“Sure,” he replied, grabbing the controls. “Thanks!”
A green path appeared on the floor of the arcade, leading from where I stood to the exit. I started to follow it, then remembered to run back and grab my notebook off of the Dig Dug game, just like David had in the movie. As I did this, my score jumped another 100 points, and ACTION BONUS! appeared on my display.
“Bye, David!” Howie shouted.
“Bye!” I shouted back. Another 100 points. This was easy!
I followed the green path out of 20 Grand Palace and up the busy street a few blocks. I was now running along a tree-lined suburban street. I rounded a corner and saw that the path led directly to a large brick building. The sign over the door said Snohomish High School—David’s school, and the setting of the next few scenes in the movie.
My mind was racing as I ran inside. If all I had to do was rattle off lines of dialogue from WarGames on cue for the next two hours, this was going to be a breeze. Without even knowing it, I’d totally overprepared. I probably knew WarGames even better than I knew Real Genius and Better Off Dead.
As I ran down the empty school hallway, another warning flashed in front of me: YOU’RE LATE FOR YOUR BIOLOGY CLASS!
I continued to sprint at top speed, following the green path, which was now pulsing brightly. It eventually led me to the door of a classroom on the second floor. Through the window, I could see that class was already in session. The teacher was up at the board. I saw my seat—the only empty one in the room.
It was right behind Ally Sheedy.
I opened the door and tiptoed inside, but the teacher spotted me right away.
“Ah, David! Nice of you to join us!”
Making it all the way to the end of the movie wound up being a lot harder than I anticipated. It only took me about fifteen minutes to figure out the “rules” of the game and to sort out how the scoring system worked. I was actually required to do a lot more than simply recite dialogue. I also had to perform all the actions that Broderick’s character performed in the film, in the correct way and at the correct moment. It was like being forced to act the leading role in a play you’d watched many times but had never actually rehearsed.
For most of the movie’s first hour, I was on edge, constantly trying to think ahead to have my next line of dialogue ready. Whenever I flubbed a line or didn’t perform an action at the right moment, my score decreased and a warning flashed on my display. When I made two mistakes in a row, a FINAL WARNING message appeared. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I got three strikes in a row, but my guess was that I’d either be expelled from the gate or that my avatar would simply be killed. I wasn’t eager to find out which it would be.
Whenever I correctly performed seven actions or recited seven lines of dialogue in a row, the game would award me a “Cue Card Power-Up.” The next time I blanked on what to do or say, I could select the Cue Card icon and the correct action or line of dialogue would appear on my display, sort of like a teleprompter.
During scenes that didn’t involve my character, the simulation cut to a passive third-person perspective, and all I had to do was sit back and watch things play out, sort of like watching a cut scene in an old videogame. During these scenes, I could relax until my character came on-screen again. During one of these breaks, I tried to access a copy of the movie from my OASIS console’s hard drive, with the intention of playing it in a window on my display so I could refer to it. But the system wouldn’t let me. In fact, I found that I couldn’t open any windows at all while inside the gate. When I tried, I got a warning: NO CHEATING. TRY TO CHEAT AGAIN AND IT’S GAME OVER!
Luckily, it turned out that I didn’t need any help. Once I’d collected the maximum of five Cue Card Power-Ups I began to relax, and the game actually started to be fun. It wasn’t hard to enjoy being inside one of my favorite flicks. After a while, I even discovered that I could earn bonus points by delivering a line in the exact tone and with the same inflection as in the film.