Story Idea: The Last Stallfighter -or- Button Mash Saves The Universe · 2:53am Aug 28th, 2014
It's about the 30th anniversary of The Last Starfighter, and after watching it last night with my ungrateful kids (No, we are not watching Pokemon. We're watching a movie that came out when Dad was young. And yes, they had computers back then. Now shut up.) I got the idea that I should crossover the story with MLP. Here's what I have so far, but I don't know if I should dive in and finish it up.
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The Interstellar Alliance is threatened with extinction as the Kullian Armada approaches its homeworld with a Planetkiller. Only one being of extreme courage and skill stands between freedom and destruction. Button Mash.
With his trusted wingpony Sweetie Belle, they are the last hope for freedom in the galaxy. Or at least until bedtime.
“Left! Left!” screamed Button into his headset as he rammed the joystick to the right, hot on the trail of the Kullian Drones that were shooting at his wingpony. “Break left and I can get ‘em both!”
“Button, my port shields are out!” she shouted back, twisting her fighter into an evasive spiral with the drones spitting fire right behind her. “If I break left, I’ll give them a free shot.”
“Trust me, Sweetie!”
The two drones spiraled in closer, bursting a shot right over Sweetie’s hornfighter cockpit. With a startled screech into the microphone, she shouted, “You better not miss. Breaking in 3… 2… 1… BREAK!”
The hornfighter gave out a sudden burst of speed and slammed to one side, allowing a few moments before the two drones lined up behind. But Button Mash, King of the Keyboard only needed one moment.
“Eat flaming photon bolts!” he shouted, driving a single armor-piercing bolt of fury through the first lightly-armored drone and snarling as the expanding fireball consumed the second one. “That’s what you get for picking on my Sweetie!”
There was an exceedingly quiet section of vacuum that surrounded the two victorious fighters until a third voice on the interstellar radio called out, “Got you, ya egg-sucking varmint! Moondancer, where are you?”
“Keeping your tail from being blown off, Sonja. Look over your shoulder.” The sounds of rapid fire lasers crackled over their headsets as Button and Sweetie swept into a long turn and poured on the acceleration.
“Red group, this is Blue,” called out Button Mash “We’re about two of the little marks on the radar away from you and closing fast. I count seven drones on your position.”
“Six!” snapped Moondancer as the thunder of a detonating drone resonated through the headsets. “They’re inside our turning radius and I can’t shoot them fast enough.”
“Circle clockwise,” called Button. “Just as tight as you can. Sweetie and I will make a high-speed pass.” Glowing dots grew in the heads-up display at an astonishing pace, showing two circling green dots with a half-dozen red dots inside their path. The first indication the drones had that the tables had turned was the titanic green blast of plasma from Sweetie’s horn-cannon that vaporized three drones and threw the rest into shock, making them dead meat for Button as the two shot straight through the circling squad members, leaving nothing but sparkling wreckage in their wake.
Four loud cheers over the intercom were followed by the familiar voice of the Alliance Commander. “Wave defeated. Good job, Stallfighters. Replenishment drones are on the way to your location to repair and rearm your fighters.”
Then there was something different. Instead of rattling off their scores, the Alliance Commander’s voice changed somehow, seeming more Equian than before.
“The next battle will start in three hours. The Kullian Armada has broken through our defenses and is preparing to unleash a Planetkiller on Alliance Prime. The fate of billions of sentient beings lie in your manipulative appendages.” The diagram of a huge oblong vessel with thousands of smaller drones around it filled the HUD, with weak points and gun towers highlighted.
“This will be the ultimate battle. Stallfighters from all over Equestria will be participating in the conflict, and if you win, the Intergalactic Alliance will be eternally grateful. But if you lose…”
The HUD filled with the image of the Planetkiller gliding up to the planet, and a huge missile flashing out and impacting with an explosion of sparks that grew until the entire planet had vanished.
“Failure will mean there will be no more Intergalactic Alliance. We are all depending on you, Stallfighters. Alliance Commander, out.”
Button Mash pushed himself back from the computer and began to exit the game. “Whee-ha! Way to go Sweetie Belle. I wish they would have posted the score after that wave. You were AWESOME!”
“Do you think they’ll really going to turn off the game if we can’t destroy the Planetkiller, Button?” Sweetie’s voice asked from the headset.
“Don’t worry. They’ve invested like a bazillion bits into this game. There’s no way they’d just turn it off if we don’t win one level.
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The Alliance Commander flipped off his subspace communicator and leaned back in his chair before looking at his subordinates gathered around the Stallfighter Command Center.
“Gentlesapients, I hope you have some good news for me, because in about three Equestrian hours, we’re going to be depending on Operation Trojan Horse to save the lives of every being in the Interstellar Alliance.”
Hmmm... I don't remember that movie being that good.
Try showing your kids Wargames and see if they get it. Or the original Tron. Dial up modems!
I always did like that movie as well as the design of the gunstars. Fighter craft with the firepower of a capital ship? Yes please!
Wait, has it been THIRTY YEARS!? Man, it's as old as I am... Welp, someone fetch me my helmet. I have a Stallfighter fic to read! Oh, and can somepony keep Snips and Snails AWAY from the big black & yellow stripey button?
Oh, the nastalgia! We are probably of an age, Georg! Please do continue, and no I hadn't realized that this was the thirtieth anniversary of the release of The Last Starfighter.
"Button Mash has a very special talent. One nopony on Equestria can apprecitate."
(And now I have The Last Starfighter theme stuck in my head, good job Georg).
Yes, please.
Yes!
I still cant get into a swivel chair without moving it jerkily round and making mechanical noises. It earns odd looks, but sometimes I just need to give in to my inner child.
Please write this.
--Spade
Also looks like you tossed a little bit of Ender's Game in the mix as well... Could just be me.
I was literally born the year this movie came out, but I grew up watching it. Definitely would like this story made.
fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/193/6/e/the_last_starfighter_by_digoraccoon-d6d7ni3.jpg
2407727
More importantly, a space fighter that looked, was equipped as and acted like a space fighter rather than something from the Vietnam War suddenly made vacuum-capable like the stuff in Star Wars.
I loved The Last Starfighter when I was a kid. Someone very smart once said that it is a gamer's dream come true - playing video games giving you the skills needed to save civilisation. If done properly and with tongue firmly in cheek, I think that it could work for Button Mash.
Oh, the power of nostalgia. You had me laughing out loud with the first paragraph alone
Though, on another note, I do get the feeling that the strongest thing this story has going for it is the nostalgia factor. Someone like me, who watched that movie when it wasn't a classic yet, is likely going to love it, but I'm not sure how someone that does not know the movie would react; I myself can't distance your story from the movie enough to make an objective assessment.
2408549
I, at least, found it to be fairly enjoyable. It's obvious that I'm missing a ton, but I'd still read a full-length version.
Thirteen years? It's been thirteen years?! Wow, time flies... please write this. I may have watched it ten years after its release, but I still liked it!
2409253 Thirty, not thirteen. Made in 1984. About 90% of the brony community wasn't even born when it was filmed. There's a wonderful making of clip here. Odds are the computer that you're reading this on has ten times(or more) the processing power of the Cray Y-MP that they used to create all of the digital effect shots.
2409287 Cool documentary, thanks for linking it.
2407708
It's not supposed to be. It's cheeseball as fuck and REVELS IN IT!
... now I wanna watch it again.