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Lucky Wander Boy
It's the mid-90s and Adam Pennyman's got no particular place to go, so he finds himself in a Los Angeles apartment with a cranky soon-to-be-ex girlfriend and a copy of MAME, everyone's favorite game emulator. His collection grows until he feels compelled to document it, or his life as realized through his gaming, in an unpublishable text called the Catalogue of Obscure Entertainments.
Unimpressed, his girlfriend starts edging out of his life just as a chance meeting with a former friend lands Adam a copywriting gig at Portal Entertainment, a dot-com ostensibly in the process of turning various videogame properties into movies. (The real business, of course, involves turning smoke and mirrors into venture cap; alumni of, oh, D*N or El*ctr*m*dia are encouraged to up the dosage of whatever they're taking to quell the flashbacks during the passages describing Portal's office culture.)
But Portal puts Adam within reach of the gamer's Grail: Lucky Wander Boy, a rare and bizarre game created by the reclusive Araki Itachi. Lucky Wander Boy was years ahead of its time, and so intricately coded that no one, no one, ever reached third level. Or have they? Adam nearly did once, long ago, and has been haunted ever since by a memory of gameplay that just couldn't have truly happened... could it? Adam will go far to find out. Very far indeed.
I love me some metaphysical conceits in my fiction, so strictly for the description of the Lucky Wander Boy game I'd rate this book highly. (It doesn't exist. It couldn't exist. I want it to exist. Dammit.) The author's done a fine job capturing a certain kind of thinking that occurs when smart people start reading deeper meaning into their obsessions.
Adam's ruminations on many of the classics (Pac-Man, Microsurgeon, Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., et al.) ring player-true -- which is why it's so glorious and scary when he goes off the rails with you right beside him. If you played in the days when primitive graphics and freshly-minuted archetypes made gameplay somehow even more addictive, this book will cause howls of recognition. Best of all, it's well-written and for the most part affectionate to the subculture; be glad this quasi-historical novel was written by the promising Weiss and not by that maiden aunt of yours who wouldn't let you have any more quarters.
You can purchase Lucky Wander Boy from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
so he finds himself in a Los Angeles apartment with a cranky soon-to-be-ex girlfriend and a copy of MAME,
Right here is where the story would lose me. It is nigh impossible that some nerd with MAME whose mission is to seek out this one mythical video game is going to have a girlfriend in the first place.
If it were a movie I'd be screaming at the screen.
So why haven't the arcade games so formative to geek youth (okay, geek 30somethings, young in the glory days of arcade play) gotten their due from the rest of popular culture?
Am I the only one who saw Tron? Last Starfighter? Mario Brothers?
Would an InSync ballad to Centipede be what you are looking for? Popular culture has been riddled with the games I loved to play. And vice versa. This whining is unseemly.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Since you brought it up, how much money DOES Hollywood and the recording industry bring in every year compared to the computer industry/software companies? Hollywood and the record companies seem to be the ones pushing for severe restrictions curtailing our computing equipment.. is it a case of David pushing Goliath around?
"So why haven't the arcade games so formative to geek youth (okay, geek 30somethings, young in the glory days of arcade play) gotten their due from the rest of popular culture?"
Let's see...there have been pop songs about arcade games, movies based on arcade games, movies about people playing arcade games, movies about people arcade video games, television cartoons based on arcade games, and almost every household you see on tv in US of A has at least one video game system.
Yes, there is no Hollywood 'walk of fame' star for gaming, but what kind of 'due' do you expect?
I think the important question is, why does every video game on tv sound like Pac Man for the 2600?
Disco might not be the same as it was in the 70's, but disco music has consistently proven to be a money spinner.
Many of the latest cuts from the top DJs are remixes of older tracks, and in the late 90's there was a definite 'disco vibe' to a lot of the commercial club output.
Recent club music seems to be having a bit of an 80's resurgence (as does European pop music in general - for proof, listen to 'Freak Like Me' by the Sugababes).
Disco culture, however, has proven popular since the 70's. If you're in the US, just take a look at some of those candy ravers and you'll see what I mean.
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Dramatic Interlude
It seems that video games occupy a certain space of popular culture and that it is only slowly expanding beyond that. The geek influences are still in place even though they're mass market items. When I am interested in a new video game or a new system, I don't check the mainstream news outlets, I go to a video game website or read a video game magazine. Comparing this to when I want to read a review of a new movie - just open the newspaper or just watch the trailer on TV and judge it from that. Video games have clearly broken out of the niche of being a toy for kids BUT the marketing of them seems to be stuck in a limited circle. Of course, maybe this is a good thing - perhaps it's the fact that people are interested enough in video games to seek out information about them, without huge marketing budgets pushing them down our throats, that shows just why the video game industry pulls in so much more money.
Oh also, the Mario Brothers movie was crap. I think that stunning pile of dog feces shows that a lot of people outside of the video game industry just don't get it - they don't have the ability to translate because their heads are stuck in Hollywood mode. All they did for that wretched mistake was take the basic characters from the game (two Italians, one wearing red, the other wearing green) and throw them into a run of the mill crap movie. There was no real use of the dynamics of the games. Video games are different. :D
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Behold! I give you CmdrTaco!
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
Even the coolest video games only cost a quarter! Now anything more advanced then a 1994 version of Street Fighter costs at least 50 cents, and I've seen some that take a doller to two dollers just so you can lose after one try.
That's the reason I was turned off from arcades, dagnabbit.
OT: I think the best baseball game ever made was SNK "Baseball Stars" for the NES. I've yet to seen one be as fun as that.
"I only speak the truth"
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God. I have a wife. I have a copy fo MAME. I'm a hard core nerd, my day job is coding z80 ASM for ATM's, my hobby at night is making video games. Yet, I've dated a lot, had a lot of girlfriends, and don't understand this geek steroetype BECAUSE NO ONE I HAVE MET HAS EVER BEEN ONE. And I know alot of nerds.
God. You know what's unbeleivable? Somebody so stupid they actually would place their suspension of disbleif in something so bad as a stereotype. 1. It's fiction. So suspend away NONE OF IT IS REAL. 2. That would be like saying "God, this cop-buddy comedy with a black man in it isn't racist enough in it's portrayal of a subculture.".
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I think that this perception is what the article summary was talking about. Video games are a part of pop culture but people think they play a much smaller role than they do.
Interesting analogy with the butler there; very true. No one wants to solder anymore! - those wimps
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Here's what the September 2002 issue of Business 2.0 magazine had to say about this myth.
Videogames Vs. Hollywood
You've probably heard that the videogame business is now bigger than the movie industry. Don't believe the hype. The reality: Videogame sales last year still trailed Hollywood box-office receipts (not to mention books and music). Throw in revenues from VHS and DVD sales and rentals, and game software becomes a distant also-ran.
Share of the entertainment dollar, 2001 (TOTAL: $59 Billion)
Video (VHS and DVD): 28%
Books: 28%
Movies (box office): 14%
Music: 19%
Videogames: 11%