Infinite Lives

Exploring the value of games-as-iconography in art, literature, and popular culture

Your mother was right: those games will rot your brain.

Here are ten (?!) horror movies for gamers. Thanks to the combined efforts of reader comments and my own loathsome late-night cable TV habit, catalogued below are, count ‘em, ten—not seven—horrific parables about videogames and those who have the misfortune to play them.

Note: To everyone who linked to TV episodes, those were also great.

These movies are, almost uniformly and without rival, the absolute shittiest the horror genre has to offer. Enjoy.

How to Make a Monster, 2001

A made-for-TV movie based, however loosely, on the 1958 horror flick of the same name. In it, a team of game developers are pulling all-nighters, attempting to finish their next survival horror title. But when lightning strikes an AI chip…

Yeah, I can’t really recommend this movie. At all.

Verdict: No.

“Bishop of Battle,” Nightmares, 1983

Emilio Estevez stars as a teenaged arcade rat whose game obsession results in inevitable, supernatural comeuppance. This is pretty much the greatest, most archetypical videogame horror story ever written, set in that remote era back when Berzerk could kill a man.

Verdict: Perfection, crammed into 26 perfect minutes.

Stay Alive, 2006

For a movie that nobody watched, Stay Alive is weirdly watchable. And although the movie title is supposed to sound ominous, I’ve always been reminded instead of a popular disco tune.

Anyway, the plot. A bunch of twentysomethings get a preview copy of a PS2 game. Then they start dying. Honestly? I remember being surprised by how much I liked the cinematographer’s use of color.

Verdict: It isn’t Shakespeare, but it might be free on cable.

St. John’s Wort (Otogiriso), 2001

A videogame artist (J-horror staple Megumi Okina) and her producer decide, inexplicably, to explore a creepy old mansion. The plot unfolds like a survival horror adventure game—think Silent Hill or Fatal Frame—but without the scares.

In short, it’s the Japanese version of Stay Alive.

Verdict: A stylized clunker with a weird, tacked-on twist ending, but one that I own on DVD anyway.

Brainscan, 1994

Recommended by Chris Person, SpatulaOfDoom

“The ultimate experience in interactive terror!”

Just when you thought it was safe for CD-ROM gaming to finally take off, Eddie Furlong and his post-grunge bowl-cut go on a murder spree from inside the game. And this was well before anyone ever thought to call videogames “murder simulators”!

My favorite part of the trailer is when the puddle of computer-generated blood pools into the shape of a compact disc.

Verdict: Rad.

Ghost in the Machine, 1993

Recommended by SpatulaOfDoom, carpboy

“And then there’s the movie Ghost in the Machine, once again from the the early 90’s, and starring Karen Allen. Brainscan and Ghost in the Machine are at least watchable.” —SpatulaOfDoom

I just realized this entry isn’t technically about gaming, but because of its thematic strength I’ll give it a pass.

Verdict: Thanks to its comparatively high recommendations, this might be one to add to the ol’ Netflix queue.

Arcade, 1993

Recommended by SpatulaOfDoom

“There was a movie in the early 90’s called Arcade. It starred A Christmas Story’s Peter Billingsley.

“Arcade looks about as childish as Spy Kids [3-D], but it did have enough violence and language to earn an R rating. It’s an awful fucking movie nonetheless. David S. Goyer (Dark City, Blade, Batman Begins) wrote the abomination.” —SpatulaOfDoom

In spite of Spatula’s derision, this movie trailer is, for me, pretty effective—probably because I am still infatuated with the VR machine they had in the mall movie theater in 1993.

Verdict: Peter Billingsley…!

HALLOWEEN BONUS: Thanks to Zort in the comments, as well as three belated recommendations from Chris Person, I am adding three more movies to the list—bringing the list from its initial seven to a nice, round TEN.

Which brings me to a brief editorial note: in our collective strain to think of ten whole movies, the genre definition of ‘horror,’ at this juncture, becomes rather lenient. Does sci-fi/dark fantasy/suspense/action/thriller count as Halloween horror? Sure!

eXistenZ, 1999

Recommended by Zort and Chris Person

Does eXistenZ count as straight-up horror? It sure counts as bizarre.

I actually don’t remember this movie very well, but here’s what I can type from memory: Jude Law is in it. Christopher Eccleston is in it. Cronenberg directed it. And, uh, to play the game inside the collective dream, they put their hands into an alien vagina. That’s how it went, right?

Just seeing the trailer makes me want to go screaming to a psychotherapist.

Verdict: Yep, it’s horrific.

The Dungeonmaster, 1985

Recommended by Chris Person

Notoriously bad fantasy flick with a cult following. In it, a computer gamer with muscular legs wakes up to find himself… See? You don’t even need me to continue.

In keeping with the established format of this blog, I should really post a trailer. But this pebble-in-the-rough is so obscure, it doesn’t seem to have a trailer. So, in lieu of a grainy VHS dub, here is crisp footage of a young man earnestly synopsizing The Dungeonmaster instead:

Verdict: Why do people love this movie so much? So you don’t have to.

Game Box 1.0, 2004

Recommended by Chris Person

Game Box 1.0 is styled after some of the earlier entries on this list, and it is a glorious mess. In it, a heroic game tester (the guy from “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch”) fights to avenge his dead girlfriend (the girl from “Boy Meets World”). Um. Here’s a trailer.

Verdict: Brain Scan 2.0.

There you have it: seven cautionary tales for gamers and three honorable mentions, each a story about the game becoming real; every one, a misguided masterpiece.

If you think of any more (and I’ll be pretty annoyed if you do), leave ‘em in the comments.

I swear to break myself of posting about baked goods. At the very least, I won’t do another toy or cake -related post this week.

Oh, who am I kidding!

It took cake designer Elisa Strauss and a team of people twelve days to make this 300 lb (~136 kg) cake. The LEGO Men (and Ladies) are handmade and edible.

• Confetti Cakes – LEGO Batman comes to NYC! (via)

I confess that I have recently avoided blogging about my favorite video game baking site, Snack or Die, because it seems unfair that I post whenever Jocelyn posts, stealing all her photographs.

But Jocelyn’s brilliant Day of the Tentacle sugar cookies simply cannot be ignored. Sugar cookies themselves seem especially autumnal. The icing itself should be a cinch to mix. Apple Jacks cereal O’s make for perfect Purple Tentacle and Green Tentacle suction cups. All in all, what a neat Halloween baking project for any fan of LucasArts adventure games.

Also—and this has nothing to do with baking—there is not much on YouTube in the way of the old Maniac Mansion TV show starring Joe Flaherty. That seems criminal!

You probably already saw these on Kotaku and Vinyl Abuse, but because I love them, here they are again: CASTLE CRASHERS TOYS.

The artist decided to customize vinyl Teddy Troops figures. With the Troops’ faces smoothed over with Sculpey, they bear (hur!) an uncanny resemblance to the heroes of Castle Crashers. Aside from the Knights’ admirably strong brows, I think the renderings of the little pets are the best part.

• Albotas – Custom Castle Crashers Teddy Troops
• Porl’s Flickr – Custom toys : Ozzels, Mini-munny’s, teddy troopers

I cannot wait for Lead to come out.

Granted, it’s already out. You can download the ROM (edit: no, no, download this one) and play it right now in a 2600 emulator like Stella. A warning: it’s tough.

Lead is a music shmup from programmer Simone Serra, designed for the Atari 2600. It boasts unforgiving gameplay and a catchy ‘glitch’ soundtrack.

As for the game’s music mechanics, freelancer/archivist/programming hobbyist Jess Ragan says, “Simone [Serra] has done what Tetsuya Mizuguchi could not: create a ‘synes-static’ shooter that is not entirely dependent on pretty graphics and a pretentious art direction.” His review of an earlier build of Lead, below:

A little over a week ago, AtariAge announced the winner of the Lead Label Contest. The game will ship—with pretty labels on real Atari carts, as God intended!—this December.

• Retro Thing – Retrospective(?): Lead 16k for the Atari 2600

You guys. This is maybe more amazing than the Tatooine bento.

Apparently, this work of Incredible Genius was made for Derek Lieu by his girlfriend. Sheez, nice lady. Lieu posted more detailed photographs, along with plenty of annotations, on his Flickr, here. (The Yoshi egg is an actual quail egg!)

• Tiny Cartridge – Super Smash Bros Brawl bento lunches

No more toys! I insisted to myself last week. I was miserable. My bedroom, once spotless, is now cluttered with lidless boxes, each one full of tiny gashapon. I’d simply shelve the toys, but my shelves are already unhappily stacked with boxes full of Toy Collection 2006.

Poorhouse, meet my total lack of resolve. Because here they are, folks: ridiculously articulated figures from the Gyakuten Saiban series (including Ema Skye and Trucy, both from Apollo Justice).

Ema is my favorite. Forensic science is rad, and look how detailed her satchel is.

I can’t wait to get my hands on these, but no word yet on when, where, or how.

• Fruit Juicy – Tokyo Game Show 2008: Phoenix Wright Action Figures. (via)

8-Bit Art Found in Philly at the Northstar Bar

Cross Stitch Joystick, by John Freeborn

Garden of 8-Bit Delights, by Vox Anon

Every Time You Emulate, Doc Remixes a Meme, by Doctor Popular

When I was a fiction writing undergrad, our class was visited by the great Lee K. Abbott. I felt at odds with him, I remember. He told my class that it was wrong to write a story with certain facts concealed. He told us that when the facts of the full story are only gradually uncovered, the process is, to the readers, unfair.

Annoyingly, Lee K. Abbott was not wrong. There are stories we tell that are very deliberately ‘unfair’; it is now obvious to me that Abbott is not a fan of horror.

In the horror genre, and especially in Japanese horror, real fear comes from the thrill of discovery. And Japanese horror itself takes a cue from, not just the principles of Asian cinema and plotting, but also the very distinctly Japanese design philosophy. Japanese design is less about agency, and more about uncovering a plot. Lee K. Abbot would be furious with it.

Recently Leigh Alexander published this intriguing feature at Kotaku, about the history of survival horror. Apart from being an excellent overview of the genre, it wisely compares Western and Japanese game design philosophies. Most importantly, Alexander asks this question: does survival horror still exist? She writes,

Don’t Fight, Just Run! Titles like these all have distinct differences, of course, but they all tend to have a few traits in common. First, they largely de-prioritize combat mechanics, favoring challenging the player through elements like on-location puzzles, mazelike game areas, using the environment itself against enemies, and even fleeing and hiding instead of direct combat.

It’s true. Alexander names Siren and Fatal Frame as two of the finest examples of using vulnerability to create horror and panic. In the Fatal Frame canon, you do not use weapons or ‘defeat’ anything, per se—rather, you are a young woman wielding a camera.

I am still humming along with ukulele covers of video game theme music. Tonight, for instance, I was trying to remember where my favorite Kid Icarus theme cover had come from. I’d first heard it on Ray Barnholt’s excellent Famicom muxtape, which is now—and for the foreseeable future—nonexistent. Fortunately, one quick, successful google revealed that the musician I was looking for is none other than the Tanguy Ukulele Orchestra.

And while what follows apparently made some web-rounds back in July—I hate it when that happens!—I nonetheless feel vindicated in reposting it, thanks to yesterday’s North American WiiWare launch of Mega Man 9. So! Here is the Mega Man 9 theme music, as lovingly realized by the Tanguy Ukulele Orchestra:

The musician’s entire oeuvre is available for both listening and downloading at the official Tanguy Ukulele website (see below).

• Miniclash – Tanguy Ukulele Orchestra