using a VHS-quality recording app, it blew up, with tens of thousands of people clamoring to know how they did it.

▼ “I took this using a recording app that makes VHS-style videos and it’s amazing”

VHS風の動画撮影ができるアプリで撮影したけど凄いこれ pic.twitter.com/HPyWlKqIan

— かんぬし (@knushi22) August 13, 2019

The video is (presumably) a recent one of the Sobu Line in Tokyo, taken with @knushi22’s smartphone, but it looks exactly like it would have in the ’80s and ’90s, with grainy picture quality, tracking lines, and the age-old, blocky time and date stamp in the corner. How could anyone forget the font of all the “Funniest Home Videos” we used to watch on TV as kids?

▼ It looks just like a video taken on a handheld, tape-based camcorder!

Excited Japanese Twitter users shared videos they took with the app, including this one where they were even able to change the date to make it look like it was recorded in the early 2000s.

https://twitter.com/resub355/status/1161675905799839744

Many went along the horror route, since the quality befits the style of old horror movies.

pic.twitter.com/fODfwjXMas

— 日神風音👁トラウマハピネスVシンガー (@triadfixer) August 14, 2019

エアコンの風邪で動く小扉をこのアプリで撮ったらおぞましくなりますた pic.twitter.com/SbvYBckBU0

— 細井勇希 (@420fudlv) August 15, 2019

The app is actually pretty smart, too. As this user recorded their descent in an elevator, it began to get more noise interference as it moved under the ground.

エレベーターで撮影したら地下に入るとノイズが激しくなる pic.twitter.com/161hx0T9z9

— 白髮のケイ (@homura_88) August 15, 2019

The app, which was released in December of last year by Rarevision, is called “VHS Cam Lite”, and appears to be available for both Apple and Android devices. It’s free to download and has over one million downloads on the Google Play Store, so it’s fair to say that everyone is a little nostalgic for ’80s video quality.

https://twitter.com/Chocomint_Queem/status/1161649713910669312

Plus, after @knushi22 tweeted about it, more than 100,000 people liked and retweeted their video, so Japanese netizens are particularly pleased with the app. Comments were all in praise of the fun idea:

“If you made a Sadako video with this app it would up the scare factor by about 10 times.”
“This is so weirdly nostalgic”
“What’s even better about it is that you can change the dates on it.”
“Oh man the noise and the date stamp font is soo nostalgic”
“I bet it would be interesting to purposefully film today’s technology with this app!”

Now that we’ve seen what the app can do, it’s time to take our phones, go out into the world and make some home videos like they did in early days! And if going retro is really your thing, there are lots of old-school products for smartphones out there to go along with your ’80s camcorder app, like this tape recorder for your iPhone. Happy time traveling!

Source: Twitter/@knushi22 via My Game News Flash
Images: Twitter/@knushi22
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