8-bit Trip
I realize this video may not be for everyone. For instance Nadya, one of my esteemed editors, hates videogames with an all-consuming passion. She must be forgiven for this, dear reader. It may not be common knowledge but Nadya’s entire village in Russia was destroyed by videogames. It was only by chance that she and her family had been chosen that week to travel the 500 miles to the nearest town to procure the beets on which they so desperately depended. Upon returning and finding the village razed and their neighbors slaughtered, they decided to flee to the United States.
You’ll excuse me, then, if I geek out for a moment. 8-bit Trip is a stop-motion music video that pays tribute to that generation of videogames that dominated my childhood, using the building blocks that has hijacked untold hours of my free time. Created by two crazy Swedes requiring over 1500 hours of work, who knows how many LEGO and a chiptune soundtrack; it is a perfect storm of cloying nostalgia, paralyzing my brain with its sheer awesomeness.
August 25th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
I think this video is one of those instances in which the ridiculousness of throwing so much of your life into a youtube video is totally offset by the awesomeness of the end result.
August 25th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Nadya? Is this why you became batman?
August 26th, 2009 at 1:24 am
Watching this video unleashed many painful memories. It was 1986: the year that Tetris came out in the United States, and the year that Chernobyl exploded. What many don’t know is that the two events were inexorably linked. The Soviet Ministry of Software and Hardware Export, Elektronorgtechnica (ELORG), had been working on an 8-bit game console that was to wipe its American and Japanese competitors off the map. But that was the console’s secondary purpose: the first was to secure USSR’s domination in the realm of science. You see, ELORG had found a way to harness game players’ synaptic activity through physical contact with the console’s control pad: the plan was to release an addictive puzzle game that created a hive mind capable of solving problems such as space flight, adult acne, and… nuclear fission. While beta testing continued in Russia, a benign (?) PC version of the game was leaked in North America.
The first live experiments were conducted in Pripyat, Ukraine: home of the Chernobyl Power Plant. Everyone knows that the cause of the explosion was computer failure: what they don’t know is that the “computer” was actually a series of gamers, mindlessly twiddling multicolored tetrads to form gapless blocks while their sweaty concentration was converted into computing energy. What went wrong? A village boy with an uncanny talent for mathematics, driven mad with an obsession to win, had hacked ELORG’s experimental console to manipulate the game’s laws of gravity. The new algorithm was what threw the reactor into overdrive. The boy, he had been from my village. The USSR’s punishment was swift. Maddened by the destruction of my village, I lost my mind and ran. And ran. And ran. I didn’t stop running until I found myself lost in a dark cave filled with creatures that terrify me above all: bats. That was the moment I realized that my village had to be avenged. The rest is history..
August 26th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
@Nadya…all that horror while this cheerful little tune played in the background…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0379Zs0qaXg
Hard to imagine really.
Your impact was severe and memorable even if sexist historians turned you from a woman of absolute vengeance into a somewhat angry man in a furry hat. Though this memorable moment of you fighting a Hind attack helicopter was pretty awesome:
http://www.scifi4me.com/RED_SON_IMAGE2.jpg
Not to mention punching communist Superman:
http://comicbookjesus.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/s_red_son_image3.jpg
You even got made into action figures!
sexist historian version:
http://ryanlb.com/images/dc/images/dcdrs_batman.jpg
historically accurate version:
http://ryanlb.com/images/dc/images/dcdrs_wonderwoman.jpg
August 26th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Mer & Nadya: Your banter may be better than the vid itself.
August 26th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
I loved the video, by the way. I kept watching it and thinking “this HAS to be computer-generated… has to.” Unless there are making-of images, I don’t buy it! It’s a total masterpiece.
August 27th, 2009 at 5:36 am
@Ross – Absoultely incredible video, great find.
@ Nadya OH THE HUMANITY OF IT ALLLLL.