Variations On A Theme: Never Lose Your Cut

"Sons of Arcade" (t-shirt) by Olipop

"Sons of Avalanche" (t-shirt) by The Yellow Snow Co.

"Sons of Energon" (t-shirt) by BiggStankDogg

"Sons of Adventure" (t-shirt) by Perdita00

"BLACKCRO" (t-shirt) by SixtyBones

Triptych: Getting Back To Basics

"Sumi Wind" (cardigan print) by Midgerock Studios

"Nintendo 8-Bit Legend" by RISEarts

"Arcade" by DKNG Studios

Triptych: Gamer's Love

"NES" by Walter Newton

"Gamer's Love" by biticol

"The Coin-Op Kid" by Neil Hanvey

Double Triptych: Street Fighter 25th Anniversary

"Street Fighter 25th Anniversary" by Randis Albion

"Capcom World Tournament" by Alvin Lee and Ben Huen

"Honda" by Jorge Fernández Peral

"World Domination" by Aled Lewis

"Fire Breathing Elastic Man" by Darick Maasen

"Growing Up" by Dan Matutina

Guys, did you realize that the original Street Fighter hit arcades in 1987? Meaning that Street Fighter has been around for 25 years? That's a quarter of a century! That makes Street Fighter an INSTITUTION. Crazy.

Triptych: A Collection Of Things

"Sci-Fi Arcade" (t-shirt) by Drew Wise

"Story Of My Bit" (t-shirt) by Adam Works

"Inventory" by Terry Mack

Disney's Wreck-It Ralph

I love Disney. And, as some of you may have figured out by now, I also love videogames, particularly of the pixelated, 1980s-era variety. So I was extremely pumped to learn about Disney's upcoming animated feature "Wreck-It Ralph", which debuted at the recent D23 Expo and is slated for release a little under a year from now, on November 2nd, 2012.

The film stars John C. Reilly as the titular character, a Donkey-Kong-like videogame villain from the game "Fix-It Felix", who tires of being forever relegated to bad-guy status and dreams of being the hero for once. Jack McBrayer (also known as hilarious NBC peon Kenneth from 30 Rock) voices Felix, while Jane Lynch, Sarah Silverman, Dave Foley and David Hyde Pierce all make vocal appearances as well. It's being directed by Rich Moore, who was a supervising director on The Simpsons and Futurama, so I can only assume he knows his way around the funny.

Sick of being a bad guy, Ralph leaves his game and sets off for one that he can be the hero of. He traipses through racing games and first-person shooters (presumably amongst others) in his search for a new home, along the way joining Bad-Anon, a support group for villains populated by the likes of Pac-Man ghosts and zombies. In the end, I'm wagering that he learns a little something about himself and the world in which he lives, and manages to pull off a coup and successfully navigate the videogame world's first bad-guy-to-good-guy role transition.

I think what interests me the most about "Wreck-It Ralph" is that it is very clearly a "Toy Story" for the videogame generation. Like those films, I'm sure "Wreck-It Ralph" will be jam-packed with pop-culture references and clever dialogue, but more importantly, it's going to explore a specific continent of nostalgia and delve into not just what we remember fondly, but why we do.

I'm also really impressed that as part of the early promotion for the movie, Disney actually put together a "Wreck-It Ralph" upright arcade cabinet, complete with fully playable game. That's some thematically-consistent marketing there, Disney. I LIKE IT.

A Short History of Video Games

A Short Visual History of Videogames by Kyle Downes

Leaving aside the poor audio quality and the fact that Australians apparently pronounce Sega "See-gah", this is a genuinely delightful AND informative look back on the history of videogames. Glad the "E.T." debacle and subsequent videogame market crash gets a mention; I'm old enough to remember playing that game, if you can even term such an experience "playing" (and not "making my little brother cry with the torturous impossibility and dullness of") and so I have a first-hand understanding of how a single game could bring an entire industry to the brink of total collapse. Anyway, the whole video is charming and remarkably well-done. Watch it and learn something!

Triptych: Now You're Playing With Power

"Now You're Playing With Power" by PixelRadio (I think)


"Insert Coin To Play" by J. Mirman


"The King of Kong" by Scott C.

Do you guys remember arcades? They seem to be kind of a rarity these days. When did that happen? There's an arcade in downtown Vancouver, Lion's Lair, that I remember from my youth, but it's gone severely downhill in the last decade. Once upon a time, there was an arcade in every mall, bleeping and blaring and packed full of kids.

While I'm definitely part of the console generation, I have fond memories of arcades and the ubiquitous cabinets littering the landscapes of my childhood. I remember playing Super Mario Bros. in a laundromat when I was about seven, walking through the woods to go to the arcade in the mall with my brother and my cousin and trying to stretch our five-dollar allowance out to a couple of hours on Gauntlet and Afterburner and Outrun when I was eleven, skipping school with my best friend Jeff, stealing change from his dad's cash register and going to the arcade located next to his family's copy shop to line up our quarters on the Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat machines, at fifteen.

Did you ever play Time Killers? It was this gimmicky fighting game from 1992 or so, where all the playable characters were from the past or the future. I spent most of the summer of 1993 in the abovementioned mall arcade with Jeff, and we got to know the regulars pretty well, being regulars ourselves. There was this one tall balding businessman in his late 30s or early 40s who would come in every day at 12:15 (presumably during his lunch break). He would then spend fifteen solid minutes pumping quarters into the Time Killers machine, and everyone would stop what they were playing to watch him. It wasn't that he was any good -- he was terrible, in fact -- but he was so physically intense while playing, arms and legs flying everywhere, jumping in the air, and throwing the most incredible body language into his game, that we couldn't not stop and stare. And then, after fifteen minutes exactly, he would stop playing -- never mind that his game was still going -- straighten his tie, pick up his briefcase, and stroll out. Time Killers was the ONLY game he ever played, he never spoke to anyone, and nothing about him even remotely suggested the kind of manic flailing he was capable of for fifteen minutes every day.

I understand that it's hard to make a profit at a quarter (or later, a buck) a pop, and when you can play videogames with your friends over the internet and every household has at least one console nowadays, the thrill of going head-to-head with your pals has faded to a novelty at best. It still makes me sad that I am (nominally, at least) the last generation to experience that thrill, though. It's really too bad that the arcade business model never found a way to adapt to a changing industry, despite many doomed attempts (Dance Dance Revolution, anybody?) I guess it's telling, though, that I didn't even realise that arcades were disappearing until they were gone.