Sure, if we mention the words ‘Marbella Vice’, you might think of that ‘GTA Online’ server created by Ibai a couple of years ago. But the truth is, there’s a hidden history of video games that requires us to go much further back, when Álex de la Iglesia wasn’t even in his thirties, Santiago Segura hadn’t even thought of the name “Torrente,” and video games were very different from what they are today.
Patrolling Marbella
You may remember FMV games, which were supposed to revolutionize everything back in the day: they consisted of video sequences in which you could play at certain moments (for example, shooting some coins or villains). Some did it well, like the classic ‘Dragon’s Lair.’ Others, not so much. In Spain, it was Picmatic, the company that ventured into this with ‘Los justicieros,’ a classic directed by Enrique Urbizu that even sold two hundred arcade machines to the United Kingdom. If you’ve played it, the word “Bullets!” surely came to mind.
With the success of the western genre, light-years away from ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ (obviously), Picmatic decided it was time to commission the next game to a new director famous for his short film ‘Mirindas asesinas’ and who was about to shoot a film titled ‘Mutant Action.’ Álex de la Iglesia, who knew what he was doing, took a vacation in Marbella with his friends Santiago Segura and Álex Angulo, and there he filmed ‘Marbella Vice.’
Unlike ‘Los justicieros,’ Álex’s game did not have a computer version, and little remains of it. However, it is known that it cost 30 million pesetas (around 180,000 euros) and featured yacht escapes, forced entries into mafia houses, explosions, and various mischief. At the end of the game, Angulo would say from a speedboat, “See you in the next adventure, haha!” But there was never a next adventure.
The game was an absolute failure, but it provided enough money for the actors and director to finance their own projects. In the same year of its release, Segura won the Goya for Best Short Film with ‘Perturbado’ (from that era that now seems forgotten), and De la Iglesia began preparing his next project, a small film titled The Day of the Beast. We may probably never be able to see or play the complete ‘Marbella Vice’ because nobody has enough interest in preserving it. However, we should consider it as a piece of our audiovisual history. It’s not every day that you can see three Goya winners goofing around together, right?
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