THE CURSE OF BEING PAC-MAN

Commenter Alogusz pointed me to this astonishing rendition of Pac-Man. I've always been fascinated with arcade cabinet artists' imaginative interpretations of rudimentary video game graphics, but this is perhaps my all-time favorite adaptation. (It's available as a t-shirt at Threadless!) The artist is Travis Pitts and he happens to be the author of one of my other fave threadless threads too...

VINTAGE PAC-MAN GOSPEL TRACT

I found this on a video game in 1982. Click any image to enlarge...

VID KID MEMORIES

Me, showing off a piece of artwork from my Q-Bert Period

The Land of Oz arcade was hidden in an obscure alcove of the Northwest Arkansas Mall. To a kid, finding it was a challenge in itself. On more than one outing I completely failed to locate the place and left the building wondering if I had actually dreamt earlier visits. (My folks were no help. They stayed intentionally aloof, preferring to avoid the blaring music and the scuzzy teens.) This lent a truly mythic quality to the venue, as though it were a portal which only presented itself under certain conditions.

Its futuristic entryway was reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange with its series of white archways of descending sizes, each layer concealing a row of glowing florescent lights. The dimly lit gaming floor was jammed with coin-operated machines, but these weren't of the video variety (yet). I had caught the tail end of the penny arcade era, therefore the amusements were purely mechanical in nature. The playing fields were three dimensional and games were played using items like miniature metal baseball players that pitched steel balls, or plastic wildlife you shot with dummy rifles. For a dime, a kid could operate the pushbutton console that made Peppy the marionette clown dance. The same price bought a song from a tiny animatronic marching band. But the main draw always seemed to be the wall of pinball machines.

I was in first grade (1979) when a routine trip to Oz revealed something very different. The whole place was rearranged to accommodate a new centerpiece for the room. It was a table with a large black and white television screen embedded under glass. A crowd overlooked two young men at either ends of the furniture who were both viciously running their hands over what would come to be known as "trackball controllers." The game was Atari's Football. The name didn't make a lot of sense to me because all I saw was a bunch of little white X's and O's. This was the first video game I ever encountered.


Coin-operated video games taught me a new kind of brutality. The moment I plunked in that first quarter (I think it was Asteroids), the game set out to do what it was programmed to— to mercilessly destroy me. The machine had complete disregard for my tender age, lack of experience, or the tasks I had to perform to earn those quarters. My first game ended swiftly. My nervous smile turned to anguished tears, and my adventuresome spirit was replaced by the pain of both financial loss and public humiliation. Upon my defeat the cabinet just stood there, tall as any human adversary, but with no capacity for remorse– only hunger for more money. Ironically, there was zero fun in those early lessons of video life. However, video games would eventually empower me like nothing else had. For the first time in my life there was something I could do better than my parents (and most of my friends). This was a very big deal.

My imaginary alter ego

For me, the outcrop of original characters was as appealing as the very act of playing the machines. There were a couple of years there before the games went the way of the toy industry and became saturated with subjects from existing movies and cartoons. Limited onscreen graphics allowed for personal interpretation of these new video worlds and the liberties taken on the cabinet artwork taught me how a dose of imagination could enhance the playing experience. The units themselves were a whole new art form. The relationship between the art on screen and the art on the sides tickled my brain. Naturally, these icons wedged their way into my own artistic vernacular. I soon found myself dwelling on the lives and worlds of these video game personalities even when space and money separated me from the arcade.


I cyclically revisit my classic gaming roots several times a year. During these seasons I binge on the likes of Robotron, Satan's Hollow, and Black Tiger (to name but a few) and my mind retreats into the glowing sanctuaries of Land of Oz, Baily's Pizza Emporium and numerous other family fun centers. Obviously, I'm currently on one of these kicks and I thank you for allowing me to publicly wallow in nostalgia as I escape a particularly ugly February. But let's not stop just yet. Here's a quick batch of visuals from my own video game heritage...

I drew this on site at Crystal's Pizza in Tulsa, Oklahoma the first time I saw Donkey Kong Junior. I wanted to capture every detail so that I could accurately tell my friends. Video game sequels were still rare at that point, and the site of it was so exhilarating I felt like I was dreaming. Ms. Pac-Man had the same effect on me.
Playing Zaxxon at the roller rink. Somewhere Journey was playing.

There's a whole mini-drama taking place in this picture.
Tron: "Hi, I'm Tron."
Warrior: "O, Tron" [thows deadly disc]
Yori: "Duck, Tron!"

The perfect marriage of film and video games

The Pac-Man Fever shirt was custom assembled by me at the local T-shirt emporium. It had my name on the back in fuzzy letters.

The Summer of Pac-Man

Self portrait

My love of Pac-Man meets my love of Frankenstein

Just when I thought all was lost on the video game front, the Nintendo Entertainment System came out. Mine came with a R.O.B. the robot. The drawing above is my Junior High take on the game Kung-Fu.

Previously on the Secret Fun Blog...

MAP TO THE LOST ARK

(click to enlarge)

Indecipherable graphics and maddening gameplay never stopped me from joyfully immersing myself in the Raiders of the Lost Ark game for the Atari 2600. Back in my day, we didn't have sissy internet message boards to cry to when we got stuck on a level, or fancy pants gaming manuals to spoon feed us every step of the way. We drew our own! And we liked it!
Presented here is the solution to Raiders which I personally illustrated in 1983. I traded many days and nights of my youth for this information. True fact– the last spanking I ever received from my parents was a punishment for playing Raiders after bedtime. I regret nothing.

(But if vintage hand-drawn video game maps are your thing, there is none better than this Zork I masterwork.)

THE COLLECTOR'S PITFALL

If you still own a copy of Pitfall! for the Atari Video Computer System then there's a chance that you're a geek. But when it's autographed by game designer David Crane, such a cartridge serves as legal proof of inexorable geekery in most states. I recently stumbled upon this monogrammed game of mine which inspired me to track down and blog photos of my visit to the 1999 Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas where I earned this nerdiest of treasures. My search yielded disappointingly pathetic results. Even so, I'll go ahead and present you with two unremarkable photos and a scan of the cover of the official expo program.

David Crane signs a game cartridge. Why did I even take this? Why not just wait for him to finish so that he could look at the camera? Anyway, I got a kick out of hearing panel discussions on the golden years of home gaming. Activision was the first company to credit individual game designers and in turn, they were treated like rock stars. Million dollar parties accompanied each new game release. Multiple hotel ballrooms were filled with foliage and live jungle animals for the debut of Pitfall! and when Barnstorming came out, creator Steve Cartwright landed at the red carpet in a real biplane.

They also discussed the sudden downfall of the industry in 1983. The panel cited a massive influx of inferior games as the primary cause of the crash. One programmer recalled how he knew it was all over when he saw copies of Parker Brothers Star Wars series of Atari games on sale at Toys "R" Us for $3.00 apiece– and each box advertised a $5.00* mail-in rebate! (*Those numbers may not be exact, but I know they're close)

This shoddy snapshot pretty much sums up the dealer floor– tables and tables of old software and software related ephemera. I quite enjoyed it, and I did come home with that Q-Bert coin bank in the foreground. But the real purchasing action took place deep in the night in the designated trading room. I got some crazy-good deals one night from a fellow who was gleefully liquidating his collection at near giveaway prices. Ah, vacation memories.


As promised, here's that program booklet. Having seen this display of memorabilia, I'm confident that you now feel as though you were actually there.

CSI:PU

While commercial pranks and novelties have long fallen out of vogue, they continue to simmer beneath the surface of our cultural landscape. Occasionally they pop up momentarily in mainstream media— Kramer joy-buzzes George or Michael Scott winds up his chattering teeth, but semi-recently the topic actually surfaced as the central theme of a primetime television show. In December CBS aired an episode of CSI:NY called Child's Play which, oddly enough, focused entirely on the world of mail order novelties. Naturally, I tuned in.

Before I continue, I must disclose that this was my very first exposure to the CSI franchise. I've seen the TV ratings and marveled at our nation's appetite for multiple weekly servings and assorted regional incarnations of CSI:Anyplace. It looked as if someone had tapped into a seemingly endless flow of hard-hitting, populous-pleasing entertainment. This being my perception, I found the episode to be just shockingly bad. I'm talking sub-USA Network-in-the-90s bad. However, I believe that there is no other place online better suited to document such an odd, prank-related phenomenon. So let us review this monument to creative barrel-scraping...

The show opens with a suave, young, suit-wearing actor entering a "trendy bar" set. (I wonder if the first line of the script was "So this guy walks into a bar..." and if it was typed with a smug grin.) He orders a pricey drink to celebrate the "deal of a lifetime" that he just made. (We later learn that this deal entailed a failing catalog business and a warehouse of overstocked novelties. Well, OK, I suppose that does sound pretty sweet.) He also orders a drink for the model/actress at a nearby table. When the bartender turns around he slips something into the model/actress's drink. "Case solved!" cries the home viewer. But this turns out to be a case of writer's misdirection, for he merely dropped a classic Bug in the Ice Cube gag into her booze...


Our prankster hero lights up a cigar in celebration of his cleverness. And then his face blows off. Now, being a CSI novice I admit I was taken off guard by the level of gratuitous gore. This single wound would have earned any given 80s feature film an instant R-rating. And that's before the carnage was zoomed-in upon and endlessly encircled by the leftover Matrix camera rig (to the beat of the leftover Matrix soundtrack).

Later, an actor dressed as a doctor digs the exploding cigar out of the victim's throat. But he can't understand why he keeps itching throughout the autopsy. Another actor walks in and reveals that the body has Itching Powder all over it. See, it was in the guy's pocket, then the explosion caused it to go everywhere.. got it?

Hey there mister doctor, it seems that you just got yourself pranked from beyond the grave! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! And you wondered how they were going to continue to intricately weave the pranking theme throughout the story.

Meanwhile, there's some other thing about a twelve-year-old kid getting his bicycle blessed in a Catholic church just minutes before he gets shot and killed. I'm serious. I guess the writers couldn't resist inserting this ultimate statement on life's cruel irony. Blessed bike, instant death; let's not forget that. And then you get to see the undressed bullet-pierced child on the slab, over and over (and over) again. Once again, this desensitized culture junkie found himself shocked. Is this their secret to amassing viewers?

Anyway, it's actually been many weeks since I watched this show, and I'm realizing that I've forgotten most of the plot. So I guess I'll just have to work off of the screen captures I took. So, the CSI actors trace the cigar to a guy named Laughing Larry. He has a New York storefront...

The CSI actors walk in front of an exterior CSI set

Talk about uninspired set decor. They should have taken a lesson from Hairspray.

Larry is sort of a Johnson Smith Company and an S.S. Adams rolled into one stereotypical bald, round prankster. This plays off of the false presumption that all novelties in the old comic book ads were manufactured and distributed by the same outfit. Although I'm guessing they streamlined this to simplify the story.

Larry still gets his jollies drenching his customers with his Squirting Camera

But allow me to just skip to the wonderfully preposterous climax of the program. The lethal cigar was given to Laughing Larry in an attempt to kill him. Larry inadvertently passed it on to the suave businessman after they struck up their deal of a lifetime. So who was trying to off Larry, and why? Answer: a disgruntled customer.

You see, decades ago a boy and his friend apparently loved to read "Wart" comics...

They loved the Laughing Larry ads...

They decided to order the "Narwhal Nuclear Sub" (obviously playing off the Polaris Nuclear Sub)...

They received a laughably large box in the mail...
They assembled it and ended up with something remarkably similar to the real thing...

They tried it out in a local pond...
It worked really well...

Until it sank and the little girl inside drowned...

Ah, a double dead kid episode.

The drama culminates when the surviving kid, now grown up and detained by the cops, finally delivers his bitter monologue to Larry's face...
"I was unsure that [the submarine] would do all the things that you said that it could, but [my friend] was sure that it would work. Sam knew that it would work because Laughing Larry said it would. So why wouldn't it?
You know what you forgot to tell us? That Sam had to know how to swim.
[This is the actual dialogue folks.]
I lost my best friend and I swore that I would never read comic books again, or let my own son read comic books or play with toys or play with other kids. So I kept him in the house around the clock. I was just too afraid that my little boy was going to get hurt."

Oh, yeah, his wife recently got custody of his son thanks to his freakish overprotectiveness which prompted him to try to kill Larry. The End. Ahem.

Well, I shouldn't be too hard on the writers of this atrocity. (I don't dare include their names, lest they discover this scathing little piece while vanity googling) But kudos to them for wedging the subject into the show. It's obvious that they have a more-than-casual interest, and goodness knows I'd attempt the same thing if I had a TV writing gig. The story isn't totally unrealistic either. There's no telling how many kids vowed mortal revenge on comic book advertisers.