Joysticks – Spin-Offs Classic

On this Blackest of Fridays, let’s turn our attention to the darkest corner of depravity the human mind can conceive–an arcade from 1983. Revisiting older media is often problematic for a variety of reasons, but perhaps there is no other piece of old videogame media more problematic than 1983’s Joysticks, an 80’s sex-comedy in the vein of Ski School or Revenge of the Nerds, only much worse than those examples. The film sought to capitalize on the pre-crash era of videogames where the emphasis weirdly seemed to be more about the “video” than the “games” aspect of the term. It’s the first 15 minutes of Tron before they get sucked into the games, stretched out across 88 minutes and with a lot of unnecessary sex added.

Disclaimer: The film in question features gratuitous sex scenes but also some scenes that could reasonably be argued to be sexual assault. We have a verbal condemnation of this at the front of our show but it should be understood in no uncertain terms that even though we’re covering this movie, we disagree with quite a bit about its depictions of sex.

Joysticks follows a humble cocky arcade owner and his friends as they goof off and annoy local businessmen and “vidiots” with high score contests, all night slumber parties, and pranks that would get you arrested. The movie focuses on things like Pac-Man, Gorp, Stripper, and Satan’s Hollow, you know, typical arcade nonsense from 1983 and there’s obviously a bit depictions of 80s panic about arcades being dens for debauchery (which this movie does nothing to refute). Honestly we covered this movie 2 and a half years ago and I barely remember anything of the plot because it’s so threadbare. Don’t bother looking this movie up to watch in advance, even though it is on YouTube (find it for yourself if you dare). But if you’ve already seen Joysticks or if you know how these shitty 80s sex-comedies go, feel free to listen along as we clown on how bad it is.

This episode originally released March 23rd of 2023.