Video Game of the Future Has Arrived, and It Looks Real

Rick Dyer of Oceanside has just unveiled a new coin-operated video game.

That probably doesn’t mean much to you . But inside the video game industry, it’s a little like saying Stephen King is out with a new novel.

Dyer, now 36, invented Dragon’s Lair in the early 1980s, the first video game with crisp laser-disc animation. It revolutionized the business and ended up in the Smithsonian.

Dyer’s latest is Time Traveler, the first holographic video game. The figures are real-life people reduced to 5-inch size, not pixilated cartoon characters.

(If you’re not hologram conversant, think of the ghostly figures in the Haunted House at Disneyland).

Marshall Gram (with your help) fights his way through centuries to save Princess Zyla, slaying (or being slain by) various bad guys: From berserk cavemen to zombies to modern-day street slime.

Dyer and the manufacturer, Sega USA of Northern California, are confident that holographic games are the only way coin-ops can keep from losing more ground to the home-played games. The coin-op gross has dropped 50% in a decade.

After months of secret testing at an arcade in El Cajon, the wraps are off this week. Dyer meets the media and gleaming white Time Travelers are shipped to arcades nationwide.

“This represents a leap forward in the evolution of the medium,” Dyer said. “For the first time, we can offer reality.”

Of course, there is nothing to say that consumers, young or old, prefer reality to fakery. If so, the San Diego Sockers would be prospering and the World Wrestling Federation floundering, rather than vice versa.

This much is known: At 1 p.m. Tuesday, more video players at the Family Fun Center in Clairemont were playing or watching Time Traveler than any other machine.

Players included six young boys, a vacationing Del Mar fireman, and a plumber from Mira Mesa who was on his lunch hour.

“This is the future,” explained Mike Whitley, 13, who was holding a small bucket of tokens.

The Passing Parade

Instances and elaborations.

* Soon you’ll see advertisements for Corvette with the America-3 sailboat in the background. (Chevrolet is a sponsor of the America’s Cup entry).

What you won’t see is that the America-3 boat went aground Monday on Shelter Island trying to get as close as possible for the photographers.

Had to be jiggled carefully off a sandbar. No damage to the boat, though.

* San Diego bumper sticker: “Say No to Drugs, Say Yes to Tacos.”

* Sister trouble.

Vladivostok in the Soviet Union this week agreed to a sister city relationship with San Diego. Tacoma, Wash., which had also been in the running, got a consolation prize: a sister port relationship with the port of Vladivostok.

A delegation from Vladivostok will come here, but not as early as planned. The Vladivostok mayor telegramed that “the very complicated situation with food products” requires city officials to stay close to home.

Translation: The harvest was lousy, shortages are rampant and consumers are increasingly frosty.

* There’s been no announcement, but retired U.S. District Court Judge J. Lawrence Irving has been named by Gov. Pete Wilson to head a screening committee for judgeship applicants in San Diego County.

* Nordstrom, known in the trade for pampering customers, has gone one better.

Shoppers at Friday’s sale at the University Towne Centre store will get complimentary valet parking.

* Resume watch.

A 25-year-old unemployed salesman has staked out a spot outside Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego and is handing out resumes to passers-by.

“I’ve tried everything else,” said Adam Schwartz, wearing a sandwich board advertising his availability for employment.

* North County bumper sticker: “All Men Are Animals But Some Make Nice Pets.”

Digging a Duo, Man

Musically correct.

Ad in the North County Entertainer: “I am seeking an African-American bass player and an ugly drummer.”