Portraits by Olympia: When Italy Invented the Arcade Cabinet with a Camera (1983)
There are stories in the arcade world that sound like urban legends until the cabinet emerges from a dusty warehouse to prove it was all true. That is exactly what happened with Portraits, an extremely rare and almost forgotten gem, conceived and developed in Italy by the historic company Olympia. An incredible discovery, recently unearthed in Sweden after tracing an unbelievable European route, which brings to light a fundamental truth: the enormous and all too often ignored innovative capacity of our engineers.
This discovery is not just video game archaeology; it is tangible evidence of how cutting-edge Italy truly was. Few remember today that our country was a veritable laboratory of pioneers. We were among the very first, thanks to visionary figures like Giorgio Peroni, to give players the ability to write their names on the high score screens. We were the absolute first to conceive and create the concept of the video pinball. And with Portraits, Italian ingenuity set another world record: the very first image digitization in a video game.
To understand the magnitude of this innovation, we must contextualize the era. We were in a time when digitization and digital cameras were concepts confined to science fiction. Every player’s goal was immortality on the “High Score” leaderboard, and Olympia decided to push beyond the hardware limits of the time. In Portraits, if you managed to break the record, the cabinet didn’t just let you enter three initials: the machine was equipped with a system capable of literally taking a photograph of the player at that exact moment, then processing and digitizing the face, inserting it directly on the screen inside the game.
It was a technical miracle for its time, requiring deep knowledge of electronics and bold programming to make a live image capture communicate with the phosphors of a cathode-ray tube monitor.
Yet, faced with such a jewel that survived time and resurfaced from Northern Europe, a question spontaneously arises that inevitably leaves a bitter taste in the mouth: what did we miss out on? We had the minds, the ideas, and the technical skills to compete on equal terms with the American and Japanese giants. If, in the 1980s, the Italian government had understood the magnitude of this technological revolution, investing even a shred of resources and attention in this sector, how would history have changed? Perhaps today we wouldn’t speak of Italy solely as a historical import market, but as a global superpower in the video game industry.
The search for such a piece is never a walk in the park. It means sifting through archives, exchanging emails with collectors on the other side of the world, and often chasing ghosts for years. For a lifetime, I searched for traces of Portraits, hoping that at least one cabinet had escaped the scrapyard, hidden who knows where.
Then, during one of my routine searches, my computer screen returned an unexpected result. A link. It led to the website of Stadsauktion Sundsvall, an auction house in Sweden. The preview image spoke volumes: it was him. The wooden cabinet, Olympia’s unmistakable design, that piece of Italian engineering history was right there, cataloged simply as “Arcade Game, Portraits, 1983.”
My heart began to pound, but the joy of the discovery was extinguished in a split second, replaced by a real punch to the gut. The auction was already closed. But it wasn’t the timing that made me shudder; it was the final hammer price.
One hundred and sixty euros.
I mean, can you believe it? A few, paltry euros for an object of monumental historical importance. A price that barely covers the cost of a dinner out, paid to take home the first video game in history capable of digitizing a human face.
As I stared at that number on the screen, my disbelief turned into a stomach ache. Who bought it? Did they really know what they had their hands on, or did they buy it out of curiosity, to dismantle it, or perhaps to reuse the cabinet? The thought that the only testament to this Italian engineering milestone might end up gathering dampness in a basement, or worse, being destroyed, was intolerable.
That screenshot of a Swedish auction closed at 160 euros was not just a missed opportunity; it threatened to be the final condemnation to oblivion for an unrepeatable piece of our heritage. I absolutely had to find out where it went.
Months passed silently, and, I admit, I had resigned myself to the idea that this piece of history was lost forever. Until today, when the situation flipped.
While scrolling half-heartedly through posts in a European Facebook group dedicated to arcade sellers, an ad instantly caught my attention. A guy was selling a cabinet that made me jump out of my chair. It was him. The wood grain, the details: it was the exact same Portraits that had slipped away at the auction house months before.
I immediately contacted the seller. His name is Fredrik Nilsson, he lives in Umeå, in northern Sweden, and he is a huge enthusiast who runs a YouTube channel and an Instagram page dedicated to arcades (which I highly recommend you visit, as they are truly worth it). Fredrik told me a chilling story that perfectly explains the fine line between historical preservation and vandalism.
He had found the game at a local reseller, one of those who usually buys old original arcade cabinets just to completely gut them. Their fate is well-known: rip out the game’s soul to make room for LCD screens, Pandora’s Boxes, or Raspberry Pi emulators, turning historical relics into sad, soulless multi-game cabinets. Fredrik, immediately recognizing the incredible importance of that Olympia model, didn’t think twice: he got in his car and drove for four hours just to save it from that fate.
But when he arrived, it was almost too late. The wicked dismantling process had already begun. The reseller had removed all the wiring, ripped out the original camera and flashes, and taken away the monitor and power supplies. There seemed to be no trace left of Portraits‘ beating heart. Then, a miracle: the original game board had survived intact.
Fredrik put the wreck up for sale as it was, with one irrevocable condition: he would only sell it to someone capable of saving it, carrying out a true conservative restoration to protect a cultural asset. Before accepting my proposal, he confessed that he had looked into who I was through a collector friend of his. To my great surprise and pride, this collector knew me well and gave Fredrik excellent references regarding our work and our dedication.
The deal was sealed. While waiting for the cabinet to physically arrive in Italy, Fredrik sent me photos of everything he managed to salvage, and I decided to share them here with you, as an absolute exclusive. If you try to search the internet, you will find nothing about Portraits, only a few grainy old photos. And the game board? I had never even seen that before myself.
Now, the ball is in our laboratory’s court. More precisely, it will be up to Domenico to work his magic and rebuild everything as faithfully to the original as possible. As only he can do. Domenico is not just a technician; he is a true magician of cultural preservation: he is the only one I know capable of repairing complex boards without having the precious electronic schematics at hand. He has already pulled off incredible miracles in the past, bringing back to light historical cornerstones like UFO (the first video pinball in history), Crazy Ball (the first arcade game where you could write your name), and Flying Shark (one of the most iconic titles built from the leftovers of UFO).
It will be a titanic challenge, but if anyone can resurrect Olympia’s masterpiece, it’s Domenico. And we will tell you about every single step of this rebirth.
Up to this point, we have talked about the hardware side and the incredible world first of the integrated camera, but what was Portraits actually about?
The concept was decidedly original for the time. The player took on the role of a photographer tasked with capturing wild animals across four different scenarios, trying to survive obstacles and not get run over. The graphics were rich and the sound department very well-crafted. Olympia believed in this project so much that they even licensed it to the historic Zaccaria, which distributed it under the name Safari, aiming to make it a flagship title in the arcade market.
Yet, despite the incredible innovation of the camera that rewarded the record holder by taking a real photo to insert on screen alongside their name, the game did not get the hoped-for response. Perhaps due to a decidedly punishing difficulty level, Portraits turned out to be a commercial flop. A destiny that made it quickly disappear from the arcades, contributing to making it the ultra-rare chimera it is today.
But there is another crucial aspect tied to this title, one that closely touches anyone who loves video game preservation. Currently, the emulation of Portraits on the MAME project is severely incomplete. Due to the extremely scarce technical documentation that survived over the years, the emulator runs the game in black and white—since the structure of the original color palettes is still shrouded in mystery—and it completely lacks audio.
This is exactly where our rescue takes on a significance that goes far beyond the walls of our laboratory.
When Domenico gets his hands on that precious surviving board and manages to get it running again, his primary task will not be limited to restoring our cabinet. He will have a true mission for the international community: extracting the missing information, mapping the hardware architecture, and decoding the video signals and sound management, only to then immediately send all the detailed technical specifications to the MAME development team.
The goal is simple: to fill a technical gap that has lasted over forty years. Thanks to this miraculous Swedish discovery and the reverse engineering work we will carry out, Portraits will finally be preserved and emulated perfectly, in full color and with its original sound. A dutiful act to give back to history an unjustly forgotten piece of Italian genius.
