Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade (2007)

Arcades are after my time, unfortunately. My only experience for years had occasionally been the scarce surviving ones that existed in those ma and pa pizzerias or in some local food shack that eventually removed it for whatever reason. They were the stereotypical "Mrs. Pac-Man." For years I never thought I'd play a game other than one that has become so iconic and archetypal you could almost visualize and play it fluently in your sleep.Then came an arcade a close friend told me about a summer around two years ago. It was $15 to get in, and after that, "you're on your own," he told me. What he meant was there was a bright red button visible on most arcade machines that warranted a "free game" and all machines were rigged so that the button would be in effect. The second you walked in the place, you felt overwhelmed by the conglomerate of colorful, captivating electronic machines that offered cult favorites, such as the "Pac-Man" and "Donkey Kong" line of games, and those that went under the radar, "Elevator Action" (one of my new favorites) and even "TRON," based off the 1984 groundbreaker. The palace even featured tabletop arcade machines, newer machines housing the "Marvel vs. Capcom" and "Street Fighter" series, and provided their customers with a refreshment or an energy drink at little cost. It was a paradise I'm now itching to revisit just be typing this.If that is the closest I come to a true arcade experience, then by God it was beautiful. On to the documentary at hand, Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade is a wonderfully engaging documentary that presents its subjects, arcade junkies with high scores on numerous games, with care and attention. Some of the faces we are acquainted, or even reacquainted with if you were fortunate enough to see The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, are Billy Mitchell, the "Mrs. Pac-Man" champion with a slick mullet, Joel West, possessing a high score on "Berzerk," Chris Steele, the king of "Centipede," Kent Farries, who painstakingly mastered "Donkey Kong" and "Space Invaders," and who can forget the referee of it all, Walter Day? We are told early in the documentary that the video game capital of the world is a place called Ottumwa, Iowa, which housed the Twin Galaxies arcade center where all these champions would hang out for afternoons on end and play their favorite games. Day declared himself the authority of video gaming high scores, saying the score would be official in his book if you achieved it on one of his prized machines. Day went on to publish a well-over seven-hundred page book, which he is shown writing here, that compiles the high scores on video games throughout years of playing. If he ever recovers from such a monumental effort, I'd love to hear how much money in quarters those hunks of metal made.The most charming thing to hear from these indelible greats was probably their little tricks and primitive thinking that would go on to be pretty foreign to today's audiences. Chris Steele goes on to talk about how him and a friend would discover tricks such as the "double tap" on arcade machines, by placing a pencil's ends on two buttons and tapping the middle of the pencil back and forth, so as to hit the buttons at a rapid rate. Him and his friend would also label their high scores under the obviously ambiguous name of "WIZ," and remark with wit and humor how the question, "who is 'WIZ'?" would come up often in the arcade. It's the subtle, little welcomed things that we will miss from these establishments.What struck me as a greater surprise was to discover how short of a lifespan arcades actually had. They were accompanied by a sudden rise in popularity in the 1980's, but by the later end of the decade, they were then met with the look of distaste. Home-gaming, made popular by Atari, but mainly Sega and Nintendo, was advancing in not only consumer-familiarity and recognition, but also stylistic and graphical attributes. Games became brighter, more vivid and fleshed out, as apposed to the redundancy of many arcade games. Not to mention, once you paid the flat rate, you could freely stay home, go to the bathroom, get something to eat, and pause your game without the fear of something happening. The moral here is that time makes you bolder, children get older, and I'm getting older too.NOTE: Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade was released to video on demand outlets two weeks ago, but Hulu is offering the documentary in its entirety free of charge, http://www.hulu.com/watch/319596 Starring: Billy Mitchell, Walter Day, Joel West, Chris Steele, and Kent Farries. Directed by: Lincoln Ruchti.

1982's Video Game World Champions share their philosophies on joysticks, groupies and life.I enjoyed the discussion of how to make the buttons react faster by using an electric knife, a pencil, or the double tap. I cannot say I was ever so devoted to games that I felt I needed to speed up my response time. Is this devotion? Obsession? A waste of time? Hmmm.I also loved Billy Mitchell's mullet, and the trash talking from the "Missile Command" champion Mister Awesome, who has an obsession with phallic objects. There is something seriously wrong with that guy. Mitchell may not deserve to be famous, but you cannot fault the guy for taking advantage of opportunities that come his way. Awesome, on the other hand, seems to have a warped sense of his own importance... the costume and comic book take any bit of respectability gaming might have and throws it away.

I decided to watch this movie since I totally dug King of Kong, but was ultimately let down by the way it was directed. The reason why King of Kong worked was because it was a documentary with a story. There was a hero, a villain and his minions, a showdown at the end the didn't take place but still some action happening.This movie is a straight documentary that just shows us some old footage and photos, takes a peek into the current lives of these high scorers and shows us a lot of the Twin Galaxies guy who looks a lot like Ezra Cobb from the old 1970's Deranged movie.My main problem is the direction of this documentary. It seems that the director thought that it'd entertaining just to exploit these video game nerds. He lets the camera linger while they laugh like nerds, shows us how most still live with their parents, one has hundreds of pet spiders and lizards, one has a mail order Mexican girlfriend. I think this all has been done before in Revenge of the Nerds but better. Here in Chasing Ghosts it isn't funny, it is disturbing and sad. It is really telling that there is not one normal guy here except for the old Berzerk / Ham Radio guy who is about 20 years older than all the other guys who were teens in the early 80's.They really build up the suspense when they first show Billy Mitchell, the villain from King of Kong. Showing shots of his jeans, belt and hair before showing his face. He looks like more of a loser here, not as menacing as he did in the other movie although he does brag about how his restaurant was the first to bring hot wings to Florida.Bottom line: the movie is watchable and a little interesting but more than likely you'll just come away depressed from watching how sad these people turned out. I'm sure the director thought that it'd be funny to show how nerdy these guys are and how most still live with their parents but in the end it is just sad and depressing.

I have seen a number of docs in the past year about different forms of gaming, and they have generally been pretty interesting. Part of the fascination is to look into someone else's life and compare it to yours, hopefully making you feel better about yourself. Most of the docs that I've seen don't go out of their way to emphasize how silly or odd some of their subjects may be--they are usually pretty respectful about presenting things objectively, although I am sure they edit the footage to show us the most ridiculous moments. King of Kong was the most successful of these because, I think, it was able to tell a linear story. It had some of the same story elements we are familiar with in fiction, such as exposition, and a climax. Chasing Ghosts is somewhat less satisfying because it just talks to several of the people who participated in a group photo back in the early 80's. Everyone in the picture was a "world champion" of one video game or another. Some of them still take gaming and their accomplishments pretty seriously. The movie seems content to just get by on showing us how geeky the kids grew up to be. I'm not sure what else I could have wanted; I just didn't think it was especially interesting.