King of Arcades is a documentary about Richie Knucklez, the owner and proprietor of the Richie Knucklez Arcade. Richie does some incredible work, completely restoring old arcade machines. It’s his goal for you to walk into his arcade and feel as though you’ve been transported back to a different era.
I remember reading about King of Arcades when Kotaku first posted about it at the tail end of 2012, but I had almost forgotten about it. We hadn’t provided any update on the movie or its progress in months. Since we last wrote about the documentary a new trailer has been released, and it seems as though we completely missed it — so I’ve posted it above as a reminder of its existence. It looks great!
I was reminded of this documentary this morning by the director himself, Sean Tiedeman, who sent us an email about the project. He’s very close to finishing the movie, and is putting the final touches on it before its release. The soundtrack is being put together by Richie Knucklez’s band, Knuckle Sandwich, and the reason Sean had gotten in touch with us was that the band had just finished off recording a cover of Pac-Man Fever, the lead song in a crazy concept album by Buckner & Garcia where every song was focused on a popular arcade game at the time.
The above video is a sort of behind the scenes look at the recording of the new version, but the best part of this video is that it takes a genuinely interesting look at the history behind the song, and features interviews with Jerry Buckner about the genesis of the song and its impact. Really cool stuff.
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