Fair warning: if you haven't read Ender's Game or seen The Last Starfighter, then you probably don't want to keep reading this unless you're in the mood for spoilers.
So your race is facing intergalactic extinction. You've been pushed to the brink of existence. What do you do? Spend time training new troops, building a mega-spaceship to take your race to another galaxy or ... develop a video game that looks for a prodigal savior to come and prove themselves through skill with a joystick?
Apparently if you're Orson Scott Card or Robert Preston, that's exactly what you'd do. It’s actually pure (evil) genius if you think about it. You know all of those Wiis, PlayStations, and Xboxes sitting dormant in living rooms, bedrooms, and basements across the country? Perfect little training units. With a little tweaking of code you could churn out an army using The Sims 27 in no time.
In a nutshell, that's the plot of both Ender's Game, the classic science fiction novel from 1985, and The Last Starfighter, which hit screens 1984. Race faces extinction, video game gets programmed to train potential saviors, if they beat the game ... then they suit up for the real thing.
In Ender's case, he didn't know that the game he was playing all along was actually the real battle. It's a good thing he didn't decide to just screw around in the game and try and smash his ships into the nearest planet, because those were real pilots in those ships. Who knows what would have happened if he had to keep hitting the 'continue' button.
Now, the real rub lies with The Last Starfighter's Alex Rogan. He was playing an actual quarter-sucking arcade game, and when he hit the high score, lights and celebration ensued. Then The Music Man himself appears from the sky in a flying limousine and whisks him away to fight interstellar battle. Sounds simple, right? Well, consider this. In Ender's Game, Ender literally wipes the enemy out completely, unwittingly committing genocide. However, Alex only destroys Xur and the Ko-dan Armada, meaning there are going to be some really pissed off Ko-dans somewhere who are going to come back and whip the snot out of someone as revenge. Of course, Alex decides to become a teacher for future Starfighters, and takes his eye-candy girlfriend with him. But if the Ko-dans pour on a little speed, then Alex and the human race are
pretty much sunk.
But what's really puzzling is how the aliens decided to put the Starfighter game on Earth to begin with. Were there tons all over the planet? Only one? Did they go to other parts of the galaxy? Do they even play video games near Alpha Centauri? One disappointing fact about the actual arcade game used in the movie comes via Wil Wheaton, whose scenes were cut from the film. He told me "The one thing I remember clearly about that film was how disappointed I was when I saw the totally awesome video game on the set, and the only thing in the cabinet was a 4x4 grid of incandescent lights in varying colors." Not very inspiring. It boggles the mind. Since there never was a The Last Starfighter 2: Even Starfightier, we may never know what happened to the other cabinets.
we may know it next year... ;)
Starfighter:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1196243/
Posted by: Bloodymara | July 23, 2009 at 05:47 AM