264 - Arcade

Your Stupid Minds returns to the deep well of Albert Pyun with another cyberspace type 90s movie about an evil VR arcade machine that turns you insane and then kidnaps you and is also Freddy Krueger. It's 1993's Arcade, starring Megan Ward, Peter Billingsley, John de Lancie, and Seth Green as "Stilts." After her mother's suicide, Alex (Ward) is struggling in school. During a visit to their favorite foggy subterranean arcade "Dante's Inferno," Alex and her friends check out a new VR machine called, uninspiringly, "Arcade," that makes you feel like you're INSIDE THE GAME despite it basically being a joystick and stationary Virtual Boy headset. After the amazing demonstration, Alex's boyfriend Greg (Bryan Dattilo) disappears, and Alex must find him. It turns out Greg was sucked INTO THE GAME and also the game is evil. She recruits Nick (Billingsley) to help. A visit to the video game studio and a talk with the game's creator provides surprisingly little information. He's just as confounded by his creation as everyone else. He doesn't know how it works or why it's evil, but they've got a Q4 financial report to release so it's gotta be released come hell or high water. Alex and Nick decide the only way to get their friends back (other friends are also sucked into the game both on and off camera) is to beat the game. Can they do it? And how convincing will these early 90s computer graphics be? This movie sat on the shelf for a few years. After the trailer's release, Disney sent them a cease and desist due to the game's not insignificant resemblance to Tron. They spent a few years replacing light cycles with skateboards before it unceremoniously sat on a different shelf: that of your local mom and pop video store.