The return of the arcade?

I Stumbled over this a few days ago.

"[Cecropia is] making a coin-op game about emotion, controlled by the earliest of videogame input devices, a single knob. They call their game a filmgame."

The idea of merging the cartoon world with computer games is not new at all. On top of my head a dozen titles pop up. Leisure suit Larry, Sam & Max, Day of the tentacle, Dragon’s lair. In fact, back in the days when I started doing computers (yes it’s a drug) these kind of games where everywhere. The 2D graphic and quirky stories must been why I fell in love with computer games in the first place (that and Samantha Fox strip poker on commodore 64 of course).

So the revolutionary thing about this story is about the return of the cartoon games? The answer is no even though this is indeed a fabulous thing. The key words here are instead Arcade and Single knob. Bringing this kind of game to a platform that traditionally has been reserved for car and fighting games is both interesting and very bold. How will it be received? This is a first step toward the interactive movie set in a public place.

“Players have to correctly read and control the visual personality cues in the animated characters in order to move to the next level of the game. The control system for The Act is a very simple and easy to use dial”

Apparently the dial is an analogue stick that you at given points use to tell the game just how funny you are or how meek you should be. I for one would line up at the bar to drop a few coins in this experiment.

Watch the trailer here