I've actually had a couple ideas for shows based on Aces High. One could be a movie and one could be a short 20 minute segment on a show like what the old Twilight Zone or Amazing Stories series use to be:
The movie I hadn't figured out completely but the idea would be Aces High would be fought both in cyberspace and the real world. You'd have players permanently in a country fighting other countries. If one country had some real good players that were causing too much trouble, the other players would go out in real life, find the threat player and take him out.
The game would be totally, real life serious but I could never really figure out how the movie would play out and end. Just a bunch of guys killing each other in the game and real life.
The short segment Twilight Zone version I thought would actually make a fun show for TV:
Starts out with an old guy and his wife. The guy's a war vet (ww2?) and is real old and depressed. He can't find fun in anything anymore and his wife's concerned about his depression.
He's watching the Superbowl and sees an Aces High commercial. He says to his wife, "You know. That looks like fun". She agrees saying, "Yes, that looks like something you'd enjoy. You should give it a try". She's excited that maybe he's found something to make him happy. He ends up downloading the game and installing it right away.
He immediately falls in love with it and at first the wife is overjoyed that her husband has a new sense of purpose and happiness in his life. But it doesn't take long before he becomes obsessed with it and it begins to take over his life.
He starts playing it all day long and into the night. He's losing sleep. The countries and players become real to him and he'll log back into the game at any time of day or night to help out his country if his fellow fliers need help.
His wife starts becoming concerned with his obsession, and for good reason. He's hardly paying attention to her anymore. All she hears his her husband yelling at players in the game when something good or bad happens.
Finally, one evening she confronts him: "George! You're letting this game take over your life! It's just a game George. We haven't even hardly left the house since you've been playing it".
George: "I have to be here for the guys, honey. They can't handle those cheating bastard rooks alone. I NEED TO BE THERE FOR THEM!".
The wife leaves the room in tears, disgusted with what the game has done to her husband and her life. She sits down and watches television hardly able to ignore him in the other room, the sounds of air to air combat on the computer and George yelling out at the enemy players and his comrades:
"That's right, Scab! Blast him from the front if he's gonna go head on with you. Damned, cheating Rooks! I'll cover ya, skuzzy, while you blast the skuzbag Rook picker!"
Then she hears his tone change: "Uh, oh. I'll bet that P38 is Von Holtz. He's one of their best, but I bet I can take him". "YOU SCUZBAG, ROOK, VON HOLTZ! I'M GONNA TAKE CARE OF YOU ONCE AND FOR ALL!". On the TV, viewers would see George getting really into the fight, interspersed with screen shots of the fight of him dueling Von Holtz' P38.
The wife listens to the sound of airborne mayhem: "Almost gotcha, Rook bastard!", then all of the sudden she hears him scream, "OH, NO!", accompanied by a series of loud bangs and the sound of breaking glass.
She gets up and hurries to the other room and screams: "Oh, my God! George, what have you done?".
George is sitting back in the computer chair. His eyes are open, staring at the ceiling but not seeing anything anymore. There's blood and glass all over his chest and face with the computer monitor appearing to be blown out from the inside. George is dead.
Von Holtz finally took out George once and for all.
(the idea being, for those that didn't get it, that Von Holtz cyperspace shots actually went through the monitor and killed George- cyberwar finally becoming real)
And that would be the closing shot: The wife with her head in her hands crying and George dead in his computer chair with blood and glass on him from his last fight with Von Holtz. Then you could have the Rod Serling voice come in and say something like, "As we become more involved in cyberspace, the more real it can seem to us. For some, it becomes too real", or something like that.
That could fit into a 20 minute TV segment, don't you think?
