You may wonder why I just linked this video but as you can see it’s loaded with video game references that are almost instantly recognizable, or at least were when the video came out in 2011.
It’s funny though, before video games became media they were considered toys. Some critics still don’t even consider it art, which I completely don’t agree with.
How did video games become media though? What led to the rise of video games as a media? Well first you should really ask when did media see the importance of video games?
Let’s take it from the beginning shall we. Video games started as early as 1951 and continued under the radar until 1971. The first video game to ever be seen in a movie was “Computer Space” which was seen in the 1973 movie “Soylent Green” But video games never became very popular on it’s own until “Pong” by Atari came out in 1972.
Being inspired by Pong, Steven Lisberger developed the movie “Tron” which was the first movie to feature video games as it’s primary focus. In the movie, Kevin Flynn engineer behind a few games which were stolen from him is an avid gamer and he gets sucked into his own game world. This movie and games based off of the movie spun a whole generation of films inspired by games, and games of movies. After this media would be filled with references to gaming, like “The Last Starfighter” in which a arcade game is played to determine the next starfighter hero for an alien defense force.
The next biggest one, I feel, would be the movie “The Wizard” released in December 15th 1987 which was basically a giant advertisement for Nintendo. In fact they used this movie to show screens of their unreleased Super Mario Bros. 3, which released in the US shortly after the movie aired in February of 1990.
There are many references to games after this and even movies based off of video games like Super Mario Bros, Tomb Raider series, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Resident Evil just to name a few.
In part though these games either had references or were based off of games but really never treated them as pop culture which I feel really never happened until Scott Pilgram vs The World. Based off the manga series of the same name (the rest of the series has Scott Pilgram in the title), it’s a story about a boy who is pretty much a loser and falls in love with a girl who has 7 evil exes that he must battle in pure video game style. The movie has huge video game references, like in one scene playing the zelda fairy theme, to once defeating the evil exes they turn into change for Scott to pick up. There are so many more references that I could just talk the whole time about this movie so I won’t, even though it is one of my top ten favorites.
Which brings me back to the video I linked in the beginning. Video games have become such a pop culture phenomenon that it is everywhere now, in fact I’m sure many people are wearing video game tees right now. Video games have so be ingrained into the culture at this point that people don’t think twice about references, it’s like common nature, just like music, movies and TV used to be which for me is a great thing since I love video games.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Pilgrim_vs._the_World
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game
http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/03/the-50-coolest-video-game-moments-in-tv-and-film/ms-pac-man