So let’s say you had to make a game around Charles Barkley, what kind of game would you make? Maybe a basketball game, maybe a coaching simulator? You’d be wrong.
The correct answer is make an RPG set in futuristic post-apocolyptic New York City where Charles goes around saving the world from basketball head zombies!
Now that you’re enthralled by the awesomeness download the game here.
If you’re like me then by now you’re tired of hearing about Uwe Boll and just want to see a game related movie that doesn’t necessitate you clamping your head in a vice and playing World of Warcraft for 40 hours to return to normal brain function after viewing. Well lucky for you that movie is here (or coming for those of you not fortunate enough to be in the opening cities.)
First let me say King of Kong is fantastic and you should probably just stop reading and go see it right now. Seriously.
So that didn’t convince you or maybe you have a few hours to kill to the next showing (or a few weeks/months) well fear not because I’ll keep writing about it so you can continue anguishing in your pit of self despair while waiting to see this masterful look at one of gaming’s greatest subcultures.
I just returned from seeing King of Kong here in Los Angeles at the Landmark Nuart where to my pleasant surprise also featured a Q&A session afterwards with the director Seth Gordon and others from behind the scenes. For the uninitiated King of Kong is a documentary which brings us a story of drive, conquest and controversy in the race to become the worlds best Donkey Kong player. The narrative is centered around Steve Wiebe who, after being laid off from his job and generally downtrodden by society, rises from the ashes and performs feats of training not seen since the great Rocky Balboa to rip the long standing Donkey Kong record from none other than the “Video Game Player of the Century”, Billy Mitchell.
Overall I’d say the experience was fantastic, however, I do get the feeling that careful editing has been performed to generally put Billy into somewhat of a negative light and paint Steve as the victim. We do, however, get to see many sides of the “characters” involved, including the part that I feel says the most about Billy, when he brings a Q*Bert machine to an 80 year old lady to help her in her goal of becoming the record holder. Even still it comes out to what is certainly a delightful piece of cinema and will surely be a treasure to video game lovers for decades to come.
Some interesting tidbits to come out of the Q&A session afterwards are:
- Billy Mitchell is a PR master and is very rehearsed in how he portrays his public image which could explain how he is so easily made to look evil.
- The battle for the high score is still an ongoing saga and just last night more draconian rules were instated making taking the record in Donkey Kong akin to an arcane ritual which one can only equate with necromantic resurrection.
- Seth Gordon is very comfortable around geeks and is in fact one himself.
- The controversial “gummy substance” was probably silicon used by Nintendo to repair the Donkey Kong boards back in 1984.
