Since The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters made it’s popular debut, we’ve been seeing an increase in documentaries about our industry, although so far they have only focused on classic arcade gaming or upon popular locations that had to close their doors for one reason or another. Here’s another arcade documentary but this one is about a current location that has been open for 26 years and counting. That would be the Star Worlds Arcade, in DeKalb, IL which took part in the Stride Gum Save The Arcades campaign in 2009 although fell short of getting the $25,000 prize. Here is the trailer for the upcoming documentary, and you can follow their Facebook page for further information on the film.
Also you can visit the Starworlds Arcade website.
Speaking of prominent arcades in Illinois, the popular Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, IL is about to celebrate their 1st anniversary this Saturday. Kudos to them for achieving that, it seems that they have maintained a steady growth in popularity which is the kind of thing I would hope that future arcade location docfilm makers will do a little research on since how popular arcades still are in some places doesn’t seem to be a fact worth checking much into for many out there (it’s easier and more dramatic to just say they are all pretty much dead and leave it at that). This documentary isn’t supposed to be about other arcades out there, focusing on just Star Worlds which is cool.
Hi
My name is Byron Czopek and I am one of the directors of “Star Worlds: A Pocket Full of Tokens and I’m Heading to the Arcade.” First off I just wanted to thank you guys for featuring our trailer. We appreciate the publicity.
Second we do know about Galloping Ghost in Brookfield (all though we haven’t had a chance to visit yet). For this film we just wanted to focus on Star Worlds and it’s contributions to the arcade scene. As far as saying that “all arcades are dead,” that’s not exactly what we are trying to say. What we are saying is that arcades are not as prevalent as they were in the 80’s and 90’s because of the introduction of the home councils. We do talk about the resurgence in classic arcade gaming and even visit the Midwest Gaming Classic convention in the movie.
We don’t want to ignore Galloping Ghost or any other arcades and their contribution to the classic gaming culture. We just simply focused our attention on Star Worlds and what they were doing.
Anyways we hope to see some people at our showings at the Sycamore IL Film Festival September 22-25 and at the Twin Galaxies 30th Anniversary Festival in Ottumwa, IA November 11-12.
Bryon,
Thanks for dropping by. I think your effort is great, my commentary on the arcades are dead thing is a bit of a pet peeve of mine as I deal with it all the time. I’ve seen some trailers for some other arcade gaming trailers and they harp on the same thing, despite there still being an arcade market with dozens of new games being released per year. I guess I’m just using Galloping Ghost as an example of another new arcade out there that can make it.
But I think it’s great that you are focusing just on Star Worlds, hopefully your doc will bring in more business for them and educate plenty of others on the scene. Too often docs are only made about closing arcades, not focusing on ones that have been open for a long time like Star Worlds.