ARCADE

a film by Kurt Vincent and Irene Chin
Pictures from our movie making adventure.

Pictures from our movie making adventure.

Be There.  This Saturday. Say Hi if you see us.

Be There.  This Saturday. Say Hi if you see us.

We shot all around Chinatown this week.  Definitely captured the neighborhood.  Here is our director of photography, Owen Strock, getting the very necessary shot of duck and chicken hanging in the window.  You can barely see it, but in the background is a cook in his chef whites chopping meat.  Owen is amazing at rack focusing, which he nailed on this shot.   We are in the middle of a lot of shooting.  I will be documenting the process.  Check our Flickr page and Facebook (www.facebook.com/arcademovie) for more! -Kurt

We shot all around Chinatown this week.  Definitely captured the neighborhood.  Here is our director of photography, Owen Strock, getting the very necessary shot of duck and chicken hanging in the window.  You can barely see it, but in the background is a cook in his chef whites chopping meat.  Owen is amazing at rack focusing, which he nailed on this shot.  

We are in the middle of a lot of shooting.  I will be documenting the process.  Check our Flickr page and Facebook (www.facebook.com/arcademovie) for more!

-Kurt

Last Friday I was a part of a panel discussion about arcades at NY Comic Con.  It was an amazing time.  Somehow, at 11 am on a Friday, we filled the room with people eager to hear a talk about arcades.  Leaves me feeling hopeful that the movie will receive a lot of attention when it is finished!  The panel was moderated by Tal Blevins who has been at IGN since the early days, 13 years and counting!  He was the perfect host.  Seth Killian was there providing an incredibly unique perspective (As far as I can tell he has one of the coolest jobs in the world).  Jamin Warren was beyond articulate, as always.  And let me state this here: In 20 years, Kill Screen will be the Rolling Stone of video games.   The Harlem Hero, Norman Burgess, was there waxing poetic about Chinatown Fair. And the star of the panel, Henry Cen, “Golden Cen” aka 50 Cen, was wonderfully cynical and cracking up the audience with his musings.    

Thank you all for coming and saying hi.  I met some new friends and look forward to continuing this discussion! 

-Kurt

I’m sad to report that another arcade has been lost to modern times. Denjin arcade, known for being the Mecca of West Coast 3rd Strike as well as the host of countless tournaments (including the 2009 SBO qualifiers and Cali Regionals) closed its doors for good yesterday. Denjin truly exemplified what a real arcade was: a place of community and competition, where players went to learn and level up. This is sadly another nail in the coffin of the American arcade. -Reed

I’m sad to report that another arcade has been lost to modern times. Denjin arcade, known for being the Mecca of West Coast 3rd Strike as well as the host of countless tournaments (including the 2009 SBO qualifiers and Cali Regionals) closed its doors for good yesterday. Denjin truly exemplified what a real arcade was: a place of community and competition, where players went to learn and level up. This is sadly another nail in the coffin of the American arcade.

-Reed

Rooftop Film's Kill Screen Video Game Film Festival

Rooftop Films and Kill Screen Magazine have put together an evening of short films for Saturday, July 30th in Brooklynn New York.  We have put together a work in progress excerpt to show!  Our piece introduces Chinatown Fair and one of our favorite people, Anthony Cali Jr, aka HelgenX. 

Check out the link for more info! 

KILL SCREEN VIDEOGAME FILM FESTIVALSHORT FILM PROGRAM$10 ONLINE OR AT THE DOOR.
8:00 PMSATURDAY JUL 30, 2011

8:00PMDoors Open8:30PMLive Music9:00PMFilms Begin11:30PMReception in Courtyard with Indie Video Games

Venue:

THE OLD AMERICAN CAN FACTORY
On the roof of The Old American Can Factory
GOWANUS/SLOPE
232 Third St. at 3rd Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11215
F/G to Carroll St. or M/R to Union

Screen Grabs: Ivan’s Puma Tapers

Behold, the Puma Tapers. Pictured here with one of the In The Groove gods of Chinatown Fair, Ivan Yeung, these shoes are the must-have of music games. Like a Mad Catz TE to fighting gamers, like Wonderboy to Roy Hobbs, or a hefty .44 to Dirty Harry, these bad boys are the go-to for any serious DDR or ITG player. If you want to be doing this, you had better be wearing those.

-Reed

Photo by Michael Nagle (originally appeared in the August 4th, 2010 New York Times) Today we are interviewing Ivan, a devoted rhythm game player and a former regular at Chinatown Fair, where he maintained the In The Groove arcade machine, while hacking it to keep updating the song selection.  It amazes me how passionate the ITG community is.  The story of how the the game series, which is widely considered to be the best of all music dance games, was discontinued after a lawsuit against the game’s manufacturer and how the community took matters into their own hands to keep the game alive.  The Wikipedia entry on In The Groove is worth reading.   The “Machine Hacking” section is particularly interesting to me. “Technologically savvy players have found methods of hacking additional content onto an “In the Groove 2” machine. The most popular methods involve utilizing a live Linux distribution (most methods SLAX Frodo) to boot the machine to a rogue operating system that the user has control over. Additional songs are loaded onto a USB card (plugged into the Player 1 USB port), and a USB keyboard (plugged into the Player 2 USB port) is used to type commands at the Linux console. Most of these hacks utilize an option in one of StepMania’s configuration files, Static.ini, to load songs and content from additional locations other than the main song folder.” -Kurt

Photo by Michael Nagle (originally appeared in the August 4th, 2010 New York Times)

Today we are interviewing Ivan, a devoted rhythm game player and a former regular at Chinatown Fair, where he maintained the In The Groove arcade machine, while hacking it to keep updating the song selection.  It amazes me how passionate the ITG community is.  The story of how the the game series, which is widely considered to be the best of all music dance games, was discontinued after a lawsuit against the game’s manufacturer and how the community took matters into their own hands to keep the game alive.  The Wikipedia entry on In The Groove is worth reading.   The “Machine Hacking” section is particularly interesting to me.

“Technologically savvy players have found methods of hacking additional content onto an “In the Groove 2” machine. The most popular methods involve utilizing a live Linux distribution (most methods SLAX Frodo) to boot the machine to a rogue operating system that the user has control over. Additional songs are loaded onto a USB card (plugged into the Player 1 USB port), and a USB keyboard (plugged into the Player 2 USB port) is used to type commands at the Linux console. Most of these hacks utilize an option in one of StepMania’s configuration files, Static.ini, to load songs and content from additional locations other than the main song folder.”

-Kurt