Everyday Activist - Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler

Posted on Thursday, October 13, 2016 at 06:00 PM

Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler

Movie Review by Everyday Activist X CalgaryMovies.com

When a film festival comes to town usually I get asked what movies I would like to watch/review. Because my interest is in documentaries first and from that list a subsection of those dealing with social justice issues, I don’t always get an opportunity to watch everything. Man vs. Snake played at the Calgary Underground Film Festival 2016, but is now available on Netflix. Had I known about the Alberta connection, I might have made a better effort to watch it in the springtime during CUFF 2016.

I never liked arcade games, but you have to have respect for people who are committed enough to dedicate themselves to playing a game to the best of their abilities. In this case, Tim McVey was the first person to reach a billion points in the game Nibbler back in the 1980s. Shortly after, an Italian teenager, Enrico Zanetti, broke McVey’s record, but didn’t receive any recognition in America until recently. Because of the controversy, Tim decides to break his record again, twenty five years later. To sweeten the story, Dwayne Richard, who hails from Alberta, ended up challenging Tim McVey to a Nibbler competition.

Throughout the movie we experience the trials and tribulations of someone wanting to reach his goal with multiple attempts over the years. They compare marathon video gaming to mountain climbing, but having spent time at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, somehow I don’t think mountaineers would be overly impressed with the comparison. I was touched at how many people came out to support Tim, even Walter Day, the founder the Twin Galaxy arcade where the record was originally broken. His wife, Tina McVey, rearranged her life to stand by her man as he pursued his dream and of course a huge online community watched anxiously each attempt.

For a younger generation, it’s hard to understand the value in retro gaming in 2016. At the Beakerhead festival this year, a professor from the University of Calgary has a retro gaming class to teach students about hardware and software limitations and how to work within them. Like good documentary film makers, Andrew Seklir and Tim Kinzy go into some of the technical aspects of retro video gaming hardware and software, especially when a controversy arises with Dwayne’s score during a video replay of Tim’s and Dwayne’s Nibblers game side by side. While many of the other people thought of Dwayne as a cheater, Tim stands up for him, further endearing this unlikely hero to the audience.

While I told my editor at Calgary Movies that I was taking a break between film festivals (next one being Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival 2016 starting Oct 29), Man vs. Snake was too good not to write about. Netflix has a lot more documentaries that were once featured at the CUFF and CUFF.DOCS film festivals as well as the Marda Loop Justice Film Festival. I encourage you to look at Netflix and the CUFF Archives to see which ones are available. They also have some of the Oscar nominees and winners in the documentary category for your viewing pleasure.  

Calgary Showtimes: Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler >