WARPED GAMES

WARPED GAMES (1983)
dir: John Badham

WARPED GAMES
MAD #244, January 1984
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

At top secret government site NORAD, Dr. McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) is trying to sell the general (Barry Corbin) on the WOPR an artificial intelligence system that will figure out various strike possibilities to defeat the enemy. In Seattle, David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) is showing his classmate Jennifer (Ally Sheedy) how he can hack into the school's computer system and change his grade in science, and he can change hers if she wants. He hacks into what he thinks are advance copies of the new video games but the WOPR system developed by Stephen Falker (John Wood), who originally named the system after his son Joshua.

At NORAD, the system has been hacked, and it appears they are on the brink of a nuclear invasion. They figure out that it was David Lightman who hacked into their system, track him down, and arrest him. He's brought to NORAD and locked in a room, but escapes on a bus touring NORAD.

Not just a Kramden cameo but Norton there in the manhole.

Having found out Steven Falker is still alive, David has found he's on a remote island off Oregon and the only one to save everyone from the brink of armageddon before the WOPR can figure out all the digits to the nuclear code. David and Steven direct the machine to play tic-tac-toe and throught that it realizes there are no possible winning outcomes.

In Germany, as well as other countries, everyone's always known who U.S. Leaders are but it doesn't seem to work the other way around.

MAD only had 3½ pages to work with but even with twice that Cracked didn't adapt much more.

WAR GAINS
Cracked #200, December 1983
a: John Severin

The movie began with NORAD taking workers through war games to show what went on there before the WOPR was fully developed.

David found out he was the one who hacked in the system by watching the news. He disposed of everything hoping he wouldn't be caught he was arrested before it was too late.

Hawkner faked his own death and isn't interested in helping anymore since he feels death is inevitable. They covince him as the earth verges on Defcon 1. It's a scale of how safe we are with Russia with 5 being the safest.