The little-known 1989 Japanese movie No Life King is a quiet art film about alienated children in an increasingly digital society. It’s very slow and its commentary seems kind of basic to me. If you’ve seen any other movies from that era about loneliness and techno-dissociation, you’re not missing too much. Like, you’re better off watching Pulse. But this movie does contain one of the most lovingly rendered fake video games I’ve ever seen.
The movie’s most interesting when it focuses on morbid schoolyard rumors. An entire elementary school becomes convinced that certain cartridges of The Legend of Life King IV secretly contain a cursed version of the game called No Life King. The game is destined to kill anyone who’s played it and their families… Unless at least one person on earth can beat it.
According to Twitter user @Macaw45, “Legend of Life King IV, the ‘cursed’ videogame in the movie, was actually a real thing that was made for the movie (but never sold). It was an X68000 game and even had music by Yuzo Koshiro!”
They scanned a feature on it from an old Japanese computer magazine called Login:
The film features several shots of the game running in full motion. It looks like it’d be deeply confusing to play, but it is absolutely believable that it’s really running on one of those late 80’s Japanese PCs. I don’t think you can hear any Koshiro music in the film, but the movie’s soundtrack is pretty cool “4th world” electronic ambient.
Here’s the entire movie with English subtitles delivered via YouTube captions:
the mid 80s Demon Headmaster uk kids books had a computer game called “Octopus Dare”, in which you had to memorize and move around shoals of invisible instadeath fish until a giant octopus comes out and hypnotises you into assassinating the prime minister.
Obediently, Mandy pressed the first key and the name of the game flashed on to the screen.
Octopus Dare.
‘It’s a treasure hunt,’ muttered Ian helpfully. ‘You have to steer your way through invisible shoals and then dive down and try and get past the—’
‘Hurry up,’ said Lloyd. ‘We want the octopus!’
‘Yes! Yes!’ everyone else shouted. ‘The octopus!’
Dinah looked round at them, puzzled by their eager faces. So that was what they’d all been waiting for. That was what the ship had to get past in the next bit of the game. That was what had made them sit so still and watch the screen so anxiously. But—why?
Mandy leaned forward again and clicked on the submarine. At once, the screen was filled with a pattern of long, waving tentacles. They moved and twisted, twining in a complicated pattern of curves and loops, constantly altering and yet always keeping a balance, swelling and shrinking and dancing …
Octopus -s-s-s-s! murmured her mind.
i am pretty sure the only difference between this and any actual mid 80s british computer game is that there arent youtube videos where guys named TheAmigaBloke talk about how it was ahead of its time
