Movie Review: Chasing Ghosts: Beyond The Arcade
Earlier this year I wrote a very positive review of the movie King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters because I was both fascinated with the content, and with how the film makers turned the story of a Donkey Kong high score rivalry into a universal story about "the outsider trying to break into the establishment." In recent months many stories have surfaced about the authenticity of the events depicted in King Of Kong, but even so, the core "universal truth" depicted in the film still stands as a monumental achievement for the film makers.
Just last week, Showtime started airing another movie that was filmed at about the same time as King Of Kong, named Chasing Ghosts: Beyond The Arcade. This movie has been shown at film festivals over the past couple years, but has not seen any kind of significant release until now. The movie is less a documentary about any one person, and more a story about the Golden Age of arcade games (roughly 1978-1983) and their effect on people. In particular, people who, for whatever reason, could play them very well. The crux of the movie is a photo in LIFE magazine that featured many of the best players of the time who had all collected in Ottumwa, Iowa, Nov 7, 1982 at the Twin Galaxies Arcade for a video game competition.
The film is a sort of "then and now" portrait of many of the depicted players. Many of the games and strategies are discussed in detail, and a very solid and compelling picture is drawn of what it was like to play and love the coin-operated video games of the early 80's.
While the gaming content is very interesting (including some nice 3D visuals and mind-bending photography tricks), the stories of the players themselves take-up most of the roughly 90 minute film and to be honest, many of these are cringe-worthy. It's obvious that many (but not all) of these "video game champions" were substituting devotion to these games for other missing parts of their lives. While a few actively deny that their obsession was caused by external forces, others are quite introspective and funny about it. The saddest stories here though come from the the individuals who simply cannot get beyond the the "glory days" of their favorite games and their own high scores. If there was supposed to be a mystery about the title of the movie ("Chasing Ghosts"), it disappears in the final frame. This is not really a film about games, but rather an in-depth look at obsession and the inability of people to leave the past behind.
If I have to find a fault with the movie it is that the narrative makes the film makers look less like parties interested in the subject, and more like bemused observers of nerd culture. From that stand-point, the movie is like shooting fish in a barrel . It's fairly obvious right at the outset that a 42 year-old guy playing Berzerk for 28 hours straight is going to have be some kind of obsessive personality. However, the structure of the film lends itself to multiple short stories without a single compelling narrative. The movie seems to be saying "Hey look at these nerds! See these nerds! They are nerds! Get it? Obsessive Nerds!", but with little else to add to the conversation. Again, the final frame (you will have to watch the movie to see it) of the film makes this apparent.
While the content of Chasing Ghosts: Beyond The Arcade is fairly solid, what is so interesting about the movie is how it looks under the shadow of King Of Kong. Even though it is not intended to be, Chasing Ghosts definitely watches like a companion piece to that earlier movie. Many of the featured characters in Chasing Ghosts are the same, save for King Of Kong "star" Steve Wiebe (whose absence makes it even more compelling as a set-up prequel...not that the producers intended it as such). It is also interesting to note that any internal impressions viewers may have created for themselves of the characters in King Of Kong will not be shattered by Chasing Ghosts. In fact, most of them will be wildly supported. While Steve Sanders comes off as less of an ass, and we get a more rounded portrait of disputed Missile Command champ Roy "Mr. Awesome" Shildt, everyone else (including Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day and Billy Mitchell) looks fairly familiar. This is a bit unfortunate for Chasing Ghosts, because to casual observer it appears to be covering the same ground as the earlier effort, but witha bit less to say about it. However, it is great for King Of Kong, as Chasing Ghosts simply adds more weight the proceedings depicted in the movie. Chasing Ghosts sets the scene, but King Of Kong tells the story. This creates the obvious double feature. For anyone who has not seen either film, the set-up of Chasing Ghosts could only be matched by the sucker-punch of King Of Kong. This is such a compelling pairing, that it is only too likely the double-DVD pack will be on sale as soon as the rights are worked-out.
However, even under the shadow of King Of Kong, Chasing Ghosts makes compelling viewing. Unlike the clear black/white, hero/villain subculture in King Of Kong, this movie takes a much more nuanced approach. The only heroes in the movie may be the video games themselves, still doing their job after all this time, even after being played, battered, exploited, and pummeled by these "champions" for the past 25 years. In the same way, the only real "villain" depicted is the passing of time itself: Sweeping away the years, and casually rendering the teenage exploits of the people involved, exploits that once seemed as important as anything of the day, to the dusty back-room of a museum that as of yet, still does not exist.
Flash Game Forever Hunted #8 in Time Magazine Top Games For 2008
The Flash game Forever Hunted, by Canadian university student, Evan Miller, has been named one of the Top Video Games of 2008 by Time Magazine. Most of the other games on the list were developed by teams of people and appeared on major console or PC platforms. Nestled in between Star Wars Force Unleashed at #7, and Field Runners (an iPhone game) at #9 is Evans' beautiful looking and playing, stylized platformer at #8.
You play it for yourself at Kongregate.
You can also check out more of Evan's games at his Kongregate profile page.
Development Diary – Micro Robot Maze #1
Development Diary - Micro Robot Maze #1
In my last game development post I wrote a little bit about the
game engine that I am fashioning
in Flex AS3. I was stuck as to exactly how to proceed after
posting that entry. I spent a few days going over the code I had
written and thought of scenarios where it wouldn't work, etc, but got
to a point where I needed to test it in a real-world situation. So,
since I have a load of unfinished games, and even more unfinished basic
tile sheets that I have created, I decided to make a relatively small
game (re-using some existing IP) and in doing so, flesh out
the game engine.
I had to first decide what game to make. I wanted to make a puzzle game
because I haven't made one in a long time. I started thumbing through
some of the books in my game development library and came across the
mention of a game I remember from the early early Mac days - Daleks.
When the Mac first appeared, it didn't have too many good games. I
didn't own one back in the 80's, but they were all over our schools
here in the USA. I think I played an Asteroids clone, a version of
Accolade Hard Ball, and a game called Daleks. I didn't know anything
about the game then (my apologies if my geek cred goes out the window)
because I had never seen the Dr. Who show on PBS and was not
keen on the show's terminology. The game was basically pretty simple.
You played Dr. Who on a large tile-based grid. On the grid along with
Dr. Who were a number of "Daleks". The Daleks were robots that would
chase Dr. Who to a fault. They were relentless even to the extreme of
running into one another an creating a pile of junk on the screen where
they used to be. The game play was pretty basic. The player moved Dr.
Who up down left or right jumping one tile at a time. Once Dr. Who had
moved, the robots would get there moves. They basically closed in on
Dr. Who and tried to land on the tile he was occupying. If
at any time Dr. Who shared the same tile as a robot, the game
was over. In his defense, Dr. Who had a sonic screwdriver that could be
used to destroy all robots in adjacent squares. We also had a limited
number of teleports available to him. The game basically went on until
Dr. Who was killed and then the player had to start over.
Complexity Workshop site has a
really nice set of information on the game and a playable Java version.
alt="daleks" title="daleks"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/daleks1.jpg">
Daleks from the
site (not the same as the ComplexityWorkshop version)
Armed with my limited knowledge of this game, I decided to use it as
the basis for a puzzle game called Micro Robot Maze. I called it Micro
because it will be a small game, not meant to knock anyones socks off,
but meant to be easily completed in a couple weeks (before Christmas).
I decided to keep the robots, but place the game in more of
a maze like play field rather than an open set of tiles. In
my version you will always enter the screen on the right, and the goal
is to exit the screen on the left through a door. Each tile-base level
will be constructed with some wall tiles to provide a puzzle-like
atmosphere for the game play. The robots will still chase the main
character (to a fault) and the player must avoid them,. The player will
be able to use strategy in an attempt to have the robots bump into the
walls or each other. If more than one robot occupies a single square,
they will be destroyed and turn into a pile of glowing material. That
glowing material will replenish the mega bombs (like Daleks sonic screw
drivers) and a teleporting orb that the main character can use to fend
off the robots. If the robots run into a wall, the player can
collect power cell that is dropped. If the player collects enough power
cells, he/she will gain an extra hero to use in the game.
There will also be a time clock count down. If the player can complete
the level before time runs out, he/she will be awarded bonus points.
I didn't want to design all new Sprites for the game, so I dug into
some older pixel art that I had created for a game (a Berzerk-
like adventure game) that I never completed (two years
ago!!!). I plan to complete that game as the follow up to Micro Robot
Maze as an extension of the engine I create this time around. That game
was never finished because I got stuck on the AI and never got back
into it. All of the sprites for the older game were developed directly
in Flash 8, so I had to save each frame out as a jpg and then open them
up in Gimp Shop. I then combined all of the frames for each into a new,
separate tile sheet and saved them out. At first, I had a little
trouble getting Gimp to save of PNG files with a transparent
background. The trick was to make sure to specify that you want the
background included in the export (that is the default). I had click
off that check box because I figured by NOT saving out the background I
would get transparent sprites. The opposite was true.
Here are the player sprites for left, right, up, and down:
alt="player left" title="player left"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/playerleft.png">
alt="player right" title="player right"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/playerright.png">
alt="player up" title="player up"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/playerup.png">
alt="player down" title="player down"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/playerdown.png">
Here are the robot sprites for left, right, up, and down (the robots
are meant to have tank-like tracks that move)
alt="robot left" title="robot left"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/robotleft.png">
alt="robot right" title="robot right"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/robotright.png">
alt="Robot up" title="Robot up"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/robotup.png">
alt="robot down" title="robot down"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/robotdown.png">
The robots also have a "Cylon" like eye that moves from left to right
when they are moving down.
I also needed to create a basic grid for the game to be played on. I
decided on a 12x12 grid that would give me 384x384 game screen. This
will fix nicely on my 400x400 chosen screen with a little space at the
top (and right) for score and some other basic messaging.
alt="grid" title="grid"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/basic%20grid.png">
That was as far as I got with the specifics of the game. I next dove
into my generalized game engine. Instead of simply trying to think up
all of the classes that I will need in a generalized form, I took a
hint from
target="_blank"> Squize,
and decided to start at the beginning. I first created the most simple
of title screens and a button to click. You will see that unlike
beautifully detailed opener,
mine is as bare as can be for now.
alt="title bare" title="title bare"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/titlescreen.png">
alt="button" title="button"
src="images/blog/mico_robot_maze/tilesheet_gobutton.png">
The "Go" button is my ultra basic attempt to re-create a Flash tween
will a tile sheet.
After all of this, there was little free time left this weekend to
working on the game engine. Was able to knock out a couple hours
in-between family visits, Christmas shopping, house clean-up and
baby/toddler care to add:
1. a com.8bitrocket.game.GameControl Interface that all game controls
(specific logic for an individual game) will implement. Currently I
have only two methods that must be implemented by any GameControl:
init() and run().
2. a com.8bitrocket.game.Screen Interface that all game screens must
implement. Currently I have only these methods that must be
implemented: init(), run(), show(), hide().
Those both are just at the beginning, so I will need to flesh them out
much more as needed. One of my big problems right now
is figuring out just how generic I want the code to be.
Certainly all games will have a title screen, so do I create
a standard ScreenTitle class that implements Screen but can be used for
any game, or do I create a unique one for each game. I'm not sure and I
guess that probably depends on how much control I give to the
GameControl and how much I give to the View, etc.
I need to put some time into it thought that is for sure. I am happy to
have a simple game to make, it certainly is helping me get moving on
the engine.