The name "Albert Pyun", the director of Arcade, is basically synonymous with "bad, straight-to-video movie", and that's what this is: it's about a video game that comes to life and sucks people into its virtual reality world. Full Moon Entertainment does it again!

Fortunately, there's a lot of familiar faces here. Megan Ward, the heroine of the flick, has been on lots of sitcoms and in quite a few movies. John DeLancie (Q from Star Trek, among other things) has a big role, and so does a grown-up Peter Billingsley (Ralphie from A Christmas Story). Also on deck is Seth Green, but he doesn't really count as a familiar face, 'cause this is some of his pre-nose job work.

Surprised? Didn't know Seth Green got a nose job? Well, he did. Look at his nose in this movie, and look at it now. (We first began to suspect that Mr. Green had a little work done after watching his starring role in an old Fruit Loops commercial...this movie merely confirmed our suspicions).

The movie begins with a dreary monologue by Alex (Megan Ward) who waxes philosophical about heaven, hell, and her mother's suicide while speaking with a school counselor. After her session, Alex meets up with a bunch of her bozo friends, and some really stupid, forced "teenage banter" occurs. Alex, turns out, has a bland boyfriend called Greg; they talk about the counselor and then take a polaroid of themselves. Everyone is fascinated by this polaroid technology, except for Nick (Billingsley) who briefly makes eyes at Alex (although he's wearing sunglasses, and early on looks like an albino here).

The gang (Alex, Greg, Nick, Benz, Stilts, and Laurie) decide to visit Dante's Inferno, a local arcade, where a new game is going to be shown off: Arcade. Yeah, "Arcade" is the name of the arcade game they're seeing. Brilliant.

Once at the arcade, Stilts (Seth Green) is almost beaten up after bumping into a fat, angry guy. Luckily, before Green's precious nose can be put to the fist, he's saved by the arcade's owner, played by Don Stark! You know -- Bob, from That 70's Show? Anyways, John DeLancie appears shortly thereafter, as some kind of evil marketing guy trying to get the kids interested in the new game. He makes a lot of menacing comments, but the kids don't pick up on his evilness, and Nick jumps right into the game -- a big, clunky sort of arcade machine that you sit in (like a racing game or something, though it apparently only costs a quarter to play). Everyone's wowed by the ensuing computer graphics, even though Billingsley, looking through VR goggles, is technically the only one who should be seeing anything.

The computer graphics warrant some mention: in 1993, when the movie was made, they might not have been too bad; in our modern era, however, they look distressingly silly and old-fashioned. In fact, they reminded me of those commercials you often see during daytime TV, for universities promising to make a computer animator out of you. They really are that bad. Or worse.

After Nick is done with his turn, DeLancie continues to pimp the hell out of the game, then promises free home versions for the kids! They all leave the room to collect their prizes, except for Greg, who stays behind to play the big arcade machine for himself. Unsurprisingly, he gets zapped into the virtual reality world and vanishes.

Alex spends the next million years looking for the missing Greg. We're treated to scenes of people pulling into driveways, people pulling out of driveways, people engaging in tedious phone conversations, and so on. Bo-ring. After a while Alex finally gets on with the plot and plays her home version of Arcade. The game calls her by her first name and then taunts her about her missing boyfriend, saying things like, "He lost the game and I won his soul!" This raises some red flags, but still she leaves the game plugged in and calls Greg's house to see if he's there.

"He's right here, bitch!" the uppity game barks, a line which I found oddly amusing. Finally, she manages to unplug the game. (You need VR goggles to play the game, but for some reason they all plug the thing into their TV's. Doesn't make much sense). Alex heads over to Nick's to voice her concerns about the game, but Billingsley remains unconvinced and makes a series of retarded arguments defending the inexplicable behavior of the game. "Maybe you just imagined it said your name," he says.

Eventually, though, Nick wises up, and the two visit their friend Laurie, whose brain has been totally fried by the game. Greg the boyfriend also appears from within the TV screen, whining, "Don't leave me!" It's pretty funny.

After seeing all this, Nick and Alex head to the offices of Vertigo Tronics, the company that makes the game, to complain about all the havoc it's wreaking. DeLancie shows up again, but in a markedly different form -- whereas before he seemed like an evil puppetmaster intent on devouring the souls of children, he now seems like an overworked, down-on-his-luck businessman. It's really weird. Anyway, DeLancie sends them to Albert the programmer -- the guy who created the game -- ostensibly to learn some tips and tricks. Albert whispers hoarsely about the game he created, as if he's afraid of it and doesn't really understand it himself, and eventually concedes that they put human brain cells into the game for some unfathomable reason -- hence the inherent evilness of the game (the brain cells came from some mean but brain-dead kid). "Don't play the game!" is Albert's advice, so the duo do the smart thing and head back to the arcade to play it. Both enter the virtual reality world, wearing ridiculous form-fitting black spandex outfits. On the girl I didn't mind it so much, but Billingsley was another story.

The two of them make their way through the game's seven levels, though Nick gets zapped out of it by Albert the programmer after about the third level or so. There's a racing level and weird alien-world level and a few others, and they all look awful. Alex solves inane logic puzzles along the way, and at the end faces "Arcade" himself, who puts her through a long and drawn-out scene featuring her dead mother. But, she prevails, and everyone the game "ate" throughout the course of the movie is shat out back into the real world.

Nick and Alex grow quite close during their shared adventure, even to the point where Nick admits he cares for her, but after Greg the Dork is blasted back into the real world Alex dives right back into his arms and stomps out that particular plot point. Sheesh.

The movie isn't really a whole lot of fun, despite DeLancie and everyone else who shows up: it's mostly just long and tedious, and the CG effects are horribly outdated. Besides all that, nothing really happens in the movie -- the villain, Arcade, doesn't kill anybody in any interesting way, and the teenagers -- though they swear like sailors -- are all extremely boring people.

I can't really recommend this movie, but a pre-nose job Seth Green is a pretty interesting sight, so that might make it worth the tedium for some folks. He looked like the Joker.

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