It’s no secret that video game fans often take their passions to fun extremes. Here are five examples of that extreme via live-action video game short films for Pokémon, Zelda, Sonic, Portal, and retro games!
1. ‘Pokemon Apokelypse’ trailer
In this 2010 fake movie trailer, Youtuber Megastakeman took a much more adult and graphic take on the beloved Pokémon series. Ash has a five o’clock shadow, Team Rocket uses real guns, Pokémon battles now take place as underground rumbles, and overall, the good guys don’t always win. The CG Pokémon in the real world setting fit in surprisingly nice, wreaking serious environmental damage in the form of Hyper Beams and Thundershocks.
2. ‘The Legend of Zelda’ IGN movie trailer
As part of an elaborate April Fools’ joke in 2008, entertainment website IGN.com released a very believable mock trailer for Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series. The internet was a-flurry when this was released, in that the production quality of the entire trailer was so high, it seemed as though every die-hard fan’s deepest desires were coming true! Sadly, IGN admitted the next day that they had simply trolled the whole of the internet successfully. And thus, nothing that was said on the internet on April Fools’ day was ever trusted. Ever again.
3. ‘Portal: No Escape’ short
Dedication doesn’t even begin to describe the production quality behind this Portal short. On top of that, the film’s creator Dan Trachtenberg took what can be observed as a very fun, satirical story, and transformed it into a haunting reminder of both our own humanity and just how trapped we all are. The CG and other special effects in this short are top notch, leaving many in the comments pleading for a feature-length movie. Hey, if that happened, we’re not complaining!
4. ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ Fan Film
Although the acting may be a bit cheesy in this one, it’s really cool to see someone’s interpretation of how everything in the Sonic universe would go down in the real world. It’s notably very difficult to make cartoon video game characters appear as if they belong talking and interacting with humans. At the end of the day, creator BlueCoreStudios tried valiantly to balance the amounts of cheese and cool factor in their short film. This 18-minute movie definitely gets an ‘A’ for effort!
5. Frediew’s ‘Old School vs. New School’ retro game short
Last, but most certainly not least, is famous Youtube filmmaker Freddie Wong’s Old School vs. New School. In his videos, Wong is usually very successful at melding together video game and real world scenes as if they had always belonged together. What’s most impressive about his work is that he releases a new CG heavy short every week! In this selection, Wong mashes together characters from video games of new and old series. Just imagine Assassin’s Creed’s Altair vs. the arcade game Centipede. Yeah, Wong does stuff that cool.
Which was your favorite?
Which short film was, or wasn’t, your favorite? Do you know of another awesome short film that we didn’t include? Sound off in the comments below!
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