Perhaps it’s just the coming, new Twin Peaks season, but it seems that all things Northwestern, surreal and Lynchian are in the air. The most recent iteration of this wave before the flood is a recent article by Leigh Anderson which collates instances of the series appearing in video game mode…

It sure is a boom time for the odd intersection of Twin Peaks with video games. There are game-y reimaginings everywhere, and a few commercial projects in recent years pay tribute to David Lynch’s 90s mystery television: 2010′s janky but beloved Deadly Premonition went heavy on the similarities, for example. In the just-released first episode of Life is Strange, set dreamily in the Pacific Northwest, a main character’s vehicle bears the license plate “TWN PKS”.

The 1990s make a good setting in general for modern games with unconventional goals. The trend toward creating more laid-back, sentimental experiences of reading and discovery — like the nostalgic Riot Grrrl story the Portland-based Fullbright Company told in Gone Home — means lots of developers might be seeking settings where physical technology (tapes, notebooks, VHS), ripe for rifling through, intersects with poignant generational angst.

I track my young adulthood through the 1990′s and I can’t think of a better summing-up of the slacker/bohemian culture of Generation X than trying to play “modern games with unconventional goals.” Twin Peaks still appeals to my generation because it still resonates with the weird idealism of that era, and it continues to win fans because, well, we were really on to something.

Or not. Agent Cooper would never fall for the straitjacket of belief and neither will I. The spice must flow.

The Welcome to Twin Peaks site has a great breakdown on the gameplay including this anxiety inducing description that left me reaching for my joystick…

A day in the FBI was never like this before! You are Special Agent Dale Cooper and you’ve found yourself trapped inside of the Black Lodge, a surreal and dangerous place between worlds.

Try as you might, you can’t seem to find anything but the same room and hallway no matter which way you turn. Worse yet, your doppelganger is in hot pursuit! You have no choice but to keep running through the room and hallway (or is it more than one?) and above all else, don’t let your doppelganger touch you! Your extensive physical training in the FBI will provide you a seemingly limitless supply of energy to run as long as necessary, but running out of breath is the least of your worries!

I don’t have an Atari 2600 anymore and this game was never actually available as a cartridge as it wasn’t produced until 2011. That said, the game master, Jak Locke, recreates vintage gameplay here while simultaneously immersing players in a thoroughly disorienting tour of Twin Peaks’s alternative reality.

Here’s a video from inside the Black Lodge…

Read the rest of the article and download the game for yourself at the Welcome to Twin Peaks link above…

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This spring we’re celebrating the 23rd birthday of Richard Linklater’s counterculture classic, Slacker.

Capturing the way-out fringe of his Austin, Texas neighborhood, Linklater put himself on the map with this rolling conversation of a film that’s as subtly sophisticated as it is endearingly odd, smartly self-conscious and deeply human.

Here’s some nice words on the film from the Indie Beat site:

Although festival masterminds and film critics like Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby found something intriguing and exciting in the film Slacker, slacker as a word was seen as something of a negative in the media of that time. As such Slacker was labeled as a film for and about ‘Generation X’, which is in large measure amusing for Linklater himself was at the tail end of the baby boomers. Linklater himself would later say in the commentary for the Criterion edition of the film that he used the word in an affection manner, and never felt that the denizens of his film were lazy or apathetic people, they just chose to strike out on very non-traditional paths compared to most of the population. Indeed if one looks at the film today its wandering philosophical debutants of Austin’s counter culture (equally grunge and folk or metal as coming from no scene at all) feel just as fresh and exciting, if not possibly more so considering the backdoor compliance to consumerism that befalls the current hipster. Composed in what almost feels like one long, fluid take, the camera bobbing along the river that is the collective unconsciousness of Austinites, Slacker is visually impressive for its acute simplicity and preciseness. To this day, Linklater’s technique is never showy nor flashy (even in his far-out animated projects), but to call his images dull is the ultimate misstep in how to look at his pictures. Like Nouvelle Vague-er Eric Rohmer, there is a no-nonsense nature to Linklater’s compositions, as if he is making sure there is enough space for his characters and all their multicolored thoughts and feelings to fit on screen with enough space left over for us to stand side by side with them. His images account for the existential in a way that is rarely abstract, surreal or fantastic. So yes, while they may appear to be more or less practical in nature, that should not mean we are taking them in without wonder. Linklater is a craftsman who builds minimalist structures which house complex constructs, often on the everyday, if strange, beguiling and even miraculous nature of life itself.

Here’s the film…

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