Gamers scare me

Park City

I think it's safe to say that the biggest surprise at the fest so far is Chasing Ghosts, a doc about the rise of competitive arcade gaming in the early 1980s. Reading the description in the festival program really didn't make it appeal much to me. I mean, how interesting can a bunch of hard-core gamers be? I'd been hearing a substantial amount of positive buzz from people around the fest - nearly everyone giving rave reviews. So I decided to take a chance and see what it was all about. I gotta say, I wasn't disappointed in the least. This film was not only really well constructed, but it really presented the subject matter in a way that totally sucked you in to this alternate world. Plus... it was really funny. It managed to walk a very fine line between paying homage to these insanely talented teenagers who could play any arcade game for several days straight on a single quarter without ever loosing a life and making fun of the fact that they were all geeky eccentrics who lacked basic social skills and desperately needed to bathe. Although the film could use a 10-15 minute trim, it generally moves well and does an excellent job of throwing you headfirst into this bizarre world of hard-core Pac-Man, Centipede, Asteroid and myriad other "classic" arcade game play. It's also a lot like a "then and now," as the filmmakers track down all of the big players from the early 80s and interview them about their past, present and future. It's really a lot like Dog Town and Z-Boys but with arcade games. Highly recommended.