As a ten-year-old, this was the absolute pinnacle of all things amazing when it aired on HBO at odd intervals. It starts as an exploration of the divide between arcades in 1982, as video games had been pushing pinball out.
Pinball advocate Geoff Harvey and Space Invaders champion Stephen Highfield both explains their theories of why their respective games are the best. It’s an interesting time capsule and if that’s all this was, it would still be a great movie.
Yet at the end, as the arcade closes and characters from pinball machines come to life to battle video aliens, you will be amazed. Even now, probably thirty years since I last saw this, I’m still so excited about this movie. You can’t even know how many hours I sat in class and dreamt of this movie, drawing its characters when I should have been paying attention to my teachers.
Thanks to the internet, you can now watch this and imagine just how happy the kid version of me was every time this aired. You can watch this on YouTube.
