Retro-Games Movie:The Space Invaders: In Search of Lost Time

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Chasing Ghosts, Tilt, High Score, King of Kong, take your pick. I am a nut when it comes to gobbling up documentaries that deal with video games.

Documentarian Jeff Von Ward has made the visual equivalent of ocular crack. To see all the games I used to play back when I frequented arcades with names like The Fun Factory, Aladin’s Castle or Pin Pan Alley really takes me back to when you could still play a game with a quarter, maybe fifty cents, before it took you a dollar bill just to waste three minutes of your life. What this trailer does is take a nostalgic look back at those days, but then pivots to talk about what it’s like to be one of the people who are trying to salvage, literally, those moments. There isn’t anything particularly showy or novel about these people’s stories but they have a certain echo. The point of all of them is that they have a need to preserve a piece of the past and are absolutely in a state of arrested development.

The trailer takes it nice and slow as it shows us these fanatics in all their electric glory, showing off their video game cabinets. It’s nostalgic porn for those of us who remember the days of pumping quarters down the plastic gullet of those red 25c slots. There’s not an exceptionally artistic thing about the way it’s shown off but that’s of little concern. It’s all about the 80s and reflection and obsession and adoration and it’s totally awesome.

goil!