Grindhouse Theater Simulator

About the Game

You finally get to put your idea of a perfect double feature on the marquee. You also get the ticket queue, the popcorn machine and whatever's stuck to the floor.

It's September 1983, and the Rialto is yours: eighty seats and one projector. Run the place in first person, from booking the prints to cleaning up after the last customer. Give them a night worth coming back for, and make enough to open the doors tomorrow.

Put together tonight's double bill

Choose from a catalog of 200 original genre film titles: creature features, supernatural horror, slashers, giallo, science fiction, crime and more. Every title has its own one-sheet poster and a trailer that plays on the theater screen.



Pick from the distributor's daily offer sheet, pair the films, set your ticket price and pay the rental. Add a bargain matinee at 1 PM. Build your reputation enough to bring the late crowd back for a midnight rerun. Or buy a hot print from the underground dealer and hope the police don't take an interest in your programming.

Keep the picture moving

• Sell tickets at the window and keep the popcorn coming.
  
• Cue the projector and get each feature started on time.
  
• Splice a snapped print while the audience waits.
  
• When the power goes, take a flashlight to the fuse box, then get back upstairs to restart the show.
  
• Mop up before yesterday's crowd becomes tomorrow's smell.

They bought a ticket. That doesn't mean they'll behave.

Horror heads, couples, cinephiles, regulars and rowdy teens share the auditorium. Somebody lights a cigarette. Somebody else is recording the screen. A fight breaks out while you're trying to keep the rest of the house watching the picture.

Step in before the complaints become walkouts. Leave the floors filthy night after night and you'll have rats to deal with, too.

Out on the street

Drifters work the sidewalk under your marquee and hassle the customers in line. Run them off and more turn up tomorrow, or hand over the night's leftovers and they'll leave your crowd alone. And watch who's in the seats: a critic in the house means a review in tomorrow's paper.

Put the Grindhouse Gang on the payroll

• Misty Stubbs sells the tickets. She'll talk your ear off about the movie and explain why every idiot in it deserved what happened.
  
• Crystal Starr handles concessions. She describes a dismemberment with the same sweet enthusiasm she'd bring to a new shade of lip gloss.
  
• Lance Silver runs the projection booth. He knows the films, knows the equipment, and would prefer not to hear your theory about the ending.

Assign their duties and let them learn on the job. Service gets faster, ranks go up, and so does the wage bill.

Give the regulars something to come back to

Restore the marquee, renovate the lobby and add front-row seating. Put in a second box office window, a hot dog roller and playable lobby arcade cabinets. Upstairs, open the Fatboy Riot Vinyl Lounge: a smoking lounge with a jukebox and the Blood Carnival pinball table, which you can play yourself.

Even the intermission has a program

A collection of 27 original 1980s-style commercials and two house intermission reels supplies the breaks, complete with jingles and mascots. Sign sponsors to get paid for running their ads. Keep the place respectable enough that they still want their names on your screen.