Actual Reality

Knightmare was a strange children’s programme and was notable mainly for its early use of computer graphics, which it used to immerse a bunch of confused children in a fantasy world of dungeons and whirring metal blades. I flicked on the television on Sunday and found myself face to face with a clip from the show; it was no surprise to find that the show has aged terribly.

But the idea of bringing the pizza-flecked world of computer games blinking into the moonlight of the real world...this is actual reality and it hurts my head. Let us exhume this concept with a range of increasingly pointless examples.

Halo Paintball

Hang on, Halo? Is this what we are after? Like many games of its ilk, Halo is a exaggerated reflection of reality in the first place, so holding up the mirror and bouncing it back into the real world seems absurd. Nobody wants to go to war for real, they just want to safely despatch a few foreigners with shiny hardware that creates big explosions.

But this is betting without the paintball.

Hardly the blood and guts, flying limbs and oh-the-humanity we would expect from a Halo actualisation, but who gives a damn when the most you are likely to be hurt is a paint pellet to the groin? In a couple of months I will be paintballing as part of a friend’s stag weekend, so this is one piece of actual reality I will be able to put into practice. Unlike...

Pac Man in the Park

Here we must be wary. There is a bad line that we would likely cross in pursuit of the wacka wacka gold. This valid experiment in game actualisation could easily turn into an unfunny stunt in the style of Dom Joly, in which a bunch of pensioners are filmed staring with an evident lack of interest at something vaguely surreal.

Only boring and middle-class students find these stunts funny. And it isn’t hard to confuse a pensioner. Seriously...the average high street shop changing into a different shop tends to blow their minds for upwards of a decade. So prancing around in Hyde Park in stupid costumes is not going to get you the Clever medal.

So this is a thing that must be done at night. This suits perfectly the stripped-down minimalism of blue on black of the original game, last seen huddled in the candy-floss smeared ambience of the eighties arcade. The dots would become shots of beer, and the power pills would be tabs of LSD. The benefit of the latter is that the second round would take place entirely in your imagination; cheap as hell and saves a lot of running around in hot furry costumes.

Or come to think of it, you could just take the acid first and stay at home. Then there would be no chance of bothering any pensioners, except perhaps Mrs Brown from the flat below when you hurtle past the window, stark naked and babbling about extra lives.

Robotron 2005

In the original game you were a happy hero who spent his time surrounded by huge waves of angry killers that homed relentlessly in on your position. You panicked the hell out of the joystick as you straddled a continual disaster curve armed with nothing but a laser gun.

A simple actualisation of this game would be to stand in the middle of the Vatican during the Pope’s address, slip on a condom and start making out with your gay friend whilst ordaining a female priest.

Then shout “yer mum!” at the Pope and run like hell.

Need for Speed: Underground

Ah. Here we find ourselves staring down the world of illegal street racing. This is not something we can take lightly and we would be drifting, in the words of Marwood, into the arena of the unwell. In this case, unwell means pale-faced 19 year olds with shit baseball caps and a handful of jewellery from Top Man’s range of My First Bling.

Across the car parks of dead supermarkets in London’s midnight, these people gather in their souped-up Novas, sound systems pumping out generic bad boy music, whilst neon blue lights mingle with sodium orange to bathe the tarmac in a liquid eeriness.

In one corner a scrawny heroin-addict lies on top of a mate’s car and watches a Cockney prick with a laughably macho nickname driving his car around in small screeching circles. Somewhere nearby a few police cars crawl past, hoping fervently that their presence stops the little bastards doing anything that would require paperwork to be filled in.

Soon enough, the adrenaline starts pumping through the veins that normally carry little else but a mixture of testosterone and cannabis. A few cars line up, engines revving like the thrust of a shagging rabbit. Needles flicker across the speedometer...the air fills with fumes. The expectation is painful, the future is uncertain...and the road ahead is empty.

Then the leader gets a call on his mobile. It’s his mother...they’re going to Aunty Beryl’s tomorrow and would Kev mind awfully coming home and ironing his Next shirt before bed?

Kev whispers “yes” into the phone, discreetly cuts her off and then shouts “screw you!” into the mouthpiece.

This week there would be no race...but let the world be put on notice...next week the Bad Boiz Kru will be tearing up da streetz of fuck knows where in their krazi motorz, and to hell with da highway code, er, providing it’s at night when there’s nobody around, like. Innit.

Meanwhile, somehow, the world continues to turn.

Street Fighter 2

Two words: New Cross.