The Last Starfighter ~ Another cult movie of the 80's

Movie Release Date: 13 July 1984 (North America) IMDB

 Greetings Starfighter, you have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Zur and the Kodan armanda. (click here for audio file)

Well, you may have thought it was a game, but it was also a test. Aha, a test! Sent out across the galaxy to find those with the potential to be Starfighters. And here you are, my boy! Here you are! Centauri (Robert Preston, RIP 1987)

Here's another cult movie that any 80’s geeks may remember: The Last Starfighter; this one came out a few years after TRON. I really enjoyed this movie at that time, been the same age of the main character playing video games. If you haven't seen this movie, watch it with your kids in Blu-ray, they've done a great job in HD 1080p (click picture above).

This movie was about Alex Rogan a teenager living and working at a trailer park seemingly doomed to stay at home all his life, frustrated and mostly to forget about his problems was playing the only arcade game available located at the trailer park front office where he defended "the Frontier" from "Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada" in a space battle. Surprisely after mastering The Last Starfighter videogame, he finds himself recruited by a "lovable con-man" as a gunner for an alien defense force.

This movie didn't get alot of attention however it was quite revolutionary for its special effects. From the generation of "E.T.", Star Wars, Star Trek and Indiana Jones there were little chance it was going to succeed. But It's a movie I clearly remember when I was a teenager and it did stick with me, so it has that special place even though we don't ear much about it anymore.

Unfortunately, this was another arcade machine in a movie that never made it in Arcade rooms. I remember been disapointed about that.. I was thinking back then: How can you make a movie about a kid becoming an hero for beating the high-score of an arcade game and not actually making the game afterwards? What a tease this was for every arcade gamer!

I'm not the only one who really enjoyed this movie, I've found a PC version of The Last Starfighter game that the guys at Rogue Synapse created in 2006 to play in their working replica of the arcade machine used in the movie… now that's wild! ~ They've done a very good job on the arcade cabinet and the game is still available for download for free! ~ Grab it before it's too late!..  (click on pictures to enlarge)

Quote from Centauri: "The amusing thing about this is, it's all a big mistake. That particular Starfighter game was supposed to be delivered to Vegas, not some fleaspeck trailer park in the middle of tumbleweeds and tarantulas. So it must be fate, destiny, blind chance, luck even, that brings us together. And as the poet said, the rest is history."

Movie synopsis: Teenager Alex Rogan lives and works in the trailer-park that his mother owns. His life consists of contemplating his rather bleak future, and waiting for word on his college loan application to arrive. One night all this changes forever. Alex possesses an extraordinary skill at video games, and when this skill attracts a space-travelling recruiter looking for pilots to protect the galaxy from outside forces, he suddenly finds himself on another planet in the middle of an inter-galactic war. It seems that his game-playing abilities are an invaluable military asset to the embattled "Star League of Planets."

Other Cool Links: Sound clips from the movie · Famous quotes from the movie · Arcade game specifications by Atari · Internet Movie Database (IMDb)