Hacker CinemaHotline Miami
Hotline Miami
Film · 55 min
1989, Miami. A young man begins receiving phone calls demanding he go to Russian Mafia strongholds and safehouses and kill everyone while wearing various rubber animal masks.
4 neutralfrom 4 commenters
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From YouTube links in the comments below. Most are clips and trailers; “Full” means the uploader says so.
4 comments on Hacker News
Yeah and that was stupid I thought, and hotline miami was a good game. I hope they have a hotline miami movie but they need to make it like pulp fiction
2010: Me dancing to Richie Hawtin's soundtrack Making Contakt on a rave being deeply connected to that moment https://youtu.be/X8nMXdMuXIA
2011: Me watching the intro scene from the movie Drive and being blown away by the song https://youtu.be/9LUTOj7rX94
2012: Me playing Hotline Miami and being blown away by the score https://youtu.be/oKD-MVfC9Ag
What a string of experiences connected to techno.
I'd like to start by saying you made a very good argument here, but I would like to make some comments of my own as someone who is absolutely infatuated with this genre. You mention that a lot of synthwave is easy listening, but ironically most of the synthwave artists I tend to enjoy are a lot more "hardcore" I'd list 'carpenter brut','dance with the dead' and 'master boot record' as some good counterexamples to what you described. As for the social aspect, many people agree that the movie 'Drive' really kicked off the modern synthwave movement with its soundtrack and how the music played into the actions of the main character. The interesting thing about that movie is that it exists in a world almost directly opposite of what you described as "smooth social brand exterior" all the characters are living in some form of grime or filth, and the main character is a socially stunted badass. This movie (atleast for me) really set the stage of what synthwave conveyed, its fantasy of what I was told growing up were better times. Hotline Miami is another piece of art that prominently uses the genre to convey harsh ultra violent scenes of death and destruction, the beat and tempo drive the player to move quickly and kill swiftly in these dingy crime infested apartment complexes. Because I was so heavily influenced by Drive and Hotline Miami I see the genre as this brooding soundtrack for antihero's, like the kind of music that plays when the protagonist does some horrible stuff and subsequently smokes a cigarette looking off into the distance trying to understand what they just did. I'll post some example tracks below of darker stuff that fits this ethos.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wy9r2qeouiQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E9-rDplPrM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNE2oCZH_4k
Here are the games in this bundle I have played, and what I thought about them:
Hotline Miami, in my opinion, is the centerpiece of this bundle. It's about storming a building and killing all of the occupants in interesting ways. It channels this weird 80s rave aesthetic and feels like something between an arcade game, a puzzler, and an action movie. The art uses low-res 2D graphics in a way that's distinct from the usual "8-bit emulation" style, focusing instead on small details. The gameplay complements the art/sound/story elements, and somehow manages to convey more violence than I felt playing Gears of War. I mentioned a story -- it's pretty good, I think, although it's not really the main attraction of the game. Hotline Miami is a game that works very hard to make you feel like you're part of the universe, and, for me, that definitely paid off.
Little Inferno is lots of fun, and casual enough that you can play it in little bites sometimes. If you're going to play it (and you should!), I would not recommend reading past this point. I really like Kyle Gabler's description that "Little Inferno is a quiet introverted art project masquerading as a loud extroverted shopping game." It's fun (although not really challenging or game-y, not that it's designed to be) at first, and then pulls you into its story very effectively. The result is that I didn't notice that my little casual play session had turned into a kind of desperate dash to unlock the next tidbit of story until the game commented on it. It plays on your feelings very well, and the ending is up there with Portal as far as innovation and poignancy are concerned. Both Little Inferno and Hotline Miami gave me trouble sleeping the days after I finished the game, and that's a good thing.
Awesomenauts is like DotA, but 2D and simpler. The graphics look a little childish, but that belies the tightness with which everything handles. It's well made, and fun for the occasional bout of competitive play, especially if you don't have the time/nerves to get good at DotA/LoL like me. That said, I don't find myself playing it very often, although that's probably more because of me than because of the game. Oh -- and it has microtransactions, but they're well-managed and totally optional.