What’s the Power Behind Pixels?
Summer blockbusters are in full swing with films like Avengers: Age of Ultron, Mad Max: Fury Road, Entourage, Terminator Genisys, and Jurassic World already released.
There are more films on the horizon, but one that has a special place in Seagate’s heart is Pixels. It arrives this week and stars Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage.
Haven’t heard of it? Well, this is a film whose plot supposes that in 1982, while searching for extraterrestrial life, NASA had sent out a time capsule including key elements of life and culture on Earth at that time. Unfortunately, aliens who recovered the time capsule interpreted the footage of video games as a war declaration, and are now sending pixelated versions of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Space Invaders and others to invade Earth.
Pixels creatively touches on a theme very central to our mission and history here at Seagate. Seagate was founded in 1979 right at the time when the golden age of video games began. In some form or another, storage has always been part of the video game evolution from PCs to consoles to handhelds to the cloud.
Hollywood Pays Tribute to the New Monarch
Video games are a huge part of today’s culture. They’ve been bigger than Hollywood for a long time now. Shows like the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) and the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) have brought video games to faithful fans for years, and films based on video games such as Doom, Need for Speed, Silent Hill, Resident Evil and the upcoming Pixels have helped bring video games to the masses.
What’s exciting about Pixels is its ability to spark new energy into video games today’s adults grew up with — classic games that not only helped establish today’s pop culture memes, but laid the foundation for today’s video games.
Fifteen Fun Facts
To commemorate the release of the film, here are some interesting tidbits about Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Centipede. How many of these did you know?
Space Invaders
- Released in 1978 by Taito.
- Inspired by the video game Breakout.
- The game’s creator, Tomohiro Nishikado, wasn’t very good at playing it and usually didn’t pass easier levels.
- Space Invaders grossed about $600 million a year between 1978 and 1982.
- Space Invaders revolutionized gaming by being the first to include the ability to save player scores, and “destructible” cover.
Pac-Man
- Released in 1980 by Namco, and from 1981 until 1987, there were a total of 293,822 Pac-Man arcade machines in arcade around the world.
- Ms. Pac-Man (1982) was the first female character in a video game.
- On May 21, 2010, Google unveiled a “Google Doodle” recreating Pac-Man to celebrate the 30th anniversary. Visitors to the site played for nearly 500,000,000 hours.
- The four ghosts that chase Pac-Man have names in both Japanese and English. In Japanese – Fickle, Chaser, Ambusher and Stupid. In English – Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde.
Donkey Kong
- Released in 1981 by Nintendo.
- That damsel in distress that Mario must save from Donkey Kong isn’t Princess Peach from other Super Mario Bros. games. She’s known as “The Lady” and was based on Fay Wray’s character from the original King Kong film from 1933.
- Nintendo owns the trademark for the phrase “It’s on like Donkey Kong.”
Centipede
- Released in 1981 by Atari.
- Designed to attract female players.
- Based on the comic initially released with the game, your “ship” is actually a magic wand. Your friends (the centipede, spider, etc.) have been turned on you because of an evil wizard who wants your wand. This is why you don’t kill the your friends in the insect world but instead transform them into toadstools.
