"The Bishop of Battle" is a memorable arcade prop from Joseph Sargent's 1983 horror anthology, "Nightmares." The segment featured Emilio Estevez as a crazed videogame guru obsessed with making it to the final level of the game. Of course, all hell breaks loose when the final level is achieved and the game becomes reality. If you are a gamer and have not seen this, you should definitely check it out (DVD available for purchase at Amazon.com, etc. Had a devil of a time finding it locally in the stores). The Bishop himself is about as creepy as videogame characters can get (much more disconcerting than the "Space Fury" guy). The cabinet has a relatively unique design with a second light panel above the screen, pinball tube scoring, and a ray gun joystick. The game play is envisioned as in the film but with some bells and whistles when transitioning to level 13. The game play would evolve during the game to become more and more immersive until the 13th level when it transitions to a FPS with graphically spruced up enemies and an endless wasteland as a game environment. Might also play some tricks with a strobe relay and mono to surround sound at that point. "Gameroom" magazine had an April Fool's piece written by Kyle Snyder on the game that was very insightful in terms of game play and controls (like the 4 colored buttons above the spinner). Controls will likely follow the scheme as outlined there. Thus far, we have gotten the screen caps, audio files from the flick, developed a marquee and light panel, and written a functioning intro (download below).

High Resolution Marquee
High Resolution Light Panel

05.06.06 DEMO!!!