Of the shameless passions I have in life, 8-bit animations of pop culture, ranks nearly as high as bacon and beer (but far above bacon-flavored beer). YouTube channel CineFix is a utopia when it comes to this kind of retro spoofing, and their latest effort is one of the more unexpected entries in their "8 Bit Cinema" series yet. Dennis Dugan’s much beloved Happy Gilmore gets reduced to its most video game-like elements, and it works almost as well as the film does.
It probably wouldn’t do any good to play this game if you were Chubbs, seeing as how he couldn’t handle the right side of the controller and all. This version of Happy Gilmore is a sports-themed bash-‘em-up game, partly styled after River City Ransom. Given Happy’s penchant for getting manically violent when things aren’t to his liking, it’s the perfect match-up, and it’s a treat to see the familiar facial expressions during the fight scenes.
While it’s unfortunate that we don’t get to see a pixelated Shooter McGavin unwittingly admit to eating shit for breakfast, games weren’t so good with cutscenes back then and that scene wasn’t exactly action-heavy. But they get everything else right on the money - enough money to make sure Happy's grandmother doesn’t have to be subjected to psycho Ben Stiller. We’ve got Happy taking baseballs to the face, we get Chubbs teaching Happy how to put his hips into the swing, and we get the ridiculous last putt, finally putting Shooter in his place. And of course…
I could seriously watch this kind of stuff all day, and would love the chance to fight Bob Barker in a video game. While The Shining and Saved by the Bell games were both awesome, neither made me squeal like a girl at a support meeting when they released a Fight Club edition a few weeks ago, modeled after Sega’s Streets of Rage. Sure, that’s a 16-bit game and doesn’t technically fit in with the rest of the series, but there’s a synthesized version of The Pixies’ "Where is My Mind?" that completely makes up for that.
