I was excited to catch a sneak preview of the aptly-named Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade last Thursday in Emeryville. The movie is a must-see for anyone interested in the historical relevance and cultural impact of classic arcade video games. Chasing Ghosts will likely bring a knowing grin of nostalgia to anyone who survived the Reagan years and perhaps spent more time than they’d like to admit pumping their loose change into arcade games. The movie will also serve as a great introduction to kids, just coming of age now, wondering about their parents’ youth, which, like all youths, was made to be misspent; in the early 1980s, during the height of the Cold War, kids showed up en masse, plunked down quarters, and defeated Martians and these lives have not yet been documented to the extent of those of the Baby Boomers, their parents, who turned on, tuned in, and dropped out during the Vietnam War.
The archival footage that Lincoln Ruchti and team have unearthed, including an arcade game marathon featured on TV’s That’s Incredible, is nothing short of excellent. The film itself includes a hip time warp soundtrack with songs by Missing Persons and Talking Heads and lots of uncovered photos of arcades of old, eventually boarded up by the Great Video Game Crash of 1984. Peter Hirschberg’s excellent revisionist 3D animation of old video game cabinets and classic video game play is also nothing short of inspiring.
Ruchti’s film focuses on the iconic Life Magazine two-page photo of video game champions taken one brisk morning in November 1982, the champions standing behind their high score games (with a bevy of early 80s cheerleaders—love the hair!—splayed out in the front row; perhaps itself a lingering sign of the era’s antediluvian (and shockingly overt) sexism as none of the champions were women). The photo was taken in Ottumwa, Iowa, the self-proclaimed Video Game Capital of the World, later endorsed as such by the Mayor and eventually even the Governor of Iowa himself, both businessmen who perhaps smelled a possible tourism surge by attaching themselves to the video game fad. This publicity stunt is organized like a three-ring circus by local businessman and Twin Galaxies arcade owner, Walter Day.
Chasing Ghosts sets out to answer the question where are they now? though, really, this is just a conceit to allow the filmmakers the opportunity to explore the genuinely quirky personalities of many of these early 80s video game world champions. In so doing, the film unveils a unique cast of characters from all parts of the globe—well, United States and Canada, at least, all presumably playing themselves (with the possible exception of Roy Shildt but more on him in a minute), with the more than quotidian number of expected adult neuroses present and even, one would assume, worn proudly on the sleeves of some of these ex-champs like so many old Activision merit badges. To wit, at least two of the adult gamers, now in their early forties, still live at home with their parents. Another gamer collects rare spiders and looks like he might be related to Comic Book Guy. Another former champ comes across with the fastidiousness of Gene, the anal-retentive chef (and he’s probably the most well-adjusted of those featured). Another player is more of a playa and seems to be living La Vida Loca, playing poker late into the night and consorting with call girls, or perhaps he just has commitment issues. Still another gamer collects pin-up art and takes great pleasure in showing it off, a collection he estimates to be worth $300,000.
It’s unclear what are we as viewers to make of these men or, worse still, the inclusion of Roy Shildt, a personality not from the original photo, though certainly a character and one who plays it to the hilt for the camera. The fact is that he may actually be dangerous to himself or others—at least, Day, for one, believes so, since the film takes pride in pointing out he has a restraining order against Shildt because Day refused to publish his Missile Command high score. Shildt, who goes by the moniker Mr. Awesome, dresses in a pilot’s uniform (but with shorts and dress socks) and even has a Mr. Awesome name tag to match. During the film, he actively promotes an autobiographical comic book about the sexual escapades of Mr. Awesome while dissing other, presumably more talented, video game players which, for this viewer at least, brought to mind the troubled brothers at the heart of Terry Zwigoff’s superior, if completely different, documentary, Crumb.
Walter Day comes off as a complex character in his own right. Portrayed in the film as equal parts shameless self-promoter and self-deluded songsmith, he appears to have been a genuine mentor to the young video game champions featured, who were often shuttled about the country —and, often as not, at their own expense–in order to drum up publicity for the nascent video game industry. Day is also a bit of a hoarder and a life-long entrepreneur. Early in the film, he is shown with a giant collection of old newspapers, which he is trying to sell as antiques. As the video game phenomenon takes hold, he hits upon the idea of becoming the self-anointed official scorekeeper for the entire industry; a few calls to the arcade manufacturers are placed (who, no doubt, saw the opportunity here themselves) and suddenly Day is the go-to-guy for all things high-score; something, amazingly, he continues to do with little fanfare for well over two decades, long after the Video Game Crash and the eventual rebirth of the home console market.
In one scene, which the filmmakers unwisely decide to portray for laughs, Day sends one of his beloved old score keeping jerseys, unsolicited, to the Smithsonian. That scene alone portrays a man trying to come to terms with how he has spent his time and feeling perhaps that he should be both better-known and more respected than he is, while also wondering if there is still enough time left for the greatest of all American pastimes: self-reinvention. Day is portrayed as a person in conflict, someone who is now trying to get out of the business of maintaining the official list of high scores, a job which he invented but which, like Pandora’s Box, has grown increasingly Byzantine, complex and, yes, unending in the ensuing years and widening acceptance of what has now become a multi-billion dollar a year industry. To wake up all these years later and find he doesn’t own a sizeable piece of the pie, it’s no wonder he isn’t feeling the love.Through all of this, Day and Twin Galaxies have officiated, establishing rules of conduct and rules of fair play, rules regarding tournament settings and factory settings, and increasing the level of proof players are now required to submit to authenticate a high score.
It wasn’t always that way. One of the interesting sub-plots involves Steve Sanders who, while not likely the first person to exaggerate his high scores on a video game, may go down in history as the first person to have been publicly busted for doing so. In the film, his fall from grace pretty much follows that of Greek tragedy: Sanders, of high station, enjoys a book contract with Ballantine and all the notoriety that comes with having the world record for Donkey Kong (yes, that includes video game groupies), until he is taken down by his own pride (with a little help from Walter Day and Billy Mitchell). Sanders eventually becomes a born-again Christian and is shown in the course of the film with his wife and four biblically named children, painfully re-reading his public letter of apology.
With many of those interviewed, the viewer is forced to conclude that, even if the gamers don’t yet realize it, their best days are likely behind them; while there are many laughs to be had in the film, more often than not, we’re laughing at the old champions rather than with them. The film ultimately leaves unanswered some darker questions about the champions it chose to feature—are we to assume that their fringe (and in some cases barely functional) adult personalities have anything at all to do with what made them video game champions in the first place? The connection is never really made and the filmmakers seem less interested in answering that question or even fully exploring what actually qualified these kids as the elite of the elite during the heyday of gaming than in lingering on their oft depressing present-day circumstances.
Was it an egomaniacal drive to be on top? That seems to have been the case with some, notably Billy Mitchell, called the Video Game Champion of the Century (which left this viewer wondering how many of the last hundred years even had video games?); not to take away from Mitchell, who is also the subject of the upcoming King of Kong, and is also certainly the player with the greatest name recognition from this era, noteworthy as the only person to get a perfect score in Pac-Man and, depending on which side you believe, perhaps still the reigning champion of Donkey Kong.
Was it an obsessive-compulsiveness to drive the body beyond what most would consider its natural limits, playing Defender or Asteroids or other games for sometimes more than forty hours straight once a strategy to defeat the machine had been devised? And how exactly did they eat, drink, or piss during these long periods of game play? How did they keep playing long after the arcade had closed for the night? How did they feel about the video game crash, when their talents no longer meant much to the masses? These and other questions, sadly, remain unanswered.
The film also focuses too little on the gee-whiz gameplay of the champions. As an audience, we’re left to take it at the word of Walter Day that these kids were indeed cream of the crop but many gamers will be disappointed that there isn’t more footage of the champions playing their specialty games, showing off their lightning-like reflexes and revealing the strategies for how they owned the machines. To be fair, there is some really cool footage of Mitchell locking Pac-Man ghosts into the exits and Ben Gold playing Centipede like you’ve probably never seen it played before and the movie also talks about the well-known strategies for shooting the UFOs in Asteroids and walking through the four same boards in Berzerk (which other gamers consider cheating); this may have been enough for a lay audience, unacquainted with the topic, but it left this gamer wanting more (which, hopefully, we’ll see that in the DVD extras once the home version is released. Come on, Mark Robichek, teach us the secrets of Tutankham).
The most emotionally satisfying sub-plot followed the story of two good old boys, Joel West and Ron Bailey, some twenty years apart in age, who kept challenging each other to improve their scores at Berzerk. West speaks almost beatifically of flow, losing himself in the moment, in a great game of Berzerk and equating it with a religious experience. This is something all gamers will likely identify with (I saw some vigorous nods and smiles of recognition in the group of gamers I attended the screening with). West and Bailey are the best of friends until Bailey bests West’s score and announces it to West publicly in a restaurant in front of West’s then-girlfriend, which apparently is more humiliation than his fragile gaming ego could take. This leads to twenty years of silent treatment from West who, during the course of the film, finally decides to bury the hatchet. The film achieves an emotional high as the two reconnect and, while they fail to get either of their Berzerk games working again, it appears both are willing to give their friendship another shot.
