Evil has no name

In response to a recent blog post about the “true face of terror in gaming,” I offer another perspective, one that reveals the “true true face of terror in gaming.”


Yes, Phanto from Super Mario Bros. 2 was scary. But did you know . . . there is another . . . Phanto-like thing!

In later years, we saw Phanto successors like the evil Samus clone who would chase you around Metroid Fusion, and a freak called Nemesis who would hunt you in Resident Evil 3. There was also the ghostly and impatient Baron von Blubba in Bubble Bobble, which pre-dated Mario 2. These and even Phanto are Johnny-come-lately sissy scares compared to the scariest creature in the history of gaming . . . and life.

Some call him the “hall monster”; others call him the “green monster.” Hell, some people probably call him “Maurice,” for all I know. I have my own name for him: “evil green face.” But learn from my example: naming him gives you no mastery over him . . . or over your fear.

The game was called Venture, produced by Exidy and released on the Atari 2600 (among other systems) back when game controllers looked like calculators. Long before Nintendo “created” Doki Doki Panic/Super Mario Bros. 2 and its resident tormentor, Phanto.

Now, by putting quotes around “created,” I’m not saying Nintendo stole this Phanto idea from a crappy Atari game. Allow me to postulate a fictional true story that maybe one day, they were making Doki Doki Panic, and someone, say, Shigeru Miyamoto, says, “You know, when I was a kid, I played a game called Venture, where you grabbed some treasure, and then this evil face would chase you down until you died. And I’m going to steal that face for this game. And I don’t even care if people know I stole it. I yam what I yam.”

And then the imperialist Hiroshi Yamauchi likely said, “Yeah, do it! Steal from those patak!”

And then the enfant terrible, Gunpei Yokoi, who would later be secretly murdered by a Nintendo hit squad for his role in creating the monumental failure, the Virtual Boy console, his death faked as a car accident, probably said, “Haha, man I like to steal things like this from other games and not give credit to the yo-yos who created it.” And then one day, he was dead.

But I digress.

Venture had a main screen with four rooms you could enter. In the main screen, your character was a pixel. For those of you who were born during the Taft administration, a pixel is a small colored square.

Today, we have these silly newfangled words for it like “pixel” and “avatar,” but back in the Reagan years, we just called it a “dot.”

When you went into one of the four rooms, you turned into a smiley face. Now back when I was a sproutling, we called such things a smiley face, but only recently did I learn that the game makers gave him a name, Winkey (sometimes Sir Winkey), and you were obliged by the instruction booklet and/or box art to believe that Winkey was a big muscle-bound clod who shot monsters with a bow and arrow. I didn’t have the game box that showed this picture, so I was blissfully ignorant and untainted by this evil fruit of knowledge.

There’s a lovely phrase about how sometimes things are better if you don’t know so much. I think it goes, “You’re a beautiful retard.”

Can that “noo-nee-noo-nee” background noise even be called “music”? Good gravy. And if he’s supposed to be packing a bow and arrow, why does it sound like a laser?

Anyhoo, if I were the marketing people at Atari or Coleco or whatever, I wouldn’t tell people that you would be controlling a muscular jungle guy with a bow and arrow. That’s just misleading. I’d tell people, “You is controlling a face with a dongle on it that shoots balls.”

And that’s how Faceball 2000 was born. It’s criminal, really, how you people steal.

So first there’s a room with skeletons, and you have to fight past them to grab some blue boxes. Then a room where you shoot snakes and snag a big grape. Then a room with several copies of the robot from Forbidden Planet who are guarding the Lion King’s head. Finally, a room with moving walls that protect the Cullinan Diamond. I guess that’s where Ocean’s Eleven came from.

After you beat these four rooms, there are four more rooms of masochism . . . and terror . . . to go.

But really, you would never beat more than one or two rooms because after your first encounter with “evil green face,” you will wish you were a blind deaf-mute, with all your senses fallen away.

If you linger too long in any of the rooms, he comes for you. If you stop to caress the Lion King’s head, he comes for you. If you shoot one of the skeletons and its corpse blocks the exit from the room, he comes for you . . . and kills you.

Yes, “evil green face” was scarier than Phanto. He came first, and he also had something Phanto didn’t: he was accompanied by the most horrifying and sickening staticky noise since the tipped-over television from Poltergeist.

When I was a kid, I had a recurring nightmare about being chased by a cactus man on the street where I lived. It was a Halloween type night, but without the candy, and the cactus man wasn’t wearing a costume. He was the costume. That’s kind of what “evil green face” was like, except real.

If you met “evil green face” in a dark alley in Tijuana, you’d say, “Please, I have so much to live for.” And he’d say to you, “I’ll eat you until you die.”

Remember that part in Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox has just finished playing “Johnny B. Goode,” and the room full of befuddled 40-year-old high schoolers is staring at him, and he says, “I guess you guys aren't ready for that, yet. But your kids are gonna love it”? I hope nobody at Atari ever looked parents in the eye and said that about Venture.

What in the name of Peter Mayhew is going on here?:

It’s like a documentary, a video game review, and an experiential psychological experiment all rolled into one unholy enchilada. I like the intermission where he goes to set up his Atari 2600. Notice that after he starts playing the game, the video turns into The Blair Witch Project.

My God, that is so sad. That numbnuts never had a chance. He didn’t even know he was dead!

Venture, why do you make children cry?

Baby, one more time . . .

(Wanna be startin' something with the one glove!)

As Robert Lusetich put it, “It might have been one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in sports,” and I suppose he’s seen a lot of sad things. Old Tom Watson, all 59 years of him, had taken a one-stroke lead into the final hole of The Open Championships at Turnberry. Needing only to par the hole to win his ninth major and become the most improbable victor in the history of sports, he instead flubbed two putts to end with a bogey, sending him into a playoff with Stewart Cink, who through no fault of his own had just become the villain of this morality play, and soon would become the destroyer of dreams.

I couldn’t find a live online video stream of the final round, so I settled for audio coverage, handled sparklingly by a pair of British announcers who commented with a melodious interplay of wit and charm that is simply foreign to their American counterparts. I listened to them amble from hopeful confidence in Watson’s chances to stunned deflation as the victory started to slip away so suddenly. When they announced Watson’s missed chance on the 18th hole, I actually felt a little sick to my stomach. As soon as he fell behind on the first hole of the four-hole playoff, I couldn’t listen anymore.

I’ve never wanted to play golf, and can only barely understand why anyone would. Walking around under a hot sun, a sack loaded with metal rods strapped to your back? I’ll pass, thanks. I think there’s a chain gang nearby that has an opening.

But I found myself mesmerized by the possibilities presented by this year’s British Open. When Watson shot a 65 and settled near the top of the leaderboard after the first round, I could smell a good, but brief, story. When he pulled into a tie for the lead after the second round and then kept the lead after the third, I was dumbfounded. The numbers: 59 years old. Watson last won a major in 1983, a generation ago. The oldest person ever to win a major: Julius Boros won the PGA Championship at 48. There’s always some old-timer who experiences a second wind at one of the majors, who seems touched by the gods of golf, at least for a few rounds, and this time, it was one of the legends of the sport.

Last year at the Open, it was 53-year-old Greg Norman’s turn to laugh in the face of Father Time. Like what happened with Watson, I found Norman’s run to be an inspirational story, and I was disappointed that he didn’t win, as well. But this year hurts more, and it’s because last year at Royal Birkdale, the Great White Shark faded early in the fourth round, and by midday, we had come to terms with his great attempt and inevitable failure. We wished him well as he went home with his newlywed bride, Chris Evert.

This year at Turnberry, Watson summoned some kind of power or sorcery to get within a hair’s breadth of a win. The 18th hole, his lips almost planted on the Claret Jug, and even when he fell there, he still had a chance in the playoff (although I think anyone who saw him knew that his only real chance to win was at that 18th hole). And there’s the history. Watson’s fabled “Duel in the Sun” with Jack Nicklaus happened on this very course in 1977, when the younger Watson conquered the older and far more celebrated Golden Bear on the final hole in what is considered by some to be the greatest golf tournament of them all. For Watson to win here again, 32 years later, when by all sanity, he should be sipping Arnold Palmers in a lawn chair somewhere – that would be history.

History, as opposed to just another Tiger-centric tournament. How rare is the former, and how increasingly unbearable is the latter. If Watson had won, it would have been the biggest story in the history of golf, and maybe even one of the biggest stories in sports history, right up there with the “Miracle on Ice” (if you’re into gee-whiz patriotism), Jesse Owens winning four golds at the Nazi Olympic Games, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, and one of those Ali fights that everyone talks about.

Okay, so a Watson win probably wouldn’t have had the cultural resonance of those moments, but it really should. Golf is different from all other sports. It’s the only sport where a 59-year-old man could even have a chance of winning against men half his age. And yes, golf is meant to be played by the old, but as we saw this year and last, it certainly isn’t meant to be won by the old. If Watson had pulled it off, he would have single-handedly demolished what we all take for granted – that you can never be as good as you once were. The fact that he didn’t win means that we were all cheated of that upheaval.

I have no doubt that the better performer won the Open this year. But the better story? Not by a long shot. After all, do you remember who won the Open last year after Norman’s collapse? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Why ask why?

Mise-en-scène:

A pleasant feeling of waking in the morning and ambling downstairs to the living room. I hear the familiar sounds of a tennis match, batted balls and squeaking sneakers. I walk toward the television, and the scene comes into focus – but strangely. I think I see a half-size tennis court on the screen, with revelers far too close to the action. Warzard sits in an easy-chair next to me, his face unmoved by the broadcast.

I take a closer look: it appears to be Mary Pierce playing in the far court, with the near-court player’s back to me. And then my vision sharpens, and the scene goes askew. Between Mary and the other player, I see Monica Seles in the middle of the court, bound at the wrist to a maypole. There’s no net; the two players exchange light volleys, badminton-style, with Monica in between them attempting to swat the balls down. An exhibition match of the most juvenile variety? We should be so lucky. No, I need to take my eyes off the action for a second to see the real exhibition: the players. They’re naked. But for a parti-colored lanyard round her neck, there stands Mary Pierce in all her stark naked glory. Monica and the unidentified near-court player as well.

Monica snares an interception. The crowd roars like it’s 1992 all over again. But no, there’s no player swap; Monica stays at the maypole for the next exchange.

I look to Warzard for some enlightenment:

Czardoz: Naked tennis?
Warzard: Rupert.
Czardoz: Rupert?
Warzard: Rupert Murdoch.
Czardoz: Oh, is this some kind of private party he’s holding?
Warzard: Yeah.
Czardoz: Why are they naked?
Warzard: You know, bribes, money, the usual.
Czardoz: Oh. . . But . . . why is all this happening? Why is it on TV?
Warzard: I don’t know.

And why should he have to know? Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die. I thought gravely to myself, perhaps this is what our boys died for in Fallujah.

An unwelcome noise, and I woke from the dream. And all that remains is a beautiful memory.

The Swim Back

I recently watched the movie, Gattaca, for the first time. Equal parts science fiction and detective story, the film came out in 1997, and it became one of those movies I “wanted to see, but never saw.” Years went by without me ever making the time to actually watch it, even though it was one of those movies that, judging by my fuzzy memories of its purported themes, would be the sort of movie I’d like. (Over time, it may have become unfavorably associated in my mind with the unappealing Halle Berry thriller with a similar name, Gothika, thus reducing the urgency to see the movie.)

Gattaca was recently made available for free on hulu.com, and I almost thought someone was thinking of me, giving me the kick in the pants I needed. For anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, especially those of you who, like me, were drawn to its previews and thematic sensibilities years ago, see it now. Don’t wait. It’s free, for God’s sakes!

The plot: The protagonist, Vincent, dreams of going to space, but he is thwarted by his genetic deficiencies. He lives in a world where science can engineer the genetic “quality” of every person before he is even born. Most children are thus the products of extensive gene manipulation by parents and doctors desperate to give their children a leg up. Vincent is an exception, and chance has given him a heart defect and a life expectancy of a mere 30 years. And while science allows you to give your child every possible advantage, the flip side is that the genetically “inferior” are forced to become the social underclass. After all, who would invest anything in someone who only has 30 years to live? Knowing this, Vincent makes desperate choices in order to con his way into space. Hijinks of the most believable sort ensue.

Gattaca is the sort of movie I hope to see every time I go to the theater, every time I pop in a new DVD, every time someone says, “Hey, you should watch such and such; you’d really like it.” The best movies (and best works of art, for that matter) leave a part of themselves in you, or rather, I think they show you something about yourself, and thus restore you to yourself.

What Gattaca restored in me was the belief that dreams are worth fighting for. Space is the only dream Vincent ever had, and he gives everything he is to his dream, even though it means defying the principles his society is founded on. He dares to believe that he can be more than the story told by his genes. To not try would be a capitulation to the injustice of his society.

Like the best science fiction, Gattaca is about ideas, not special effects. To me, the movie channeled the aesthetic of early science fiction, the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. In their books, the sci-fi elements were almost incidental to the ideas and evocation of human conflicts. Gattaca isn’t about space, nor is it even about a eugenics-mad dystopia. Genes and space are the mechanism for exploring the choices we face about whether we can be more than what others condemn us to.

The movie is elevated by some of the best actors in the business. Ethan Hawke, as Vincent, carries off emotions ranging from sarcastic to gentle to entreating to terrified, and above all, he owns the role of heroic dreamer. Uma Thurman plays his frosty on the outside, yearning on the inside love interest, Irene (though for Vincent, romance will prove to be an afterthought). Jude Law, in one of his first major roles, scorches the screen as Jerome.

I was moved as much by Michael Nyman’s extraordinary score as by the story itself. I think he one-ups even his fine and better known work in The Piano.

This was the first movie from writer and director, Andrew Niccol, who went on to direct Simone, and who also wrote The Truman Show. All three of these movies share sci-fi characteristics, generally involving Niccol’s pet theme of a protagonist pitted against a world that tries to constrain what he is capable of becoming.

Because of The Truman Show’s big budget and the involvement of megastar Jim Carrey, producer Scott Rudin (Zoolander, No Country for Old Men) reportedly could not entrust the project to a rook (Gattaca had not been made at that point). Veteran Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society, Master and Commander) was brought in to helm the movie, and though I admire the work he did, I can’t help but wonder what Niccol would have done with his own script as director.

The most recent Niccol movie was Lord of War, a strictly non-sci-fi film that starred Nicolas Cage as an incorrigible arms dealer. With his typical care, Niccol takes a conventional genre thriller to a more thoughtful level than most viewers would expect from this material. Despite the radically different milieu, Lord of War plays to Niccol’s raison d’être: to glorify a man who wants to do one thing and who pursues it, no matter the cost.

I like Niccol’s later movies, but I think none of them has the emotional weight and technical completeness of Gattaca. In the spirit of the new year, I resolve to set aside old prejudices and give everything I am to my dreams.