Wednesday 30 January 2013

Mario Taught Me How To Be A Plumber On Mushrooms

Anyone else remember The Last Starfighter, that cheesy but oddly lovable sci-fi film from the mid '80s about a kid who beat a fiendishly difficult arcade game that turned out to be an entrance exam for an elite interstellar fighter squadron? It's maybe most famous for being one of the first films to make use of CGI:

How have I never noticed the similarity to a Starfury before?
but I think it's more notable for this idea of video games as secret method of training, which a plot born straight from the dreams of a hundred thousand teenage boys. Who doesn't want to find out that all those hours logged playing Operation Wolf/Pole Position/Frogger has made them a kick-ass Green Beret/brilliant F1 driver/expert at amphibian preservation in built-up areas?

But secret game training has its dark side!  Who can believe, that after a week in which the Coalition are under great pressure to defend their recent choices to scale back spending on the prison system that this:



is mere coincidence?

Gamers of the country, ask yourselves: do you want to play your favourite game? Or does David Cameron want you to want to play it?

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