If you want to see what the image would look like at high resolution -- I couldn't resist making a small JS implementation: <a href="http://ianhenderson.org/kickstart-vector.html" rel="nofollow">http://ianhenderson.org/kickstart-vector.html</a>
There is a youtube video in the comments with a recreation of the vector image from the original graphics:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXhxE4j6dm0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXhxE4j6dm0</a>
Root cause: The Amiga didn't have curves in its graphic primitives.<p>Just this week i read an article in a 1986 Byte magazine which included a comparison of the Amiga and Macintosh graphic privatives. The Amiga had color routines, but the Mac had circles, curves, rounded rectangles, and a few other desirable shapes that the Amiga lacked.<p>Except for the text, the Kickstart image is not a bitmap, it's the output of a vector drawing program using the built-in ROM routines. No curves, and that's what you get.<p>Edit: September, 1986, page 251.
How funny, I've been on an 80s Amiga Cracktro/Demoscene kick this week and it is an image frequently seen and tweaked in many demos.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50WWFEBsgfk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50WWFEBsgfk</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pssH6moTGLc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pssH6moTGLc</a><p>(I couldn't find the specific intros with the funny graphic...)
An unfinished, but "sorta working" attempt to recreate that vector drawing data onto an html canvas.<p><a href="https://jsfiddle.net/kw4b95gv/4/" rel="nofollow">https://jsfiddle.net/kw4b95gv/4/</a><p>I didn't do the color flood fill, and something isn't quite right, but it's recognizable.
Tossing my JS implementation onto the pile as well, I guess. Missing the flood fill command; picked the wrong graphics library for this and it was too late by the time I'd realized it. ;) Easy enough to change over to something else, but it's time to move on.<p><a href="https://codepen.io/Fortyseven/pen/rNWZpJb" rel="nofollow">https://codepen.io/Fortyseven/pen/rNWZpJb</a>
I never would have guessed that the Kickstart 1.x graphic was vector, but it’s so clear in retrospect. It’s not hard to spot the nodes of the pre-Bézier shape paths once you’re looking for them!