Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure Impressions - E3 2004

At E3 2004, we were able to take an advance look at Atari's upcoming game based on creative inspiration from clothing designer Marc Ecko. Details seem scarce, but Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure will apparently be a game about a lone graffiti artist attempting to spread a message of defiance in a huge metropolis overrun by gangs and by an oppressive military force.

Atari showed a brief video--which may or may not have been representative of actual gameplay--that featured a daring young fellow dressed in a stylish hooded sweatshirt, baggy jeans, and oversized sneakers leaping across the top of moving trains in an attempt to spray-paint graffiti on them. Later, the young man sprayed up a wall in what appeared to be a subway tunnel, only to be accosted by a gang of thugs. The young man pulled a lighter from his pocket and, with his can of spray paint, made a makeshift flamethrower that took his assailants by surprise before he delivered a few devastating punches and kicks that floored his opponents, until one of them hit him from behind with a club.

The scene then changed to the young man fleeing from a military helicopter firing on him as he sprinted across a rooftop and then leaped onto a telephone wire and slid down the length of it to the next building. On reaching the next building, our hero saw his next target--a propaganda billboard, part of which flashed with a glowing X (presumably to indicate that this was where he had to spray-paint his next message). He then replaced the end of the billboard's sentence, which claimed that the police state made "the city free," with "the city free...TO KILL." The video then cut to one final sequence that showed our hero dangling by his waist from a great height spray-painting something in red--the camera zoomed back to reveal that he had spray-painted the word "FREEDOM" in huge block letters on the side of a bridge. With this last cryptic scene, the video came to an end. Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure is scheduled for release next year.