New arcade game documentary movie?

In my mind, King of Kong was the arcade game documentary that opened up some doors for other movies about the hobby to be made. King of Kong combined a great (arguably twisted) story revolving around one of the top ten most popular games of all time and attributed for its success. The Space Invaders: America’s Underground Arcades is a trailer for a documentary about us, the collectors and our passion for collecting these huge wooden cabinets and putting them in our homes.

Arcade Documentaries – Niche product for a largely untapped market

I should put together a timeline and how each of the proposed arcade / pinball documentaries have panned out. First there was KOK, then Tilt, and since then we’ve seen trailers for a movie about pinball players, missile command champions and the list goes on and on – each even more specific than the last. Fortunately, in this hobby, even though we might not all collect pinball machines, we’re all going to go out and see a movie that loosely revolves around how we spend our free time.

This time we’re looking at the possibility of a documentary that puts on display our dark little secret that we have tucked away in our garages, finished basements and sometimes even lofts. A movie about arcade game collectors, by an arcade game collector, I got a little soundbyte from Jeff Von Ward himself;

Two years, three classic game conventions, thirty-five collectors, two-hundred hours of footage…and still going!

Ha, well, not a ton of insight into the games we might see in the documentary or the locals he might visit but certainly visiting 35 different collectors in person is quite the undertaking. Click on the screenshots below to view the Space Invaders: America’s Underground Arcades trailer.

Will this arcade documentary succeed?

I hope so. I believe that the audience for this movie will be more limited to those individuals who can empathize with the trials and tribulations of collecting. (Although that is not the subject of this movie). But I think that common ground will drive people to view this movie. And if we can push a few more bodies one step closer to inculturation, all the better for the rest of us.

Jeff might be the perfect person for the job. Jeff has worked at Adobe for a number of years, and is truly a creative individual. Let’s just hope he finds some funding somewhere down the line so that the rest of us can benefit from some sort of distribution before another two years go by.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Photos – New Arcade Game Museum in McLean, IL
• New Watchmen Movie Poster
• Picked up a gorgeous Ms. Pac-man / Galaga 20 Year Reunion
• Former operators have the best NOS artwork
• New Addition: Strato-Flite Pinball

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