Arcade

MOVIE #2,188 • SCORE 6/10 • 12.05.24
SERIES: ALBERT & AKERMAN

Some backstory of note:

The film features heavy use of CGI, which was fully redone after The Walt Disney Company named Full Moon in a potential lawsuit. The Sky Cycles in this film resembled the light cycles from Disney's Tron. 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.

Well, thanks to some kind soul out there, you can watch the original CGI version on the Internet Archive here. This international VHS release rip even includes some random trailers and featurette doc on the backend. Part of me wanted to watch the re-edit (which Pyun had very little to do with) just for the sake of comparison, but this was enough of a chore. I didn't have it in me to watch this movie twice. Sorry. The only major difference seems to be:

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.

The glaring issue with this movie is that there's simply too little of that notorious CGI, which looks like this...


The bulk of the action takes place in-between the game and it ranks amongst the dullest stuff Pyun's put on film. I thought this would be more fun than it actually was. I suppose the ridiculous (horrible) aesthetics make it worth watching, but only barely. It's slight. I wonder if the re-edit is better or worse, but I only wonder. I KNOW that it's not really a question worth asking. This is the most generous 6/10 I’ve ever dished out.

---

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #2,187 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #2,189 ⫸

---

Arcade is a 1993 B-movie science fiction film directed by Albert Pyun, written by David S. Goyer and produced by Full Moon Entertainment. It stars Megan Ward, Peter Billingsley, John de Lancie, Sharon Farrell, Seth Green, A. J. Langer, and Bryan Dattilo. It was released on July 20, 1993.