Empire used to be really good at Sensible Soccer. Or at least, so we thought – until it became available on Xbox Live recently. We downloaded it in a fever of anticipation, ready to destroy all-comers as we used to do so effortlessly, and then challenged our young designer chap, John Hitchcox, to a game… in which he thrashed us without breaking a sweat, batting an eyelid, or reaching puberty. Most annoying.
And we tell you this because this clash between gamers old and new forms the basis for Thundercade, a spec script from Fanboys scribe, Ernie Cline, which has just been snapped up by Lakeshore Entertainment.
The premise takes the classic arc of many a sports movie – former great tries to reclaim his past glory by competing in a cut-throat tournament – and moulds it to fit the gaming world. Namely, when an ageing gamer discovers that a young punk has beaten a world record he held, he sets out to prove that he hasn’t lost his mojo, taking two friends away from their humdrum lives in order to enter the Thundercade, the world’s ultimate gaming championship.
So it’s Kingpin, or Tin Cup, but with joypads. But if this works as well as those movies, then Thundercade should be a treat. And it comes tinged with authenticity, as Cline is a self-confessed videogame junkie. "Having spent countless hours playing Xbox with my nephew and listening to him trash-talk me, I fell in love with the idea of pitting older classic arcade-era gamers from the '80s against teenagers -- the Atari 2600 generation vs. the Xbox 360 generation," he told Variety.
Thundercade – to be produced by Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi and Dan Farah - is at a very early stage, obviously, but looks like it has real potential to bag a name in the lead role – we could easily see a Steve Carell or a Jim Carrey or a Will Ferrell. But that will all have to wait. Right now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve off to challenge that Hitchcox fella to a game of Tekken 2.