Perfectly adorable

Instant Favorite.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Story Synopsis: A company specialising in Virtual Reality games holds a demonstration of their latest game "Arcade" in an arcade parlour. They give out home versions of the game to a group of high school students. But the game, which has had its AI designed using the brain cells of a dead child, comes to life, taking the souls of anyone who plays it & loses. Alex Manning, one of the students given the game (& who is still recovering following the suicide of her mother) discovers the game's secret. She tries to stop her friends from playing the game but fails. Along with a friend who is a fearsome game player, she enters the VR world & tries to defeat the AI & rescue her friends.Film Analysis: When the pretty-to-look-at but totally brainless VR thriller The Lawnmower Man came out in the early 1990s, it spawned a whole slew of films that used VR as a plot device. Arcade, a cheap entry in producer Charles Band's Full Moon stables, is one of the lesser ones, even by the standards of the subgenre.With the exception of the Lawnmower Man films, just about every one of the VR films that came out during the 1990s used VR as either simply a hook to hang a thriller plot onto or to showcase killer AI systems. Arcade, written by future genre legend David S. Goyer & directed by cult genre director Albert Pyun, is a member of the latter category.The film is, by most standards, a fairly brainless sci-fi flick that has dated somewhat badly since the demise of the VR market. The critics have slammed the film, citing cheap effects & a stupid plot that recycles certain horror film elements. Personally I had not too much a problem watching the film. Sure the effects look quite cheap but judging from what I've seen from films made during that era, the effects don't look too bad. As for the story, Arcade takes a few cues from the A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET films, with an AI that acts a lot like a high-tech Freddy Krueger (brought to life by Jonathan Fuller's spirited voice over work) & even having a dramatic but brainless scene where star Megan Ward has to confront her dead mother in order to defeat the game.Arcade is not the sort of film you would expect from a director whose bread & butter features revolve around kickboxing, future locales & killer robots (or all three at once), but Pyun manages to keep the story moving along with almost no problems in the narrative department. The only problem with the story is a lack of consistency – the game's structure is quite simple, too simple in fact – plus the mysterious disappearance of a couple of levels.The acting is okay, with Megan Ward (who came to the genre's attention after her performance in the zombie flick TRANCERS II) playing a vulnerable teenager quite well. Making an early bit part is Seth Green as well as long time Pyun associate Norbert Weisser as a zoned-out computer programmer.

"Arcade" is not only the name of this direct to video feature, but the name of the cutting edge video game within the feature. This game Arcade is a virtual reality extravaganza that its makers hope will be all the rage among todays' kids. However, something's gone horribly wrong with the game (natch) and the teens who play it go bonkers and then get trapped somewhere inside the game. And the game would dearly love to become a part of the "real world". Megan Ward ("Encino Man", "Freaked") is sexy and appealing in the main role; even if technically she's too old for her role, casting 20-somethings as teenagers is a concept that's hardly new for the movie business. It's also extremely amusing not only to see a young Seth Green in this, but none other than Peter Billingsley (a.k.a. Ralphie in "A Christmas Story") as another of Wards' friends. The cast also includes John de Lancie (Q from 'Star Trek: The Next Generation), Sharon Farrell ("Night of the Comet"), A.J. Langer ("The People Under the Stairs"), Bryan Dattilo ('Days of Our Lives'), Don Stark ('That '70s Show'), and Norbert Weisser, a regular in the films of director Albert Pyun ("The Sword and the Sorceror", "Cyborg", "Nemesis"), as the games' designer. The issue that this viewer had with "Arcade" was that considering its subject matter, it still turned out to be a rather boring, muddled story. It simply has little energy, and it's too hard to muster much interest in the characters or the tale being told, even though there's one intense story thread with the heroines' mother having killed herself. And even for a company that specialized in low budget genre fare, this looks especially cheap. The special effects are basically adequate; "The Lawnmower Man" had more visual buzz when it came to the whole virtual reality concept. This may entertain less discriminating viewers, but with the characters lacking rooting interest and the movie coming up short in dramatic tension, it has to rate as a below average Full Moon production. Four out of 10.

Arcade is an early example of one of the truly awful trends to overtake low budget horror and sci-fi over the past twenty years: the use of CGI effects by films that do not have the budget to pull them off. Full Moon Entertainment reported spent three years trying to master the effects for this film, and it still looks bad, even by early nineties standards.The plot follows a young woman who discovers that a new video game, Arcade, is stealing the souls of its players. With the help of her friend Nick, she has to find out the game's secrets and play it to rescue her friends.One of the biggest problems with the film is that it attempts more than its budget can pull off. Full Moon Entertainment simply did not, and does not, have the money to do CGI in a competent manner. Consequently, the film is one long special effects failure. Actors are clearly just running around in front of a green screen, and one scene of the protagonist running across a virtual reality wasteland clearly features shots of the actress going through a vacant lot. Indeed, the film's effects, along with its emphasis on virtual reality technology, date it so much that it appears to have been one of the few Full Moon releases never to be issued on DVD.More damningly, the film does not really live up to the horror one expects from a Full Moon release. There is very little violence or gore and no nudity. The R rating is largely for cursing and a scene where a woman rather graphically kills herself with a handgun. Charles Band would have been better off editing out the language and blood and releasing under Full Moon's Moonbeam Entertainment label as a PG / PG-13 family thriller.

I just recently discovered this wonderful piece of late 80's/early 90's Sci-Fi and decided to give it a look-see. I am a big fan of Full Moon so I figured it would be fair, but it actually exceeded my expectations. The set-up is simple: a new virtual reality type video game called Arcade is more than it appears to be. Kids are getting spaced out, and disappearing all-together. After a tight-knit group of friends falls prey to the game, the last remaining members must fight to save the others. The film contains some very familiar faces. The lead is the beautiful Megan Ward… the ultimate girl next door. The film is worth it just for her cuteness factor alone. You may recognize her from other Full Moon classics like Crash and Burn and Trancers 2 & 3. I couldn't help comparing her to the Nancy character in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Her role is very similar. A young Seth Green (Austin Powers) is one of the group, as well as an aging Peter Billingsley (A Christmas Story). The running time is short, but with a few more additions this movie could have been epic, as in The Crow epic. A touch more gore would have been good, since it already had an 'R' for language (what a waste- I think they swear twice). If the target audience was preteens, why not go for PG-13? The story is tight and the ideas predate films like The Matrix, which borrowed heavily from Arcade. Most obviously is the concept that what happens in the game happens to you in real life (aka your mind makes it real). In the game you can actually get "sucked in", but let's not get too technical. The chemistry among the kids is what makes the film work. Many reviewers have complained about the CGI. Remember that this came out in 1993, so computer animation hadn't matured yet. Also bear in mind that they didn't have the budget of productions like T2 and the access to ILM for top-notch effects. In the featurette after the movie, Charles Band stated that he wasn't very happy with the first generation of special effects, so it was shelved for three years before the effects technology could mature a bit. The film itself was shot in 1990. You can't sit here in 2011 and watch it and blindly say "those effects stink". You have to put in the right perspective. Keep in mind that Full Moon flicks are low budget, and often direct to video, but this is precisely WHY fans love them. They are not the billion-dollar blockbuster movie-for-the-masses junk. There is alternative music that only serious music lovers seek out (because it is unique) and there are alternative movies that you can connect to on a more emotional level. Arcade is one of them. The whole movie had a great alternative feel to it, like the dingy arcade where they went to play video games. It hearkens back to the sleazy warehouse bars where raves and such are held. It's just the kind of place teens would hang out. Arcade is a real treat for filmgoers who appreciate films that are low on budget, but high on spirit. This is one that definitely deserves a DVD release… especially considering the trash on DVD today (go rent Alien 3000 for a look at the moronic crap I'm talking about). Unfortunately, many Full Moon productions are not pressed on DVD, and that is a shame. The real tragedy is that with all the video stores renting exclusively DVD, films like this are now completely lost to the next generation. Hit up Ebay or Amazon and find a used VHS for a couple bucks. You'll be glad you did.