Movie of the Week: Man vs Snake

Alexa: I will freely admit I am not a video game person at all, so I’m sure I didn’t appreciate “Man vs. Snake” on the same level as my fellow reviewers. But fortunately it’s a film you can go into with zero video game knowledge and still enjoy. The documentary does a great job of capturing the video game culture of the Twin Galaxies era and conveying the significance of Tim McVey’s achievement. Tim is an affable character, and his passion is infectious. “Man vs. Snake” is an intriguing exploration of the gaming community – and a specific subculture within that community – but at its heart, it’s a story about an ordinary man and his quest to achieve an astonishingly challenging goal. I liked that the documentary chronicled Tim’s experience over several years. It underscored what a difficult achievement this was, and how much time and effort he had to put into breaking the record again. Really my only complaint about the film is Walter. I appreciate his contributions to gaming, but it really rubbed me the wrong way that he refused to recognize Enrico’s achievement until the record was safely Tim’s again. But I did like that the film ended with the record being shattered yet again. Tim’s score paved the way for other gamers to push their skills. He’s a key player in gaming lore, and “Man vs. Snake” is a fitting tribute.

Joel: This movie works as sort of a companion piece to the more famous video game documentary The King of Kong. Both movies tell the story of a few people trying to achieve an impossibly high score on a classic arcade cabinet. In both cases the record to break is one that’s been at the top of the scoreboard for decades at this point. Man vs Snake takes a look at another aspect of these old arcade machines that The King of Kong doesn’t really cover. While The King of Kong focus on an incredibly hard game and people trying to get really good at it, Man vs. Snake focuses on a game that’s not all that hard to play. Nibbler is a game that is much more forgiving than Donkey Kong but that means that to get anywhere close to the record you have to be playing the game for hours. Man vs. Snake focuses on the mental and physical exhaustion that comes from playing a game for 30+ hours straight. (In comparison, the current world record game for Donkey Kong is about three and a half hours.) When it comes to the potential foul play from a competitor part of the movie (as all these seem to require) it’s not about a person trying to make the game easier, but about trying to make the game faster to cut down on that marathon time.

Twin Galaxies is also heavily featured in this movie as well, though it’s interesting to see the company and two people (Walter Day the founder of Twin Galaxies and Billy Mitchell, competitive video game player) featured in such a different light in this movie compared to The King of Kong.  While Billy Mitchell was more or less the villain of the movie in The King of Kong he kind of portrayed as the Yoda of video games in this movie. He only appears in talking head segments to talk about video games and the difficulty of being one of the most elite players in the world. The movie is also much kinder to Walter Day who gets to appear more an authority on classic gaming and high scores rather than the easily manipulated person he comes across as in The King of Kong. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle of the to different Walter Days that each of these movies present. (The same can’t be said for Billy Mitchell who earlier this year was officially stripped of all of his video game high scores due to cheating and banned from ever submitting new scores.)

There are a lot of these classic video game documentaries out there. (In addition to these two, there’s Chasing Ghosts, Atari: Game Over, Video Game the Movie, The Lost Arcade, and plenty of others.) This is one of the better ones. It feels low stakes, but it does a good job of making 30+ hours of the same game visually exciting to watch. It gives you a good idea of what makes the game work without ever grinding to movie to a halt to hand hold the audience. The two main players in the movie, whether intentionally or not, create a great foil for one another, and it’s easy to once again get really invested in hoping this guy gets a high score in a video game that is a quarter of a century old.

For those who are interested, Nibbler has been saved on the Internet Archive and you can try out the game here if you want to take your own shot at the high score.)

Chris: It is intoxicating to see someone perform a skill that they are a master at. That’s why is so enjoyable to watch sports with players at the highest level playing at their peak and all the way down to something seemingly trivial at playing video games but it’s equally as impressive. What I found interesting is the documentary picking up the story every couple years or so and see the gradual shift in culture. First of all, MAGFest is a much bigger deal now than it was when their footage was recorded and just the simple notion of watching someone play video games and turned into a common pastime online. We all saw it on the Christmas Nibbler run but Twitch streaming is now basically the home for marathoners like Tim. Man vs Snake is a great depiction of the gradual acceptance of video games as something adults can like and be passionate about. That being said, I’m not about to play GTA V for 40 hours to set any sort of record.

Jason: Gonna be honest here, I don’t really know how to start my review for this doc. While watching it, I was able to follow the story and root for the good guy but after it was done, I was left with that feeling you get when you've eaten a pop tart and are still hungry. My introduction yo video games was an old Atari console in my dad’s bedroom when I was 5. I didn’t get into arcade cabinet gaming till much later in my life. And it still isn’t my gaming bread and butter. These guys who are featured here are that one generation older that only had the arcade. Twin Galaxies was their hideaway. It was their safe place. It was where they became big kids. Watching Tim try to regain his youth throughout this film was somewhat depressing. While he did finally accomplish his goal, his failures were so much more crushing than they he’d been decades ago. And I guess that’s what makes this such a compelling story. He does persevere. He does push through his depression and defeatism to reclaim his glory. It was a nice, clean ending.

As I said earlier, this one felt like a filler snack. I enjoyed the Family Guy-esque animation, the song at the end was goofy and fun. I don’t regret having sat through this one.