This month saw the release of Marvel's Doctor Strange, which wowed audiences with its crazy world of magic and mind-bending visuals effects. The effects themselves were nearly universally praised, with buildings bending in on themselves and a psychedelic Dark Dimension right out of the pages of Steve Ditko. But what would these effects look like if we turned back the clock to the 1980's and turned them into an arcade game? That's what the folks at CineFix wondered and they reimagined Doctor Strange as an 8-bit video game. Check it out.
Thanks to YouTube channel CineFix we can now combine our love of Doctor Strange and old school NES games for a nostalgic throwback to the video games of yesteryear. Directed by Norwood Cheek and animated by Raz Mergian, the video imagines the hit blockbuster as an 8-bit video game in the spirit of Mega Man. The video goes through all the big highlights of the film, imagining how those events would play out if you were the player and only had a limited number of buttons to get the job done.
Taking a classic video game format, the video has Doctor Strange completing his objectives and earning a new item has a reward. That item is then used to defeat the next boss, which comes right out of the pages of Mega Man or Legend of Zelda. Seeing the effects of Doctor Strange simplified down to this format certainly throws things into a unique perspective. To see the chase scene through the Mirror Dimension (arguably the best scene in the film) restricted to a 2-D plan takes away some of what make that scene special, but the use of the background art and the kaleidoscope effect still help to capture the feel of the scene. The video even comes complete with the Cloak of Levitation beating up that one guy.
Perhaps the highlight of the video comes at the end for Doctor Strange's climactic showdown with Dormammu, whose big head fits right in in a 80's video game. Instead of utilizing the Eye of Agamotto to activate a time loop, Strange resorts to using what a lot of kids did back in the day did when games were too hard: cheat codes. Using the "Konami Code," Strange gains infinite lives and manages to outlast Dormammu, who -- like your little brother waiting for his turn to play -- gives up and leaves.
Also, nice touch ending the video with a pixelated Thor enjoying some magical ale in a mirror to the actual after credits scene of Doctor Strange. There aren't any Marvel video games based on the movies for some reason, so we'll all just have to get our kicks from the actual Doctor Strange, which is still in theaters.
