I’m not saying we confuse the realities, necessarily, although anyone who’s completed his third season of a dynasty in any simulation can be forgiven for wandering into an alternate reality. “My star linebacker, Rocky Doss, was lost for the season with a broken leg today,” my friend Dav, playing his fifth season as Air Force’s head coach, told me a few years ago. “And honestly, I really felt sorry for the guy. He was in the second game of his senior year.”

Andy Hutchins, who writes The Arena sees things in just such a way. I went to him a week ago with this Greatest Sports Moments idea. He immediately rolled off an AP-style lede, complete with a quote. And to be fair, if I took Northwestern to a national championship, I’d probably be hallucinating, too:

The nation’s top two scoring offenses entered the BCS National Championship Game expecting pyrotechnics. But it was Tim Vincent and the Northwestern defence that proved more explosive, leading the Wildcats to a 17-14 win and their third straight national title.

Vincent, the NCAA’s all-time sack leader, harassed Oklahoma’s signal callers all game, sending two to the sidelines with injuries on his two sacks, and the Wildcats’ defence gave up no points after the first quarter, holding the Sooners to just 143 yards of total offence.

“I’ve been a part of three special teams and three special defenses here at Northwestern,” Vincent said. “What this defence did tonight makes this the sweetest win we’ve had.”

So in this spirit, I asked around for some folks’ top moments in sports video gaming. They follow below, with mine going last. Of course, feel free to share your own in the comments, and I’ll excerpt some of them into this column in an update later today.

Steve Noah, Operation Sports (MLB 09 The Show)

I like to create myself in a lot of games, just to see how accurate the game is, compared to my real life, uh, non-existent professional career.

This time it was baseball, playing MLB 09 The Show. Building myself into a cyber-steroid emerging uber-talent was hard. But after a few years, I was eventually plugged into the starting lineup of the San Francisco Giants. Even though I had a great average with good power and speed, I wasn’t what you’d call clutch.

It seemed like every imaginable time I had runners in scoring position, during the season or in the playoffs, when the team needed me the most, I would choke, crumble and let them down. Every single time. I’d dribble it off the plate, pop it up or just strike out at the most important time of the game.

That is, until Game 7 of the World Series. Steve Noah, “Mr. Choke Job” himself, stepped up to the plate, bases loaded, bottom of the ninth with one out, trailing 6-3. It was something kids daydream about when growing up. On a 3-1 count, the count that I would usually jump all over, only to see disappointment, I hit a 390 foot home run to win the game! I was jumping up and down, screaming and yelling like I actually did this in real life. Like I was a kid again, like a professional baseball player, living a dream. OK, maybe not. But damn, did it feel good, and to do it against the Yankees was icing on the cake.

Commenter “Michael Dukakis” (MLB 08 The Show)It all began as a baseball conversation among friends. With two Mets fans, two Yankees fans, and a Red Sox fan no matter how civil the discussion began,it always quickly devolved into something similer to the Dawn of Man scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. So as our “discussion” continued it came to a bet. Me and one of the Yankee fans 1 on 1 MLB 08, $US10 to the winner and of course, bragging rights. I, the Mets and he of course, the Yankees.

Before I was even settled in the La-Z-Boy a Derek Jeter home run makes it 1-0. No biggie, Carlos Delgado immediately homered and I was right back in it. The 1-1 tie held until the top of the 8th, when Jeter smacked a two-run double (Pixelated Aaron Heilman, my starter, was just as bad as his counterpart apparently).

Mariano Rivera began warming up, due to face the bottom of my lineup. My first two batters were retired on strikeouts. But a walk to a pinch-hitter and a base hit gets me in business. Rivera goes to full count on my next hitter and then walks him. That brough up Carlos Beltran, with the bases loaded.

Now this was a year ago so I can’t quite remember the exact pitch sequence, but I remember the last pitch. Oh what a shot it was, clearly into the virtual parking lot. The gloating and $US10 mine. That is my greatest sports video game moment … and sadly, probably one of the biggest wins any Mets team has had in quite a while.

Jim Harris, Operation Sports (NHL 94)

As a teenager growing up in Winnipeg in the early ’90s, to say we were preoccupied with NHL 94 would be the understatement to end all understatements. We played it when we were bored. We played it when we were avoiding homework. We played it to determine our social standing and our own sense of self worth. My younger brother and I were especially transfixed. We spent hours and hours battling it out in one fictional seven-game series after the next.

Having played the game so much, we were essentially equally skilled. If we played 100 times, he might win 51 games to my 49 (but I’d probably win six of the 11 ensuing fistfights).

One particular seven-game series still stands as my favourite sports moment. Having gone back and forth over the course of a particularly tense series, we finally entered Game 7. Much to my chagrin, my brother got the best of me that game, building up a comfortable lead over the course of the first two periods. When the horn sounded to end the second period, the taunting began. He started ripping into me like only a younger brother could. I was finally getting my comeuppance.

Then something strange happened. Singing a happy victory song at the top of his lungs, he danced his way right out of the room. After a moment, I realised he’d mistakenly thought the game was over. At that point, I did the only thing that was right to do: I turned down the volume on the TV and played out the third period against an absent opponent. I called my brother back into the room to politely alert him to his oversight, just as the third period wound down.

As I recall, he didn’t take it too well …

Owen Good (Hardball!)

This is from 1992, after my freshman year of college. By now I had been playing Hardball! on a Commodore 64 with a Wico Command Control joystick for close to five years. We’d gotten it from our next door neighbour, who was the software buyer for the catalog showroom store in town. He’d been sent a bunch of samples and regularly passed them along to us.

Somewhere around my sophomore year of high school I began keeping box scores on notebook paper in a three ring binder. I could routinely log a 10-run, 20-hit game against the computer, and with the right pitcher, toss an 18-strikeout shutout.

But never a no-hitter. I was Hardball!’s Dave Steib – the Toronto Blue Jays pitcher who twice took a no-hitter to the final out only to lose it. In this case, I was convinced the game’s AI was rigged to assure you never threw a perfect game against it. Repeatedly – it must have been half a dozen times, minimum – I would record the first 26 outs and get to two strikes on the game’s final hitter, who would then drop an unplayable flare just over the third baseman’s head. No matter where positioned the infield or the outfield, they couldn’t get to it in time.

So that summer in 1992, I sat down to play Hardball! on a Saturday. I took the Champs’ screwballer, Pepi Perez (with the deceptive 5.47 ERA) up against the All-Stars (the only other team in the game.) Sure enough, I powered through the first eight innings without a runner reaching base.

In the ninth inning, after getting two outs, I figured the perfect game had been proven an impossibility, but I was not going to waste a no-hitter. So I decided to pitch around the final batter and see if I could get the next hitter.I threw every ball out of the strike zone, just to see how committed the game was to screwing me. The computer swung at two pitches and looked at the rest, running the count to 3-2. I delivered the final one low and outside, absolutely intent on walking the computer.

It hit the ball directly to my third baseman, who didn’t have to move. He caught the ball for the final out. I’d finally thrown a perfect game in Hardball! I turned off the computer and never played the game again.

Stick Jockey is Kotaku’s column on sports video games. It appears Saturdays at 10 a.m. U.S. Mountain time.

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I usually use the Notebook Dump as a place to tell readers about facts I’ve picked up that don’t merit their own posts. Today, however, it’s more relevant to talk about why I don’t have as much to share this week.

A game reporter spends some weeks… distracted. This week was like that for me. I spent a chunk of Monday completing Assassin’s Creed II. I spent part of Tuesday sitting for a gaming-related interview for Spike TV (extending my streak of weeks during which I’ve worn make-up to two). On Thursday, I was indisposed for a couple of hours at one of those secret-for-now preview events for a game that comes out next year. All of this, in addition to spending a few hours chipping away at the Modern Warfare 2 campaign to keep pace with our Game Club, keeps a game reporter from doing that much, well, reporting.

That’s not ideal for me, mind you. For years, people have replied to my description of what I do for a living by asking me what it’s like to play games for work. They assume I play games from nine to five, but that’s something I’ve tried to avoid. It’s less easy to avoid that this time of year. Playing games spills into working hours. Working hours become added gaming time. Less reporting gets done. That’s yet another sign that the job of the reviewer and the job of the reporter aren’t made to overlap. Some would argue that they should not — or even that one person shouldn’t do both. Tell that to all the people who conflate games journalism with games reviewing.

Enough of this irregular Notebook Dump. By the way, that’s an image up top of a Mario t-shirt that I photographed at the Nintendo World store this past weekend. Say hello to his little friends.

Games I Got But Didn’t Write About (Yet?): NCAA Basketball 10 (Xbox 360, PS3), Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines (PSP), Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles (Wii)

EyePet Review: His Master’s Voice
In which Luke Plunkett’s furniture and lighting fail to meet Sony standards.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert Micro-Review: Palm-Size Power Trip
In which freelancer Matt Cabral forgives a key omission.

Left 4 Dead 2 Review: We Don’t Care How You Did It Up North
In which Michael McWhertor no longer worries about the corny and the hokey.

Assassin’s Creed II Review: A Season For Masterpieces
In which I praise, among many other things, the game’s infidelity joke.

LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues Review: Nuke The Mini-fig
In which Brian Crecente finds a silver lining to a Crystal Skull.

Asphalt 5 Micro-Review: Pedal to the iPhone
In which Cabral is driven to temporarily dislike one of his favourite bands.

Torchlight Review: The Fate Of DiabloCraft
In which Michael Fahey is on the verge of laughing — but holds back.

Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron Review: Deja Vu in Space
In which Brian Ashcraft fires the Ion Cannon a tad too much.

Art Style Digidrive Micro-Review: The Superiority Of Video Games
In which I praise a game that can be played on shaky boats, wobbly subways and other unstable places.

But anyway, Spirit Tracks has multiplayer. Boy does it ever have multiplayer, and boy did we ever play it. Here’s what we liked:

What Is It?
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks’ multiplayer mode is akin to The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures for the GameCube — four people each control one colour-coded Link and move around the same map as the other Links. The difference in Spirit Tracks is that instead of trying to help each other, you’re racing each other to collect Power Gems and trying to royally screw each other up on the way.

Note: It’s local-only.

What We Saw
I played two matches against a developer and two publicists at Nintendo’s Redwood City office after finally getting my hands on the single-player mode.

How Far Along Is It?
Spirit Tracks is out December 7. I was playing on a normal-sized cartridge that may have been a final version.

What Needs Improvement?
Little Bit Laggy: When dashing around the dungeon map, things start off steady and the Power Gem drops are few and far between. As the match picks up pace, however, and players start falling into traps or getting sliced up the Phantoms, huge amounts of Gems will suddenly spill out onto the map. That plus all four players frantically running to that point to scavenge Gems caused a couple of super-laggy moments in an otherwise smooth experience.

Trap Door Confusion: There are trap doors in every map that are either random or triggered by switches. I honestly couldn’t tell you which, though, because sometimes I’d press a switch and a trap door would open and sometimes the door seemed to open and shut in a kind of rhythm. It was confusing — and that much more frustrating when I fell into one because I didn’t know if I should blame somebody for it.

What Should Stay The Same?
Spreading The Phantom: Numerous Phantoms — those big guys in helmets from the last Zelda DS game, Phantom Hourglass — wander the maps, prowling for Links. When one spots you, a little icon pops up above your head, indicating that it’s got a bead on you. If you fail to run for your life, the Phantom will speed toward you and cut you – costing you precious Power Gems and precious seconds as you scramble to get up and recover them before the other players get there. The fun part about this mechanic is the bit where you can pass the Phantom’s bead onto other players you run by — like spreading Chlamydia. It’s amusing.

The Invisible Zone: One map we tried out had a patch of water in the centre that rendered players invisible when they ran in. You could still see ripples where their feet landed in the water — and if you look closely, the ripples are colour-coded like the Links — but with all four players running around in there and Phantoms bearing down on one or more of them, it was blind panic. And freaking awesome.

Mario Kart-style Pick-ups: Occasionally, an orb with a question mark on it will fall from the sky. Players that snag this pick-up are treated to several things like a random Gem drop, invisibility or a lightning strike that you can inflict on other players. It keeps things interesting and can be the salve to the wound of a player who just went from 51 Gems to two after a string of Phantom infections.

Single Cartridge Play: I am so happy that it doesn’t require four people to actually buy the game to enjoy this mode.

Final Thoughts
The multiplayer mode in Spirit Tracks certainly isn’t the main attractions of the game — but it’s a solid addition that deserves to be played if you can tear yourself away from trains and princesses for a little while.

You are reading Kotaku’s once-weekly (sort of) journey back to yesteryear.

I direct you to the June 24, 1990 edition of The Oregonian. The headline: “Video Games Capitalise On Popularity Of Movies.” But past reports of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Dick Tracy games is a bit on something called Final Fantasy.

Tom Sarris, a spokesman for the Nintendo empire, said that the company expects about 70 new game titles out between now and the beginning of the year.

“Basically, you can expect something for everybody,” he said. “One of the most eagerly anticipated titles here is ‘Final Fantasy,’ which is very, very big in Japan, and that is very much geared to the adult market.”
Final Fantasy is a role playing-adventure fantasy game that will come with two maps and, Sarris said, the biggest instruction manual ever to accompany a Nintendo game — 84 pages long.

“It will be the most sophisticated game yet,” said Sarris. “We estimate the serious player can get through it in 60 hours. Casual players may take twice as long.”

I never played that first Final Fantasy. I never counted the pages of its manual. I couldn’t even say it’s not for adults, though I didn’t think it was geared for the adult market. But it certainly was big in Japan. Still is!

[PIC]

LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues spends much of its time focused on the brickification of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but it also gives players a taste of Indy’s original adventures. Better still, it gives Indiana Jones fans a chance to build their own LEGO levels this time around.

Can a new, coop-friendly split-screen system and the ability to design your own levels make up for the fact that the game reanimates Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Lets see.

Loved
Two Players, Two Screens: One of my big qualms with previous LEGO games was that when you started playing coop — and that’s always been the best way to play — the screen became a leash. If one player went too far in a direction it started pulling the other player around with them, sometimes to their death. This time around, once you hit the limits of the screen it splits, allowing the two players to go their separate ways. The way the screen splits also shows which direction the other player is in. It’s a neat design concept that typically works quite well.

Build Mode: While LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues spends most of its time focused on just about everybody’s least favourite Indy film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it also introduces the ability to design and play through your own LEGO levels to the franchise. The system is fairly straight forward: You select and throw down LEGO bricks you’ve unlocked through gameplay to create sets based on what comes with the game. Not only does that include AI-programmable enemies and creatures, but traps that you can tie to different bricks. It’s a robust little system tied to a fun aesthetic. My only disappointment is that you apparently can’t share your creations with friends online. A pretty big bummer.

Another Take: While more than a third of the game is devoted to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the game also includes abbreviated takes on the first three movies. Interestingly, instead of just porting over chunks of these LEGO adaptations from The Original Adventures the game seems to completely reinvent them. While Indy purists may lose sleep over these in-a-nutshell adaptations of the first three films, they’re clever, punchy and fun in a way that makes playing the story a second time worthwhile.

Wide Open Spaces: Every LEGO game has a sort of jumping off point, a hub from which gamers embark on the multiple stores and adventures of the particular game. In the original LEGO Indy game it was a university, this time it’s the storage warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sort of. The top menu has you select one of the eight containers (some start boxed up and have to be unlocked) to decide where your adventure begins. There are crates for the first three movies and then three crates for Crystal Skull and finally a crate each for the build mode and another for “Super Bonus” levels, which are essentially time trials. But when you jump into a movie, the game drops you into a fairly expansive area that than has to be explored to find the storyline. While you wander around these large set pieces you also discover hidden items, challenges and fun little things to do. It’s a neat addition to the LEGO gaming experience.

Vehicles: Always a pleasure in LEGO games, this time around the world gives you access to cars, motorcycles, bikes, tree-cutters, horses, camels, rickshaws and, my favourite, planes. There’s nothing like flying over a LEGO land and jumping out to parachute to your favourite play area.

Completest: As with all previous LEGO games, LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues comes with quite a few reasons to play, replay and replay the game again. There are special LEGO pieces to collect, time trials to unlock, Easter eggs to discover. And it’s all a lot of fun to do.

Funny Story: Played in tandem with my eight-year-old, the game had Tristan in stitches. And it wasn’t just him. Sure, I’d still like to see a LEGO heart ripped from a mini-fig’s chest, but the alternative to all of that Indy violence can be quite funny at times.

Hated
Not So Invisible Walls: The worlds of LEGO Indiana Jones 2 are much, much bigger, but they’re not without their limits and unfortunately those limits aren’t disguised very well. Go too far and your mini-fig will just float back to the map.

The Camera Controls… Still: How can Traveller’s Tales, who have single-handedly reinvigorated, reinvented the LEGO gaming franchise, still not have the in-game camera worked out? I’m sick of dying simply because the perspective is throwing me off. Fix this already.

What Next: I love the huge explorable, hidden, area-filled worlds of LEGO, but I hate having to wander around in them for half an hour trying to figure out which path, which cave, which ladder will take me to the next step in the story. A map or maybe a better indicator would be much appreciated.

I wasn’t really looking forward to LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues. Of all of the LEGO games the first Indiana Jones was my least favourite, though I still quite liked it. And this time around, I wasn’t really anticipating playing through my least favourite movie in the series. But the game delivers on so many levels, adding a much needed split screen and a fantastic build mode, that I’ve been delighted with the experience.

If you didn’t pick up the first LEGO Indiana Jones game, I think it might even be worth skipping and instead going straight to this one.

LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues was developed by Traveller’s Tales and published by LucasArts for the DS, PC, Playstation 3, Playstation Portable, Wii and Xbox 360 on November 17. Retails for $US49.99/$AU89.95 (Xbox 360/PS3). A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through all sets and campaigns both alone and with my son on Xbox 360. Built several levels alone and with my son.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

I was introduced to Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers last week, discovering quickly that this was not the kind of Crystal Chronicles game I had expected. It is, you see, a single-player game, the first in a splinter line of Final Fantasy games made for Wii platforms and previously designed for four players.

The Crystal Bearers is different, set 1000 years after Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and putting the player in control of a single hero, a mercenary named Layle. The series’ dwarf race, the Lilty Tribe, have risen to power. The mechanical race, the Yuke, have seemingly been wiped out.

I was told by a Square-Enix representative that this game would feel like a “true Final Fantasy” for the Wii. It will have a deep storyline. But it also has real-time combat and was described to me as 75 per cent mini-games.

What I saw and played clarified things. I was shown Lilty running through a farm, getting pulled into a challenge to pluck all of the vegetables from a field before a clock ran out. A scarecrow was the opponent, shooting at Lilty to try to mess him up. So don’t think of “mini-games” in terms of a Mario Party, I realised. Think of them is mid-game challenges.

Next, I was shown some combat. Lilty ventured to a dusty desert area and enemies attacked. The game is played with a Wii Remote and Nunchuk. The control stick moves the character. The Remote’s pointer is used for telekinesis, to pick up objects and enemies, then toss them. The d-pad on the Remote is used to swivel the camera, the only element of the controls I found hard to handle in the few minutes I played the game.

I was told that conversations with non-player-characters will be less than typical for an FF game. Instead, the interactions the player tries to get are “reactions”. You get these from enemies by encountering them. For example, out in that desert area, Lilty fought some dog enemies. Once he had a Reaction associated with them, he could get them to stop fighting, run over and, uh, urinate on him. Other Reactions are equally comical, sending enemies into a daze because they’ve had their heads knocked off, for example. It’s all cartoony, done for laughs.

Also, somehow, some way, you can take a cow, hold it over Lilty’s head and shoot enemies with its udders.

I’m a sucker for the absurd in my games, so, as little as I saw of the Crystal Bearers, I was encouraged. It’s hard to see it as being a “true” Final Fantasy game, but only a longer play session that presents more of the story can verify that claim.

The game plays swiftly, action-first. It is colourful and has fun visuals, as you can see in these shots. Crystal Bearers may be off some people’s radar, but it will indeed be out this year in North America, the day after Christmas, for the Wii.

Sure, but getting the film made — and made right — wasn’t so simple.

Turbo follows 4D fighting game player Hugo (Justin Chon of Twilight fame), who hopes to join a pro-team by winning a Super Turbo Arena tournament.

“People,” Conway recalls, “looked at me like I was crazy.”

It wasn’t the story that was causing the looks of bewilderment, but Conway’s vision for how the film should be made: An effect-heavy film with a budget of $US100,000 USD.

This was Conway’s University of Southern California student film short. “It costs about $US400,000 to make an episode of Power Rangers,” says Conway. “So if you think about it that way, it’s really not that expensive.”

Student films typically cost a few thousand bucks — maybe the price of a sedan at most, not a fleet of sedans. Sure, Turbo was to be Conway’s thesis film, but it was to be more: atypical. It’s Conway’s calling card. This would be a two-years-in-the-making showcase showing he could use to tell a story and made a slick, effect-heavy film. And ultimately prove that this young, up-and-coming filmmaker gets gaming, the internet, convergence.

It all started in 2007. No, actually it started before that with karate, anime and video games. The Last Dragon inspired a young Conway to take up marital arts in junior high, studying Shorin-Ryu style karate and kobudo until he achieved a black belt. “There weren’t many black action heroes that I was aware of as a kid,” he says, “so Bruce Lee Roy fighting Sho-Nuff the Shogun of Harlem on a bootleg VHS was my inspiration.” (The movie would even go on to inspire the final fight in Turbo!) By high school, he was got a gig as executive editor of game site PSXNetwork.com, going to E3 each year starting when he was 16. There was a stint working at Electronic Arts in marketing. And then there were movies, loads and loads of movies.

Movies took him to USC Film School and to a select motion capture performance class taught by Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis. The class got Conway thinking about the Uncanny Valley Theory, about avatars, about effects and even martial arts. But it wasn’t just about making a slick flick. “I wanted to find the story’s emotional core,” says Conway. For him, that was the relationship between the two brothers in the film. Conway was ready to go, Turbo was the picture he wanted to make for his master’s thesis. Then, road block. “I didn’t get a lot of support at USC for the project,” says Conway.

If he was to make the film using USC’s cameras and USC’s equipment, well, then, USC owns the film. Meaning? Meaning Conway could not put it online. How did you see Turbo? On the Internet. How did I see it? Ditto. This is an age in which, if it’s not on the Internet, it does not exist. And the only way for Conway to ensure that the film existed was to get it online, which meant raising the money himself.

He didn’t do it alone. Film is a collaborative endeavour — though the director is leading the charge. Conway and his producing partner, Garrett T. Thompson, set out securing money. Conway created a press kit — a press kit for a movie that hadn’t been made yet, but a press kit that showed the visual vibe of the film. “Neither one of us comes from money, so we had to take a basic grass roots approach to raising the funds,” says Thompson. Student loans, credit cards, fundraisers, matching gift donations, grants and any which way they could get the money they needed. “The challenge was convincing people that  we could get this ‘crazy Turbo’ project done.” The reward wasn’t some monetary pay-off.

Remember, Turbo is a student film — they were convincing the donors to give money just so the film could get made. That’s it. A donation of faith. “When people donate to a short film they are basically doing it out of the kindness of their hearts and pockets,” Thompson points out. “They will really reap no monetary benefit, so your passion truly has to convince them.”

With initial funds in place, shooting commenced on December 2007. For the next year plus, Conway and his team would be hard at work on this short film.  “I was never worried about it turning out great, I was just worried that it would take forever to get there,” says Justin Lutsky. “To be honest, I never expected this to be such an undertaking.  When I agreed to edit I was anticipating a several month commitment and couldn’t really believe we were still working on a short film a year and a half later.”

Lutsky had met as contestants on a Fox filmmaker reality show called “On The Lot” in May 2007. Both were eliminated, but became fast friends. Lutsky, a young filmmaker filmmaker in his right, was asked by Conway to cut the film. “Turbo shot on the RED camera, which was fairly new at the time,” says Lutsky. “There were no established post production or editorial work flows established.  We essentially had to create our own work flow from scratch and had a lot to learn along the way.” Learn as you go, learn as you go.

An effect-heavy film like Turbo needs effects. Lutsky introduced Conway to the folks at Ember Lab, a start-up digital effects house in Southern California. “With the large amount of VFX work that had to be done, Jarrett could have easily spent his entire budget on post production alone if he had used an established Hollywood studio,” says Ember Lab’s Josh Grier. “We wanted to propose a bid that fit within his budget and would allow us to sustain our selves for the duration of the project.” For the team at Ember, Turbo was their first complete project and the experience of working on this type of film was by far their biggest drive to get involved. That, and the arcade gaming.

“My brother Mike and I lived in Tokyo for about three years and we have always been fond of the Japanese arcade culture,” says Grier. “After watching the first cut of Turbo, we knew right away that we wanted a hybrid look, combining elements of the retro eighties gaming culture with Japanese arcade flair.” Those retro elements were massaged so that they felt futuristic and a look was developed that Conway agreed completed his vision. “The most challenging part of Turbo was not a specific effect, but the design work that went into developing Turbo’s game system,” says Grier. “The HUD, UI and the futuristic TV were featured in about 75 per cent of the shots and all had to be developed from scratch.”

Not only was the game system complete mapped out, but the game’s mechanics. “People sweat when they play DDR in arcades, right?” asks Conway. “That’s the same idea — Super Turbo Arena is a physical game. Kids want to be Turbo players, not basketball players.” The game and its moves was created in the minds of the Turbo team so that it would be possible to play if the tech ever existed.

That’s what sells the film — its authenticity. Whether it be the authenticity of Turbo’s characters or its video game element, it feels real. Even for a movie wrapped in a sheen of CG and special effects. It feels more real than anything than has come out of the traditional Hollywood system.

Turbo is not perfect, but it’s filled with promise. It’s a vision of a future when those who grew up playing video games start to make movies about them. Movies that don’t suck.

Turbo from Jarrett Lee Conaway on Vimeo.

Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron follows the tale of two brothers, both Jedi clones, named X1 and X2. As the Dark Side’s power grows, the brother find themselves on opposite sides of the battle with X1 fighting for the Empire and X2 helping the Rebel Alliance. The game takes place over the course of the Star Wars films, with clips and characters from the older and newer films.

Compared with the previous entry in the Battlefront series, Elite Squadron offers “deeper” customisation than any of the previous Battlefront titles. But with customisation now standard on so many titles, a good game needs more than the option of character changes.

Loved
Variety Is The Spice of Space: Elite Squadron takes the fight into space, allowing players to fly X-Wings and board Star Destroyers. The inclusion of a galactic front in the series, opens up the title — makes it feel bigger. You go from blaster Stormtroppers on Tatooine to barrel rolling TIE Fighters in space. It really encapsulates the Star Wars experience.

So Epic: The great thing about Elite Sqaudron is the scope — players travel from Tatooine to Hoth to Endoor. The game is epic! Just like a Star Wars title should be. But at the same time, it does give players the feeling of experiencing the smaller side of a larger battle — just like a Battlefront title should

We Are Online: Elite Squadron has robust multiplayer, and The Heroes and Villains mode is a welcomed addition, giving players the chance to play as Stars Wars heroes or bad dudes. The other online modes, such as Galactic Conquest, offered replay value once the single player campaign is finished.

Hated
The Controls Are Outta Control: There’s no way around it, controlling the camera and the character by using the PSP’s analogue stick is a bad idea. Why not control the character with the directional pad? Oh right, because I’m using it for all sorts of input controls like getting into spaceships and whatnot. The controls could be and should be streamed lined — they feel dated. There is nothing wrong with complex controls when they add to the experience. Here, they don’t. They detract. It would make more sense to have the character controlled with the direction pad — not just for camera issues, but for control issues. The analogue numb on the PSP often lead my character all over the place, jumping too far, running too far, missing my landing spot. Unfortunately, the Alternative Controls are even less instinctive than the Default ones.

Been Here Before?: And as previously mentioned, the inclusion of space battles, provides a variety in gameplay, but some of that variety gets stale in the single player campaign. Missions seem to be either shoot guys on foot, use Ion Canon, then fly away or fly away, use Ion Canon and then shoot guys on foot. A pattern develops and becomes old.

The addition off space battles and the new multiplayer mode show that there is still innovation and room for the Battlefront franchise to grow. But for it to truly blossom, the basic control mechanics are in need of an overhaul. I fear the dark cloud of clunky controls shrouds all Elite Squadron.

Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron was developed by Rebellion Developments for the PSP and published by LucasArts on November 3. Retails for $US29.99/$AU59.95 for the PSP as well as for the Nintendo DS. A copy of the game was acquired via PSN digital code for reviewing purposes. Played through single-player campaign and tested multiplayer.

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