Last September we ran a brief story on a new documentary on pinball called “Special When Lit” and I sort of forgot about it until recently. Now, the documentary will be appearing at a few different upcoming film festivals, including the Los Angeles United Film Festival(Apr. 29th-May 6th), the Buffalo Niagra International Film Festival (Apr. 16th-25th), and the Wisconsin Film Festival (this Saturday, Apr. 17th). The filmmakers describe the film as such: “This is the definitive story of the rise and fall of pinball as told by the fans, collectors, designers and champion players from across the globe. A game, a sport, a lifestyle – pinball takes this eclectic bunch of self-confessed ‘pinheads’ back to their youth as they open up passionately to reveal the attractions of the ‘world’s funnest toy’.” The film will be hitting DVD and Blu-Ray sometime later this year.
Last September we ran a brief story on a new documentary on pinball called “Special When Lit” and I sort of forgot about it until recently. Now, the documentary will be appearing at a few different upcoming film festivals, including the Los Angeles United Film Festival(Apr. 29th-May 6th), the Buffalo Niagra International Film Festival (Apr. 16th-25th), and the Wisconsin Film Festival (this Saturday, Apr. 17th). The filmmakers describe the film as such: “This is the definitive story of the rise and fall of pinball as told by the fans, collectors, designers and champion players from across the globe. A game, a sport, a lifestyle – pinball takes this eclectic bunch of self-confessed ‘pinheads’ back to their youth as they open up passionately to reveal the attractions of the ‘world’s funnest toy’.” The film will be hitting DVD and Blu-Ray sometime later this year.
A short time ago we heard that Atari was looking at bringing some of it’s classics to the silver screen and now word has it that Warner Bros. is looking to bring a big Taito classic to movie theaters – Space Invaders. There aren’t any details on it yet as it is just in the negotiating round at the moment but it is another indicator that Hollywood isn’t looking to let up on the video game to-movie translations any time soon. I am guessing that one reason why they are looking at doing classic games into movies is due to the success of classic titles in recent times via downloadable means and the general nostalgia that drives collectors to keep the fun alive behind these games. Whether this, Missile Command, Asteroids or the Joust movies we heard of ages ago will make for riveting box office numbers, is something we will have to wait and see about. With Space Invaders it can prove a challenge simply because aliens invading from space is far from new but at least they have a template to follow.
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity of reviewing a documentary film about pinball called “Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball”. I enjoyed it, in part because at the time I knew very little about pinball history or what kind of work went into creating one game. Now another documentary is about to make it’s debut with pinball as the primary subject and it looks like it will also be a winner. Called “Special When Lit”, the focus behind this film is not just about the game itself but also behind the fans who are keeping it alive. The filmmakers visited a plethora of different pinball shows and tournaments where they interviewed fans, collectors and pinball designers to get the proper feel for what it is all about. The film will debut next week at the Raindance Film Festival in London and from there it will make the rounds at different international film festivals (if it shows up at Sundance perhaps I could get a chance to see it, weather, time and money permitting) before it is hopefully picked up for distribution on DVD/Blu-Ray.
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity of reviewing a documentary film about pinball called “Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball”. I enjoyed it, in part because at the time I knew very little about pinball history or what kind of work went into creating one game. Now another documentary is about to make it’s debut with pinball as the primary subject and it looks like it will also be a winner. Called “Special When Lit”, the focus behind this film is not just about the game itself but also behind the fans who are keeping it alive. The filmmakers visited a plethora of different pinball shows and tournaments where they interviewed fans, collectors and pinball designers to get the proper feel for what it is all about. The film will debut next week at the Raindance Film Festival in London and from there it will make the rounds at different international film festivals (if it shows up at Sundance perhaps I could get a chance to see it, weather, time and money permitting) before it is hopefully picked up for distribution on DVD/Blu-Ray.
As some of you maybe aware there is a sequel on it’s way to the 1982 movie “Tron”. Well it looks like the marketing for the film has now begun with these really neat arcade tokens for Flynn’s arcade (featured in the original Tron).
Just realised how long it’s been since I’ve watched the original, must change that!
UPDATE: Here are a couple of new viral sites promoting Tron:Legacy (which is supposedly the final name for the film, after they have changed it a bunch of times): Flynn Lives and Home of Tron. From Home of Tron they are showing a Space Paranoids arcade cabinet – which was never shown very well in the movie and it didn’t look quite like this. This leads me to wonder now – is there a chance that we could actually see Disney make a real Space Paranoids game and cabinet where you could find this at certain arcades out there? If so, I wonder how you could possibly sign up for that, I’d love to have a Space Paranoids cabinet at my arcade and do my little part to hype the Tron movie. 😉 – Shaggy
And for an extra blurb, AICN has some shots of the concept art shown at Comic-Con. It looks really good so far.
As some of you maybe aware there is a sequel on it’s way to the 1982 movie “Tron”. Well it looks like the marketing for the film has now begun with these really neat arcade tokens for Flynn’s arcade (featured in the original Tron).
Just realised how long it’s been since I’ve watched the original, must change that!
UPDATE: Here are a couple of new viral sites promoting Tron:Legacy (which is supposedly the final name for the film, after they have changed it a bunch of times): Flynn Lives and Home of Tron. From Home of Tron they are showing a Space Paranoids arcade cabinet – which was never shown very well in the movie and it didn’t look quite like this. This leads me to wonder now – is there a chance that we could actually see Disney make a real Space Paranoids game and cabinet where you could find this at certain arcades out there? If so, I wonder how you could possibly sign up for that, I’d love to have a Space Paranoids cabinet at my arcade and do my little part to hype the Tron movie. 😉 – Shaggy
And for an extra blurb, AICN has some shots of the concept art shown at Comic-Con. It looks really good so far.
When Hollywood studios set their sights on adapting a video game into a film, you sadly have to worry about how badly the game will be butchered on screen. Hollywood has a terrible track record when it comes to these projects, although adapting films into games doesn’t fare any better. On occasion when they do want to adapt a game into a film, you really have to question what it is they are smoking there at the game studios because it makes little sense as to why they want to take the project on. First was Joust, which was announced ages ago but I haven’t heard anything on that project since and now, they want to make the classic Atari arcade game Asteroids into a movie.
(take a moment to scratch your head in confusion)
I don’t get it either – I love Asteroids as much as the next guy and I even have the game sitting at my arcade but I still don’t understand where this movie idea came from. They must be looking at what made truck-loads of money back in the day and tying it to the nostalgia that people still have for classic arcade games to come up with this idea. It’s no secret that Asteroids has made tons and tons of money over the years for Atari and it is certainly one of their best recognized and best selling games they have had in their arsenal but to have expected to see a movie come out of it was not expected. Strangely enough, it appears that four movie studios were bidding on this, with Universal Studios coming out on top. I do wonder if they will hearken back to the Atari 2600 Asteroids manual for an idea on the storyline, not that there is much there to work with.
Label this under the “somewhat related to arcade games” category but Rifftrax – which is helmed by three former cast members of the hysterically funny show Mystery Science Theater 3000 – has released a rifftrak for the beloved movie which features plenty of concepts gleaned from arcade games, TRON. What is Rifftrax? This link explains all but essentially it is a downloadable commentary that is released for a DVD movie where the commentators riff on the film – similar to MST3k but without the shadows and the hosting segments.
As a fan of TRON, MST3k and Rifftrax I have wanted to see them do TRON for a while now and they finally have – sort of. Unfortunately none of the former MST3k guys are on the track for this one, instead they got Johnathan Coulton, Paul and Storm. I’m not sure who they are but they seem to do a decent job at riffing the movie if the sample below is any indication.
Next up they need to take on another arcade-related movie known as Joysticks (if this movie had been more popular I would maintain that it is the real reason that the game industry crashed but then again it’s mere existence may have caused it too) . I have never seen it myself but from what little I have seen on youtube it looks pretty terrible and thus ripe for riffing.
Is the Street Fighter Movie one of the worst movies ever and is Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game one of the worst games ever? More than likely, but I some how can’t help look back at them with a feeling of weird fondness. That’s why I’m loving all these pictures that have sprung up courtesy of Alan Noon – who posted a ton of info on the game last year. Also it had Kylie in a leotard, what’s not to like!
Arcade Heroes 
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