''Arcade'' is a 1993

B-movie A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double featur ...

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

film directed by Albert Pyun, written by

David S. Goyer David Samuel Goyer (born December 22, 1965) is an American filmmaker, novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for writing the screenplays for several superhero films, including '' Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'' (1998), the ''Blade'' ...

and produced by

Full Moon Entertainment Full Moon Features is an American Film, motion picture production and distribution company headed by B movie, B-movie veteran Charles Band. It is known for the direct-to-video series ''Puppet Master (franchise), Puppet Master'', ''Trancers (fran ...

. It stars

Megan Ward Megan Marie Ward (born September 24, 1969) is an American actress. She is best known for her numerous credits in science fiction and horror movies and television series. In 2007, she joined the cast of the American daytime drama '' General Hos ...

Peter Billingsley Peter Billingsley (born April 16, 1971), also known as Peter Michaelsen and Peter Billingsley-Michaelsen, is an American actor and filmmaker. His acting roles include Ralphie Parker in the 1983 movie ''A Christmas Story'' and its 2022 sequel ' ...

John de Lancie John Sherwood de Lancie, Jr. (born March 20, 1948) is an American actor, television director, director, film producer, producer, writer, and comedian, best known for his role as Q (Star Trek), Q in various ''Star Trek'' series (1987–present); ...

Sharon Farrell Sharon Farrell (born December 24, 1940) is an American television and film actress, and former dancer. Originally beginning her career as a ballerina with the American Ballet Theatre company, Farrell made her film debut in 1959 in ''Kiss Her Goo ...

, Seth Green,

A. J. Langer Allison Joy Courtenay (née Langer, born May 22, 1974) commonly known as A. J. Langer, is a retired American actress andsince 2015the Countess of Devon. She is most known for playing Caroline Larkin in season 2 of Baywatch and as Rayanne Graff o ...

, and

Bryan Dattilo Bryan Dattilo (born July 29, 1971) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Lucas Horton on the NBC daytime soap opera '' Days of Our Lives''. Personal life Dattilo was born in Kankakee, Illinois, subsequently moving to West Palm ...

Plot

Alex Manning (Megan Ward) is a troubled suburban teenager. Her mother committed suicide and the school counselor feels that she has not dealt with her feelings properly. Manning and her friends decide to visit the local

video arcade An amusement arcade (often referred to as a video arcade, amusements or simply arcade) is a venue where people play arcade games, including arcade video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers (such as c ...

known as "Dante's Inferno" where a new

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

arcade game called ''Arcade'' is being test marketed by a computer company CEO, Difford, who is more than willing to hand out free samples of the home console version and hype up the game as if his job is depending on it, and it is. However, it soon becomes clear that the teenagers who play the game and lose are being imprisoned inside the virtual reality world by the central villain: Arcade. It would seem that Arcade was once a little boy who was beaten to death by his mother, and the computer company felt it would be a good idea to use some of the boy's brain cells in order to make the game's villain more realistic. Instead, it made the game deadly. The game's programmer knew there would be a problem with this, and even tried, but failed, to convince the computer company, Vertigo/Tronics, to halt the game's release because of the company's unorthodox decision to use human brain cells in the game's development. Nick and Alex enlist the help of the game's programmer and head to the video arcade for a final showdown with Arcade and his deadly virtual world. While Alex is able to release her friends from a virtual prison, she also ended up freeing the evil little boy, who taunts Alex in the final moments of the film. In the original CGI version, however, the film ends on a somewhat happier note, with Alex, her friends, and Albert (the programmer) simply walking away from Dante's Inferno, with the donor's soul seemingly laid to rest.

Cast

Production

The film features heavy use of CGI, which was fully redone after

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

named Full Moon in a potential lawsuit. The Sky Cycles in this film resembled the light cycles from Disney's ''

Tron ''Tron'' (stylized as ''TRON'') is a 1982 American science fiction action-adventure film written and directed by Steven Lisberger from a story by Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. The film stars Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a computer programmer a ...

''. The VideoZone video magazine (a staple of Full Moon films during the 1990s) as well as some trailers showed footage from the original version of the film. As a rarity, the VideoZone featured on the Full Moon Classics DVD release of the film contains no footage of the released film's CGI, but only of the original film's version. Despite the change in CGI, the original CGI version did manage to find a release in some places outside of North America, such as Argentina, Germany, Poland and Italy.

References

External links

* * {{Full Moon Features 1993 direct-to-video films 1993 horror films 1993 films American science fiction horror films 1990s monster movies Direct-to-video science fiction films Fictional artificial intelligences Films about video games 1990s science fiction horror films Films about telepresence Films about computing Films with screenplays by David S. Goyer Films about virtual reality American monster movies American direct-to-video films Full Moon Features films 1990s English-language films Films directed by Albert Pyun 1990s American films

Plot

Cast

Production

See also

References

External links