What if Pong was played in a bloodbath? If Tim Miller and Dave Wilson, producers of Amazon Prime Video’s adult animation series Secret Level, have their way, we’ll see something of that sort across our TV screens in the near future. Speaking with ScreenRant, the pair discussed the video games they would love to put a disturbing twist on in a second season of Secret Level.
No formal renewal of Secret Level has been announced, but that hasn’t stopped Miller and Wilson from thinking about which other games and characters they might like to tackle. When discussing a possible second season, Miller admits there are too many video games to choose from, before Wilson mentions arguably the most influential video game of all time. “The one I know I want to do is if we can figure out a way, the sort of granddaddy of all video games, I need to find a way to make a Pong episode.”
Before any of us could conjure up all of the possible twisted angles you can take with a 2D table tennis-themed game, Miller goes straight for blood, suggesting a Pong episode “could be equally disturbing as Pac-Man.” Just to refresh your memory, the Pac-Man-inspired episode from the first season involved a floating golden orb training a swordsman who emerged from a tank to escape a maze, before violently taking over his body for its own mysterious aim. Does that mean the Pong paddles will be controlled by humans ready to lob bombs instead of an innocuous white dot back-and-forth in a game of survival? Maybe not, but Pac-Man covered in blood after eating its way into someone’s body doesn’t make that suggestion an impossibility.
Miller also calls Fortnite the “Moby Dick of video games,” perhaps because the vast collection of IPs now present in it would make acquiring the rights a highly attractive but also very elusive and challenging prospect, or because, in his mind, the game’s popularity and cultural ubiquity make working with the property an obvious goal for anyone involved in telling stories rooted in games right now. Either way, a second season of Secret Level is not promised, especially given how the first has been received by reviewers. If Amazon did decide to drop more money into an anthology series in which robots rebel against humans in Unreal Tournament and Patrick Schwarzenegger’s New World: Aeternum character dies enough times to bore his murderer, then prepare to see Pong dripping in blood.