*Hyperspace Used, a.k.a. The Great Father/Son Vectrex Minestorm Rivalry of 1985

Videogames were an important facet of my life back in the early 1980s (I was in grade school), and between my network of friends, I had access to all the major home systems of the day. Friend #1 had the Atari 2600 (1977), the old, reliable workhorse, a system so popular and ubiquitous that its joystick controller became a de facto symbol of the gaming industry itself.

Friend #2 had the Odyssey 2 (Magnavox, 1978), an oddball system with full-Qwerty membrane keyboard that made it superficially resemble a personal computer. Considered a lesser system due to its inferior graphics and sound (every game seemed to emit the exact same set of bleeps and bloops), it had a few notable system-specific titles such as K.C. Munchkin, a Pac-Man knock-off that was more fun than any other dot-eating maze game available on cart at the time, and Quest For The Rings, a board-game/videogame hybrid that required two players to cooperate as a team in a multi-level dungeon crawl.

Friend #3 had the newish Colecovision (1982), which had superior graphics and licensed arcade hits like Zaxxon and Donkey Kong, as well as titles built around popular pop-culture characters like Rocky Balboa, Buck Rogers and The Smurfs.

And finally, I had the Intellivision (Mattel, 1979), viewed as the more sophisticated machine, since its name was a portmanteau of "Intelligent" and "Television". Apparently, your time spent mindlessly zapping flying saucers on the Intellivision was actually an enriching intellectual exercise.

One glaring omission from my circle-of-friends system-collective was dark horse Vectrex, by Milton Bradley. Introduced in 1982 and retailing at $199,Vectrex stood unique from the other systems because it was a portable machine, and rather than hook it up to your television, had its own built-in vector-scan display.

Vector graphics were composed of rays of light that traced lines between points, rather than a bit-mapped grid of blocks. Some vector-graphics arcade games of note were Asteroids, Tempest, Battlezone and the original arcade Star Wars. The bright, clear lines of the display, similar in brilliance to those you might see on an oscilloscope screen, were very striking and had a definite futuristic science-fiction aesthetic. No other system before or since offered this unique display type (and modern arcade emulations can't quite capture the effect).

I spent enough hands-on time with the Vectrex at in-store kiosks to decide I definitely would welcome this little machine to my home, if not for the two-hundred dollar price tag (as well as the disapproval from my parents, who felt it was something akin to betrayal to add a new cartridge-slot to feed when we already had a perfectly good system at home.)

Unfortunately the Vectrex may have been too unique for its own good, as the system floundered commercially and was discontinued in 1984, with less than 30 games ever released (Atari 2600, by comparison, had hundreds of titles.) Even unique add-on peripherals like active-shutter 3D goggles and a light-pen were not enough to save the system from consumer disinterest. Vectrex systems were soon sitting on toy store clearance racks, priced at $49. This was my chance to finally grab one!

Even these genuinely cool hardware peripherals couldn't save the system.
After several months of saving every penny I could get my hands on (fifty bucks was a lot of money to a grade-schooler in 1984) I finally scrounged together enough to buy the discounted system, but with no money left over for cartridges.

That's okay, though, because Vectrex came with one built-in game, and it was, as the kids say today, a killer app. Minestorm was basically Asteroids on steroids (A-Steroids?) You piloted a space ship using rotate-left/right, thrust and "hyperspace" controls, shooting floating space "mines", which sometimes shot back or followed you around the screen.

So it was Asteroids, leveled-up.

Magazine ad for Vectrex highlighted the free pack-in game Minestorm
and a very, very excited family.
The Minestorm instruction manual included a few pages to document high scores, and I started logging my steadily increasing achievements (although I never bothered recording the date when the scores were achieved.)

Today, the score record stands as an amusing account of father/son one-upmanship.

Dad, you see, was a bit of a videogamer too, and he gravitated towards the games with a simple controller layout (the joystick-only Frogger was his arcade favorite.) Initially against the Vectrex purchase (our loyal Intellivision may get jealous, was perhaps his thinking) he soon warmed up to this latest addition to the family and was adding his own personal-best Minestorm scores to the list, although with his scores barely halving mine, I was in no immediate danger of being overtaken.

I mentioned my Dad's preference for uncomplicated controls... he could handle the ship rotation (joystick controlled), fire and thrust buttons that Minestorm required, but lacked the dexterity to include the third "hyperspace" button (the manual calls it "Escape") in his repertoire. The rare occasions he tried using the feature always ended in disaster, since he had to divert his eyes from the screen to visually locate the evasive third button on the controller before finally navigating his finger to it, always seconds too late.

Consequently, my Dad made it a point of pride that HIS scores were achieved without using the hyperspace feature, as if this was some kind of lesser, unsportsmanlike tactic. Much like professional athletes who hold records qualified with an asterisk to denote some questionable circumstance associated with the achievement, to my Dad, my scores all bore the scarlet H... "*Hyperspace Used."

On one particularly good run, I managed to nearly triple my previous high score, achieving a then-impressive 166,958 points.

This must have lit a fire in Dad's belly, because what follows is a streak of steadily increasing scores as he chased my new record, finally topping it on 5/15/1985 (at least three months after my entry), with a score of 171,105. And Dad did not rest on his laurels, either, pushing himself harder and higher, eventually landing an unprecedented score of 218,090 two months later (7/11/1985)!

Dad, basking in high-score glory, was simply too much for my pre-teen ego to bear. Enough was, decidedly, enough.

After having semi-retired from the Minestorm scene, I quietly returned to the playfield for the sole purpose of reasserting my superior skills, and in a move worthy of videogame record-holding villain Billy Mitchell (King of Kong:A Fistful of Quarters), proceeded to rack up a previously unheard of score of 681,070, tripling-and-then-some my Dad's once proud record, and noting the achievement in the official record book with a little triple-underlined, exclamation-pointed self-aggrandizing smugness ("Bill Super Star!")

Lest there be any doubt who was currently on top...

"But you used Hyperspace!" father despaired, as his hard-won scores were dumped into the ash-bin of history...

Don't feel too bad for Dad, though. As the years rolled along and my interest in Minestorm waned (this ended up being my last recorded score), he perfected his game, eventually besting my historic achievement with an impressive 954,819 ("11/8/85 Dad New Champ!"), then nearly doubling that years later (5/4/1987, 1,906,735).

At this point, Dad was no longer competing against me--but against himself. He was on a long, personal journey of discovery.

...a journey made longer, perhaps, by not using hyperspace.

This is Phoenix! Real Life (1979)

I'm going to take a break from taking a break from posting about scary stuff (it HAS been awhile since my last post....ahem) to tell you about one of my favorite comedies of all time, which was not only set and filmed in 70's-era Phoenix, Arizona where I grew up, but also made some startling predictions about how technology would change filmmaking, and how unscripted "reality" programming would become a viable entertainment format.

It's the 1979 pseudo-documentary Real Life. Written and directed by Albert Brooks (Finding Nemo, Taxi Driver, Drive), and starring Brooks as a fictionalized version of himself, Real Life is essentially an early "found footage" film in which we view the results of a failed attempt to document a year in the life of a typical American family.

Today, this is such a commonplace premise it hardly needs further explanation, but back in '79 the idea that cameras capturing the typical everyday interactions of regular people in their homes, warts and all, would be a source of entertainment, and perhaps provide insight into the human condition, was a pretty radical concept.

The Yeager Family of Phoenix (portrayed by Charles Grodin and Frances Lee McCain as the parents, with a son and daughter), are the lucky family chosen for the project, beating out hundreds of other applicants in a grueling (and hilarious) screening process, which involves interviews, psychological evaluations, and embarrassing role-playing exercises (which, as Brooks notes dryly, "single-handedly discouraged 23 families from further participation.")

This occurs not at a Hollywood studio casting call, but at the "National Institute of Human Behavior" in Boulder, Colorado, in order to lend the project, which Brooks is convinced has important sociological and scientific merit, an air of legitimacy.

This is where the film makes some remarkable predictions about the future of filmmaking technology. First, as part of the screening process, candidates have their face scanned into a computer model in order to evaluate their "screen presence" at any angle.

That's right--in 1979, Brooks predicted digital face scanning and pre-visualization on a computer.

Although the actual result resembles the greatest Vectrex game never made.

On top of that, Real Life purports to be the first movie photographed with DIGITAL CAMERAS. In an effort to be as unobtrusive to their subjects as possible, a "whole new generation of motion picture equipment" is developed specifically for this project: The Ettinauer 2-26 XL, from Holland.

Not only is the camera worn over the head (supposedly for ergonomic considerations, but it also has the hilarious effect of making the cameramen look like alien visitors)...

...but all images and sound are captured digitally, on printed circuit-boards, which are swapped out when filled to capacity and later transferred to traditional film.

It's important to note that in 1979 this was, frankly, impossible, and the introduction of these cameras steers the film into the science-fiction genre.

Despite Brooks' initial enthusiasm, things get off to a rocky start when the Yeagers' on-camera family dinner debut begins in uncomfortable silence and collapses into a loud argument that sends the children to their room while Mrs. Yeager complains about her menstrual cramps.

Mr. Yeager, meanwhile, can't disguise his discomfort being filmed, repeatedly looking at the cameras and issuing apologies for his family's behavior.

Brooks, for his part, can't seem to stay off-camera or out of the Yeagers' lives. He moves into the house directly across the street and is constantly popping in, involving himself in their family drama, and trying to steer the Yeagers' behavior with offers of a big screen TV or football tickets if they'll "open up".

A few weeks into the shoot, word of the project leaks to local media thanks to an article in The Arizona Republic, and the Yeagers are soon hounded by news cameras on the street and at their home (including a reporter from KPHO TV 5).

"Nightmare In the Desert: The Phoenix Experiment". Sensational article appears to have been doctored into an actual copy of The Arizona Republic next to a story on winter tourists a.k.a. "snowbirds". A flyer advertising the Heard Museum is visible on the table.

Between the stress of constant filming, the local media attention, and Brooks' overbearing personality, the entire family eventually shuts down...

...prompting Brooks to turn up at their door, unannounced, in clown makeup, in an ill-conceived plan to cheer them up so they'll be more interesting subjects for his movie.

Finally the Yeagers have had enough and announce they want to quit the project entirely. Brooks, realizing that two months in Phoenix is a movie without an ending, goes into some kind of severe emotional meltdown. Hoping to salvage the film by emulating the spectacle of big budget blockbusters like Gone With the Wind or Jaws, he provides his own dramatic climax by setting their house on fire.

To give you an idea of how novel the concept of filming "reality" for entertainment was at the time, we need merely observe the depiction of the old-guard studio head reluctantly funding the project, Martin Brand (Jennings Lang), who can't distinguish between what Brooks is doing and "the God-damned news", and repeatedly implores Brooks to cast James Caan, Neil Diamond, or some other big name as a next-door neighbor or housekeeper, to give audiences a reason to tune in.

We get to see a lot of Phoenix locations and landmarks during the course of the film (although I suspect at least some of it was filmed elsewhere) including long lost amusement park Legend City, the Phoenix Zoo, Goldwaters department store (owned by... yes, THOSE Goldwaters!) and the downtown area, as well as some local media institutions like The Arizona Republic newspaper, and TV stations KPHO and KAET, and radio station KDKB.

Here's some pics, and if any fellow Zonies want to help identify some of the locations or share your memories, please elucidate us in the comments section!

1.1 - Downtown Phoenix
The Wyndham Hotel (building with the half-circle windows) and Hyatt (with rotating restaurant The Compass Room on top)

1.2 - Downtown Phoenix
The Hotel Luhrs

1.3 - Downtown Phoenix

2.1 - Animal Hospital building

2.2 - Arizona Veterinary Clinic, lobby
Supposedly the interior of the same building, but it could be another location.

2.3 - Arizona Veterinary Clinic, interior hallway

2.4 - Arizona Veterinary Clinic, interior office

3.1 - Goldwaters Department Store
I believe this was the Scottsdale Fashion Square location, although there were several in town.

4.1 - Papago Park
This appears to be somewhere in Papago Park, a range of distinct mountains near where The Phoenix Zoo and the Desert Botanical Garden are located.

5.1 - The Phoenix Zoo, entrance

5.2 - The Phoenix Zoo, elephant
Not sure if this is the famed painting elephant Ruby or not...(?)

5.3 - The Phoenix Zoo, giraffes

5.5 - The Phoenix Zoo, tortoises

6.1 - Log Flume Ride
I'm guessing this is The Log Jammer, a ride at Legend City, an amusement park that used to be located near Papago Park. Can anyone confirm?

Picture of Legend City Log Jammer for comparison:

7.1 - KPHO "Live Eye" Truck
Looks like this is somewhere downtown.

8.1 - KAET mobile van and KDKB truck
KAET is the local Public Broadcasting station, and rock radio station KDKB is following in a truck. This appears to be in a residential area somewhere.

9.1 - Mountain Neighborhood
I'm not sure what mountain this is, presented in the film as the Yeagers' neighborhood in the newer "fifth district".

10.1 - Elementary School
This school is identified as "Benjamin Franklin Grammar School", but I have no idea what school this actually is or if it is even in Phoenix.

11.1 - Soft Serve Ice Cream location
Reflection in the glass places it adjacent to someplace called "CAL Automotive". I have no other clues as to its identity or location.

12.1 - Dry Cleaners
A sign reads "Thank You Call Again".

13.1 - The Yeagers' and Albert Brooks' cul-de-sac
The Yeagers' house is at the end of a cul-de-sac and bears house number 10510. Albert Brooks took a house across the street with house number 10501. I'm not sure if this cul-de-sac is actually in Phoenix (the green trees visible in the undeveloped area at the end of the cul-de-sac don't look very "Phoenix" to me) but here are screen caps from four directions if any detectives want to try to find it.

UPDATE: Reader totallymorgan managed to track down the cul-de-sac at 10510 Laramie Pl., Los Angeles, CA. The houses have been remodeled a bit since the film but there are several identifying features that have survived, including the circular garden wall at the neighbors house which is still standing. Thanks totallymorgan!

14.1 - Movie Theater
Because this is a night scene its hard to make out any details identifying this movie theater entrance.

15.1 - Memorial Park
Finally there's this memorial park, site of a funeral scene. The mountains in the background might help locate it.