For a slightly edited version, check here: http://cinemablend.com/games/Top-5-Best-Moments-Of-Video-Games-Featured-In-Movies-Ever-13708.html
Before Uwe Boll began churning out video game movies twice a week, to see a video game in a movie was a rarity. What was always most interesting to me though was how little the people obviously knew about video games in the first place when they decided to put them in the movie. Case in point is the John Cusack vehicle, Grosse Pointe Blank. In that film, Doom 2 makes an appearance…as an ARCADE GAME. Oh, yeah, I remember putting in that God Mode code at my local Cineplex, right on the keyboa…wait a minute…arcade cabinets don’t have keyboards.
So below are my top five favorite moments of video games featured in movies. Number one is my absolute favorite, mostly because I actually believed it was true at the time.
5. Karate Champ in Blood Sport
Karate Champ was a horrible game. It was horrible back then, and it’s an atrocity today, but in the Van Damme foot fest, Blood Sport, some serious male bonding happened when the muscles from Brussles and some other dude united by playing it. Seriously, I would think Pit Fighter would have been a better pick, given the subject matter.
4. Afterburner II in Terminator 2
Whoa, is that Butnick from Salute Your Shorts I see rocking out in Afterburner II? No way! Believe it. The nineties was a deciding decade for Zubaz pants and bizarre red mullets (Just check Wheeler from Captain Planet if you don’t believe me), and Butnick, so bad he just can’t help it, hanging with his friend, John Connor, adds the perfect cheese factor to a game that supplies all its thrills on the fact that it’s in a plastic plane that moves. They don’t make ‘em like they used to, that’s for sure.
3. Super Mario Bros. 3 in The Wizard
Okay, so maybe The Wizard was more a commentary on autism and Nintendo merchadising, than it was on anything else, that still doesn’t make that final, pivitol moment in the film when the idiot savant finds the hidden whistle by ducking on the white rectangle. Never have I felt more like a geek than when I tried the trick myself and found out that it worked. Little Big world was the shit.
2. Double Dragon in…Double Dragon
In the whoa, meta category is seeing the arcade cabinet for Double Dragon in the actual movie of Double Dragon. The scene occurs when that guy who ruined the X-Files, Robert Patrick is fighting the Lee brothers, and he slams them against the arcade cabinet, the game flickering on and on in the background. Okay, accuracy might not be the true aim of the film, but am I really supposed to believe that a movie that takes place in the not too distant future is still going to have old-school games like DD in them? Come on, where’s the cheesy virtual reality footage of people with headsets on fighting from the mind’s eye? Also…a little Battletoads love would have been nice, especially with their eventual team-up in the real not too distant future.
1. Game Gear in Rumble in the Bronx
Rumble in the Bronx was Jackie Chan’s first breakout film here in the US for many reasons. It had suspense, it had romance, and it even had magic, as revealed in the scene where Jackie’s little wheelchair bound friend is seen playing a Game Gear and there’s sound coming out of it. The magic lies in the fact that THERE IS NO GAME inside the Game Gear when he’s playing it. Ta da!
So below are my top five favorite moments of video games featured in movies. Number one is my absolute favorite, mostly because I actually believed it was true at the time.
5. Karate Champ in Blood Sport
Karate Champ was a horrible game. It was horrible back then, and it’s an atrocity today, but in the Van Damme foot fest, Blood Sport, some serious male bonding happened when the muscles from Brussles and some other dude united by playing it. Seriously, I would think Pit Fighter would have been a better pick, given the subject matter.
4. Afterburner II in Terminator 2
Whoa, is that Butnick from Salute Your Shorts I see rocking out in Afterburner II? No way! Believe it. The nineties was a deciding decade for Zubaz pants and bizarre red mullets (Just check Wheeler from Captain Planet if you don’t believe me), and Butnick, so bad he just can’t help it, hanging with his friend, John Connor, adds the perfect cheese factor to a game that supplies all its thrills on the fact that it’s in a plastic plane that moves. They don’t make ‘em like they used to, that’s for sure.
3. Super Mario Bros. 3 in The Wizard
Okay, so maybe The Wizard was more a commentary on autism and Nintendo merchadising, than it was on anything else, that still doesn’t make that final, pivitol moment in the film when the idiot savant finds the hidden whistle by ducking on the white rectangle. Never have I felt more like a geek than when I tried the trick myself and found out that it worked. Little Big world was the shit.
2. Double Dragon in…Double Dragon
In the whoa, meta category is seeing the arcade cabinet for Double Dragon in the actual movie of Double Dragon. The scene occurs when that guy who ruined the X-Files, Robert Patrick is fighting the Lee brothers, and he slams them against the arcade cabinet, the game flickering on and on in the background. Okay, accuracy might not be the true aim of the film, but am I really supposed to believe that a movie that takes place in the not too distant future is still going to have old-school games like DD in them? Come on, where’s the cheesy virtual reality footage of people with headsets on fighting from the mind’s eye? Also…a little Battletoads love would have been nice, especially with their eventual team-up in the real not too distant future.
1. Game Gear in Rumble in the Bronx
Rumble in the Bronx was Jackie Chan’s first breakout film here in the US for many reasons. It had suspense, it had romance, and it even had magic, as revealed in the scene where Jackie’s little wheelchair bound friend is seen playing a Game Gear and there’s sound coming out of it. The magic lies in the fact that THERE IS NO GAME inside the Game Gear when he’s playing it. Ta da!
I’m not really sure if this was meant to market Game Gear as the tool of the devil, or just a prop to show that Jackie’s friend was wasting time, but I’ll never forget seeing that one shot of the kid playing Game Gear, in all its beeping and booping glory, and there was nothing even in it to make that noise in the first place. Leave it to Hollywood to mess up something as easy as putting a game in the gameslot.
What pains me MOST to admit, though, is that I actually believed that Game Gears could play games without having cartridges in them. The Master System could (Hang-On was on there), so why not the Game Gear? I mean, the number 1 and 2 buttons were the same, so why not this feature? Alas, it was not true, and upon unwraaping it for a present for Christmas, it didn’t take me long to realize I had been rused again. Dammit, Jackie! Ay ya!
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