King of Walkthroughs 

Finally, a film that challenges “The Wizard” for cinema's best representation of a video game tournament.* King of Kong is a glimpse at the real way video game tournaments work; they are small affairs within a close-nit community and are set in dingy arcades with fading carpet and nacho snack bars. These retro arcades seem closer to “video Armageddon” to me.

The King of Kong is a fantastic documentary and should be recommended simply for making the act of watching someone else play video games exciting. Go see it. It is touching too so you can take a girlfriend and she will like it.

As a walkthrough author I can’t end this post without mentioning the film’s brief interview with Steve Sanders, author to The Video Master’s Guide to Donkey Kong. The original guide (out of print and selling on eBay for $89.99) was based off of Billy Mitchell’s 1982 record setting strategy. After seeing King of Kong I am totally inspired and if he asks, I would volunteer my time to be the personal strategy scribe for Steve Wiebe. I would even include his white, grease pencil diagrams for how to dodge the killer springs. 

Notes:

*Interesting that both tournaments feature Mario games

Last Week's News 

Check out last week's edition of the Escapist because the Game Intestine got the interview treatment. The piece is done by a fantastic writer and I would recommend reading the whole thing even if it didn't describe me as "no mere mortal -  Zukalous, an exiled hume Knight from the kingdom of Dalmasca."

READ THE FULL STORY - Zukalous: Defender of Ivalice

On The Road Again
 

"On The Road" was first published 50 years ago today and everyone who likes books is all "Greatest American Book", "a true portrait of what America was feeling at that time." I have read it and it is kinda true that it is one of those media corner stones that gets what it is like to live in America.

There are other American media triumphs that do the same thing. For movies you have Scorsesy Films, paintings there is Edward Hopper, photographs are Richard Avedon, and with music most people say anything by John Mellencamp.

There is a bad habit of mine in which I compare games to other forms of media as purly an exersise in determining how they differ from eachother. So I wonder, is there a game that represents the American Experience? I mean there is Grand theft Auto, but that is made by a bunch of Scotts so GTA is more like Alexis de Tocqueville "Democracy in America" which is a perspective of America not by an American. We could be cute and metephorical and say World of Warcraft because it represents a culture of object gatherning and tourism. But, WOW takes place in a world where there are elves. I think there is nothing that is acutely American because video games are so weird and they rarely have any reference to something in the real world. It is even more rare to find a game that is set in a real world place. For that reason I am going to settle with Bad Dudes.

Chris