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Giant Joystick Lands in Echo Park

by Mark Mauer

April 18, 2008 8:15 AM

If you Google the phrase "Giant Joystick," one of the first names that comes up isn't a well-endowed porn star, but artist Jason Torchinsky, who actually built a scale-model of the classic Atari 2600 controller, except at 15x the size of the ones we had as kids.

Dozens of people showed up at Machine Gallery Thursday night to grab hold of that mighty stick with both hands to play Donkey Kong, Missile Command and Pac-Man projected to appropriately huge proportions on to the wall of the gallery.

(Projected game about 12 or 13 feet high)

Next door at the Echo Park Film Center the already-classic documentary King of Kong was playing, with the filmmakers in attendance, but come on - it's already on DVD, and you can listen to the director's commentary if you really want to know more about Billy Mitchell's hot sauce (And by the way, Billy Mitchell is again the reigning champion at the game, having beaten Steve Wiebe's score).

(Sorry for dark video, but the game had to be played in complete black to see the projection. Trust me, the screen is even bigger than the joystick...)

Read on...