Friday, December 16 2016

Giant arcade game for the streets of Christchurch!

This summer, visitors to the central city of Christchurch will be able to play a giant outdoor arcade game, the first of its kind in the world in Gap Filler’s latest project - Super Street Arcade. The giant joystick, standing over a metre tall with buttons the size of dinner plates, needs to be pulled, pushed, twisted and jumped on by several players at once, all communicating and combining movements to achieve success in the game. And because the details matter, there is even a high score board.

Super Street Arcade is Gap Filler’s latest project and will see the over-sized gaming console installed on a footpath in the Innovation Precinct and a large screen mounted on the neighbouring new Vodafone building. Super Street Arcade turns normally sedate, lounge-room gaming into a highly active, outdoor social experience. “It’s so much fun to play; it really gets you moving. Players become as much of a show as the game itself!” says Gap Filler Project Developer, Damian Doyle.

The first game that will launch the project – Attack of the Cones – is a uniquely Christchurch take on the 1980s classic Moon Patrol, featuring Christchurch buildings, public figures, evil road cones and more. The fun and playful game with a Christchurch flavour is bound to appeal to people of all ages. Attack Of The Cones was created by internationally acclaimed local game developers Cerebral Fix. The game has players guide Captain Jimmy Wheeler on his fast bike and salvaged alien blaster on a mission through Christchurch to save us from the invasion of alien road cones - a traffic threat of galactic proportions! And more games are to follow. Over the Summer, Gap Filler plans to ask school children and hobbyist developers to create a selection of new games for the system, installing them over a period of several months and is exploring the possibility of mentoring to be provided by professional developers.

Like almost all of Gap Filler’s projects, Super Street Arcade is a free public amenity that hopes to bring some more energy, life and fun to this part of the city, encouraging people to play the game day or night.

“This project is a bit of a turning point for us and is a bit of a reflection on the city’s quake recovery,” says Coralie Winn, Gap Filler Co-Founder. “The rebuild is progressing fast, making this an exciting new opportunity for Gap Filler to inject some of our quirkiness and community spirit into the heart of the Innovation Precinct, working with a brand new building. This is also the first project where we have collaborated with gaming and tech communities in Christchurch, and with EPIC and others right in the neighbourhood it’s been a logical and fruitful collaboration.”

“We learned a lot from the interactive public amenity that is the Dance-O-Mat and probably our most popular project. So we were thinking about how people have responded to and used the Dance-O-Mat when dreaming up Super Street Arcade” says Winn.

Super Street Arcade will run December 16 - Spring, 2017.

www.superstreetarcade.co.nz

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