PRESS START

October 28, 2013 7:17 PM

8 Bit Cinema: The Shining

Finding Nemo
The Dark Knight

All from CineFix, via

posted by the man of twists and turns (13 comments total)

That was pretty cute. I appreciate that they put Calumet baking powder in the dry storage lock-up scene.
posted by codacorolla at 7:29 PM on October 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

Holy shit, these are good. The pixel art, music, sfx, sprite animations, the way stuff moves around... on point.
posted by scose at 7:51 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

You can tell the creator actually understands the technology limitations that make old games look the way they do.
posted by scose at 7:53 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh my goodness, I so want to play this for reals!
posted by Calzephyr at 8:05 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

The one for Anchorman is very Earthbound-y, although that one should technically be 16-bit Cinema.
posted by JHarris at 8:12 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Very well done. They've clearly modeled each of these off of a specific game, and their choices are good. The Shining one is clearly Maniac Mansion, and The Blade Runner parody is modeled directly off of the SNES Shadowgate (which itself was heavily indebted to Blade Runner -- it's turtles all the way down).

The best part is how they manage to preserve the creepiness of the Shining so well in its 8-16 bit format. There's a certain sense of dread that games of that era can impart -- partly because of the abstractness of everything, partly because of how alienating and austere the technology is -- that this taps into perfectly.
posted by workingdankoch at 8:19 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

...wow.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:26 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm guessing they based the Shining video off Maniac Mansion, which creeped the hell out of me as a kid. I was also caught off guard by how creepy and menacing the 8-bit frozen Jack at the end was.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 8:34 PM on October 28, 2013

These are great, but this 8-bit version of Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog is amazing (previously).
posted by straight at 9:35 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

That was pretty cute.
posted by Alexsandra at 11:24 PM on October 28, 2013

ha, even though I've seen this movie loads of times and knew exactly what would happen at the end, i still got nervous near the end!
posted by bitteroldman at 5:22 AM on October 29, 2013

8-bit is nostalgia branding at this point, isn't it? The Dark Knight uses a lot of assets from A link To The Past, which is a 16-bit game of course.
posted by ersatz at 5:37 AM on October 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

8-bit is nostalgia branding at this point, isn't it?

I wouldn't call it "nostalgia" as my kids, for instance, also get a kick out of this style, but yes, at this point "8-bit" is basically slang for anything that looks like NES- or SNES-era graphics.

Stuff that harks back to even earlier styles of vector graphics or Atari-2600-style usually just gets called "retro."
posted by straight at 9:09 AM on October 29, 2013