The "Video" in "Video Games"

An admittedly random assortment of video game-based art that I enjoy. I've played video games since I was very young, and since they're such an inherently visual medium, I've always thought people could do something cool with the pixilated visuals that they beam into our heads. Turns out a lot of people agreed.

Flickr user skinny coder posted this on his account. It's Duck Hunt, realized in Legos. What's especially cool about this project is that he's managed to preserve the blocky graphics of the early age of video games while still creating his art in a three-dimensional space. I like it. He's done a few other games, too, including Excitebike and Bionic Commando.


This piece, titled "Pipe Dreams" was made by an artist calling himself Danimation. He re-styled a whole lot of Mario characters in a more fluid, cartoony style. For Mario fanboys, this is the equivalent of a centerfold.


This piece apparently first showed up as a poster in Nintendo Power, a magazine I actually used to subscribe to when I was a kid. I just like that the artist, some guy named Gabe Swarr, bothered to put as much effort into it as he did. He's covered most of his bases by showing a healthy cross-section of the various Mario-related games I played when I was wee. And I can't help noticing that he seems to have drawn Mario to look like the Mayor from "Powerpuff Girls." Gabe Swarr, by the way, has his own blog, where he posts a lot of his work.


I'm not sure who's actually responsible for making this Mario-related installation, but it's a neat idea for public art. The pigeon presumably agrees. Can't remember where I found it.


Flickr user Neil Fiddleton posted this on his account. It's strangely vacant landscape art created from the original Super Mario Bros." graphics. This one is titled "Martin Short." He's also made ones called "Steve Martin" and "Four Sisters."


This is a snow sculpture representing a character named Totakeke, whom I wrote about earlier in a Back of the Cereal Box post concerning him and the Pet Shop Boys. The image was posted on Flickr by somebody named Mr. Pippo. A good likeness, really.


This next one is utterly confounding. I think I picked it up from Kotaku or Destructoid or some such other gaming blog. It's Japanese in origin, so it makes no sense. In it, you can see realistically drawn humans dressed up like Mario characters. You can also see Mario in a car being driven by Mario. Oh, Japan.


The final three images come from work exhibited in the i am 8 bit show that I saw in Los Angeles last year. Neat stuff. I don't know who did the below work, but I know it was featured in the show. Using fabric to show the princess in a more playful sense really works to get at what the artist was going for.


The above pieces stands in stark contrast to the next two, which both depict familiar Mario characters in a dystopic setting. Below is Isaac Pierro's "Don't Be a 2nd Player Hater." Poor Luigi.


And finally we have this piece, "The M.K.," by Jose Flores.