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The King of Arcades Documentary, coming March 25th 2014


gigapig

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Will definitely check this out-- I program a film festival for a living, so it's right up my alley. As a side note, did anyone ever see a documentary called CHASING GHOSTS? We played it at my Festival back in 2007, and we came REALLY close to playing THE KING OF KONG as well, but had already accepted the first one and decided that we couldn't play two video game docs. Honestly, I think CHASING GHOSTS is a better film (you can watch it on HULU still, I believe), but it didn't have the competition aspect of KofK, which is what made that film so much more successful. CHASING GHOSTS is amazing though, because it focuses almost entirely on the history of Twin Galaxies... I'll never forget the first time I watched it. Loved it so much that I immediately watched it again, and I don't recall another time that I've watched a film two times back-to-back like that. When we played it at our Festival, they shipped in 40 arcade stand-ups and held daily competitions. It was amazing. Check it out if you can find it!

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Will definitely check this out-- I program a film festival for a living, so it's right up my alley.

Thanks for mentioning Chasing Ghosts, couldn't see where to buy it but got hold of it anyway; can't wait to watch it.

Your entire job revolves around a film festival, how cool is that, you are in LA I suppose.

Giga, did you find that Class of '81 side art you were looking for?

Can't remember, well I didn't find it although someone started doing a theme along the same lines, but there has been no update on that for a while.

I was looking for suggestions for marquee art, to have it printed on canvas, but that's all complete now.

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Yah, I saw "chasing ghosts", someone linked it a while back. Cool stuff but... well, gaming history is seen as single story while truth is it is the story of 3 parallel universes: usa, europe and japan. I was born in '77 but as far as I remember no one ever told me about how arcades were the "next big thing" in 70s-early 80s here in italy (remember, I live in rome, and it's a "big" city). Just an example: It's a bit weird how everybody in internet write about "the great videogame crash of 83'" while in europe and japan basically nothing happened.. nes had a '83 release in japan, so actually the market was growing there :D

It would be interesting to see also european and japanese history of gaming. In europe arcade history probably would be focused in early 90s with japan consoles, the myth of london's arcade in "trocadero", street fighter 2 and so on. I definitively must open a thread "gaming history in your country/city". It would not ending up being the "real story" but I think it's really interesting investigating the gaming microcosms were we lived back in the days :D

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It would not ending up being the "real story" but I think it's really interesting investigating the gaming microcosms were we lived back in the days :D

I don't remember any crash because I was 13 :) But I know there was one in the USA due to boring games and Atari churning out the same games and a glut of really terrible games at $30-$40 a pop(see below for a perfect example.)

I had a 2600 for a while but then like most moved on to home computers like the Spectrum and Commodore 64, I don't remember anyone at school who had a Japanese console, we all liked to sit around and pray for games to load or type them in from magazines.

Great days and thanks to everyone here and the people who write the software, with that I can relive those feelings every day. :cheers:

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Ah, I remember the good old days when computer games came out of a book you borrowed from the library and the phrase "return without gosub" could reduce a grown man to tears. Kids today don't know they're born...

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Yeah right...the crash didn't seem to happen in the UK. In 1982 the ZX Spectrum came out and that pretty much started the home computer revolution right through to the early/mid 90s when the Amiga and ST started to die off and the SNES and Megadrive were becoming popular (and of course then came the Playstation).

Nice link too...Chasing Ghosts is currently my fav video game documentary, but you can never have too many to watch :)

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Italy and UK have similar gaming history, 8bit was basically c64 vs spectrum (spectrum here was not as popoular as in uk, obviously) and 16bit was amiga vs atari st. Basically europe didn't had a "videogame market crash" for 2 reason: the market was not as "huge" as it was in USA and gamers just moved from first-second generation consoles to "home computer". European's "love affair" with consoles probably started with street fighter 2 (pc and home computer conversions were junk), pc became "gaming gear" only after 1993 (you guess it, doom :D ) while "mass market sale" was introduced by playstation. I mean, megadrive and snes obviously had fair sales here but they were perceived as childish toy. Playstation, instead, was seen as "more mature" entertainment (you guess it, lara croft :D ). Ah... nintendo did not use "r.o.b." as trojan horse here in italy, they sold it as "AI co-op" for games without mentioning it worked only with 2 games, lol.

Another great mistery is amiga's flop in USA... I mean back in 1985 it was cutting edge technology and it was cheaper than mac and ibm compatible... they should have sold it as hot cakes...

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  • 1 month later...

Just in case anyone is wondering, here's an update from the Faceass book page.

The King of Arcades

12 April ·

The King of Arcades is EDITED! ALL DONE! Meeting with Richie Knucklez this Wednesday to approve final cut! The DVD is packed with HOURS of extra content. Kickstarter backers will receive their DVDs this May. The release to the general public will be this summer! Thank you all for your patience and support. Stay tuned...

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Now I'm on Hulu watching it.

Will definitely check this out-- I program a film festival for a living, so it's right up my alley. As a side note, did anyone ever see a documentary called CHASING GHOSTS? We played it at my Festival back in 2007, and we came REALLY close to playing THE KING OF KONG as well, but had already accepted the first one and decided that we couldn't play two video game docs. Honestly, I think CHASING GHOSTS is a better film (you can watch it on HULU still, I believe), but it didn't have the competition aspect of KofK, which is what made that film so much more successful. CHASING GHOSTS is amazing though, because it focuses almost entirely on the history of Twin Galaxies... I'll never forget the first time I watched it. Loved it so much that I immediately watched it again, and I don't recall another time that I've watched a film two times back-to-back like that. When we played it at our Festival, they shipped in 40 arcade stand-ups and held daily competitions. It was amazing. Check it out if you can find it!
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  • 4 months later...

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