Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade

Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade will have a touch of Déjà vu for those that watched the arcade gaming documentary we posted last month called The King of Kong : A Fistful of Quarters.Both documentaries focus on classic arcade gaming and even some of the characters involved are the same I loved in The King Of Kong.Billy Mitchell, Walter Day and (the once cheating Billy now Billy's BFF) Steve Sanders again feature.Both documentaries were released around the same time in 2007 so plenty of comparisons but Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade covers the broader subject of gaming while The King Of Kong focused only on Donkey Kong and rivalry between the two best players.

So the focus here is on the brief time in the early eighty's when arcade games were so popular that Life Magazine ran a spread about the best players, those who had world record scores on the most popular games.Then the 82' Video Game World championships was televised and it seemed the best and brightest gamers would become rich recognized celebrity's.Of course home gaming emerged as a threat to arcades, before long the consoles started getting better than the games in your local arcade, within the blink of an eye it was all gone, well almost....