During a recent review of the contents of a couple old USB drives that I had forgotten that I stashed away, I found a handful of articles that I had written for a gaming site that went defunct. Since I hate for words to sit unread (even those in incoherent, rambly sentences), I decided I might as well share them here. Here’s one from around January 2013 in which I mused over some depictions of games and gamers on the big screen.
It’s widely accepted among gamers and movie-goers that movies based on video games are never quite as good as the games themselves. But movies that contain references to video games…well, some of those aren’t that great as well; but many of them are perfectly enjoyable. These references range from large (Tron – the entire movie) to small (remember the NES Advantage controller from Ghostbusters 2?) to everything in between. While it’s unfortunate that Hollywood often invokes typical “gamer” stereotypes (as “they” do with just about any group “they” don’t fully understand), these references are testament to the fact that video games are an integral part of our culture. I love it when games, consoles, or gamers get in a little bit of screen time, so here are a few of my favorite video game references in movies.
