Leigh and I just recently re-discovered our jones for pinball after having attended the Saratoga Pinball & Arcade Show in back in July. If you haven’t been, you should check it out. It’s an excellent gathering of pinball geeks and machines at the YMCA in Saratoga Springs that is run as a fundraiser (a fun-raiser, perhaps?) for that branch of the Y. It’s all-around a great vibe for a great cause. We can’t wait to go back next year.
In the meantime, we’re trying play pinball wherever we can find it and in support of our revived passion for the silver ball, we’ve been watching movies about arcades and their games. There are quite a few out there, both documentary & narrative films, but here are a quick three to whet your appetite.
THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS (2007)
Not only is The King of Kong one of the best documentaries about an arcade game and video game culture, it’s one of my favorite documentaries, period. Director Seth Gordon is more well known for his big-budget comedies & TV shows (Horrible Bosses, The Good Doctor) but he’s had his hand in a dozen documentaries as well. The story follows the unexpected entry of an out-of-work Boeing engineer, Steve Wiebe, into the exceedingly peculiar universe of competitive video gaming. The story is set in motion in 2003 when Wiebe purchases a golden-era Donkey Kong arcade game to while away some of his unemployment time. He ends up setting a new record on the machine and submits his score Twin Galaxies, the self-appointed arbiter of tracking high scores in video games. Unbeknownst to Wiebe, he arrives as an outside disrupter to the status quo of the video game hierarchy. Intrigue, subterfuge and some serious geekery ensue as Wiebe attempts to claim his crown from video gamer & BBQ sauce huckster, Billy Mitchell.
As documentaries go, The King of Kong has everything- compelling, eccentric characters that would be at home in a Christopher Guest mockumentary, a well-told story with unforeseen twists and turns and a glimpse into an fascinating unknown world that we’re glad the filmmaker has visited on our behalf, distilling a cohesive humanist narrative from what you know must have been literal weeks of mind-numbing footage about arcade minutia, unnecessary tangents and petty squabbling that we know Gordon would have been subjected to and has mostly spared the audience from. (Definitely spare a thought for the edit team on this one…)
It’s available for rent at most of the major streaming services. Additionally, Variety Video has a DVD copy. You’ll find it on our “Greenville Drive-In Picks” shelf. The link to the trailer is here:
It’s not as polished or as focused as The King of Kong but there is a lot to like and learn from Brett Sullivan’s pinball doc, Special When Lit. Like Kong it features a rogue’s gallery of curious and eccentric humans, their common denominator being an all-consuming passion for the silver ball. The film does a decent job laying out the history, controversies and culture of pinball, not only in the United States but also in abroad. (Interesting fact – at the zenith of pinball manufacture, more machines were being shipped to Western Europe than domestically, fueled by intense demand there coupled with bans on pinball across many American states.) In 2023, the film feels a little more dated than Kong but if you’re into pinball, arcades or are fascinated by other people’s obsessions, this is a good watch.
You’ll find it for free on some of the secondary streamers. I watched it on Tubi. The link to the trailer is here:
This video game-inspired film turns 40 next year and remains something of a minor cult classic. Alex Logan, played by Lance Guest, is a teenage boy living in a trailer park with his mother and younger brother. Alex’s only diversion is an arcade game called ‘Starfighter’ which he plays so well, he becomes the game’s highest scorer. This attracts the attention of the game’s creator, Centauri, who proceeds to abduct Alex from Earth and takes him into space where it is explained that the video game was actually an audition and was designed to identify ‘Starfighters’ to take part in the conflict between the Rylan Star League and the Ko-Dan Empire.
At one level, The Last Starfighter is kind of a straightforward teenage boy hero fantasy but it retains its human connective tissue against the backdrop of its’ pioneering computer-generated special effects. Four decades later, these effects obviously look dated, but it’s worth noting The Last Starfighter helped pushed computer animation forward in Hollywood by including 27 minutes of CGI generated with a Cray X-MP supercomputer.
The film was a modest success, generating a box office return of $29 million on a $14 million budget. Rumors have circulated for years about a possible re-boot of or sequel to The Last Starfighter but there seems to be some discrepancy about who actually owns rights to the film.
If you want to see the original, it is available for rent on most of the major streamers. I watched it on Blu-ray. You can view the trailer here:
Cinema With A Twist 