Author Topic: Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances  (Read 791 times)

Ninja Spirit

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« on: January 30, 2006, 03:21:45 PM »
That Enemy of the State/Turbo Express thing caused me to come up with this thread. Name as many on screen cameo appearances of games or gaming paraphernalia (i.e. posters, accessories). No need to mention "The Wizard" at all.

-Strapped (Neo Geo AES): Obscure movie in the black cinema genre set in a NYC hood. 2 guys (one of them being Freddo Starr of the rap group "Onyx") are playing "Super 8 Man".

-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NARC): In the underground warehouse where troubled teens hang out, several kids are playing it.

-Bingo (Strider, arcade): One of cheesy kids movies about dogs. This is a blink and miss kind of thing. In the arcade segment, if you look hard at the background as the camera rolls, you'll spot the title screen of Strider.

-Rap Music Video, Goodie Mob's "Cell Therapy" (Street Fighter 1)- In a series of segments shot in a convienence store, a Street Fighter 1 arcade cabinet makes an appearance

-Juice (Street Fighter 1, Forgotten Worlds) In the pizza parlor where kids that skip class hang out at, Omar Epps is playing SF1. Next to the SF1 is a Forgotten Worlds cabinet. In the ending credits, Capcom got a slot in the special thanks bracket for the scene.

-Drew Carey Show (Sega Saturn console): In some episodes, a Sega Saturn is seen on top of their TV set.

-Charlie's Angels (Final Fantasy VIII) Huge error. FFVIII is not 2 player

-Ghostbusters II (NES Advantage) Uses the Advantage to control the Statue of Liberty

-Mercury Rising - Just before (I forgot the name of the character is) gets killed by agents, you'll see a Battle Arena Toshinden: The Anime poster hanging over his desk.

Keranu

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« Reply #1 on: January 30, 2006, 03:32:08 PM »
Awesome thread. There is a site somewhere that talks about all of these portable video games in various movies and has screenshots of them. Will try to look for it later.

I'm not putting much thought on this subject now, but one that I can clearly remember off the back of my head is this movie called Surf Ninjas, or something like that. The youngest kid of the group is playing Game Gear and something happens to it and he says "Hey what happened to Shinobi?". It's not 3 Ninjas, but it was kind of like it, but it had these three California surfing ninjas, really cheesy movie.
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Adding PCE console specific layer on top of that, makes for an interesting challenge (no, not a reference to Ys II).

esteban

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2006, 07:35:45 PM »
Robocop 2 had some Data East arcade cabs, including the Robocop arcade unit, IIRC. It was a great scene, with arcade cabs being hurled and smashed... and it definitely seemed to be commenting / satirizing the notion of arcades and video games as a breeding ground for violence. :)

Night of the Comet (great movie) opens with our heroine playing Galaga in the lobby of the Valley Girl movie theatre, and the movie ends with a wonderful reference to this scene.
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akamichi

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2006, 09:03:40 PM »
Off the top of my head...

Karate Kid:  There's a scene in Golfland(?) or some other such amusement center.  Lots of old-school video games in that arcade.

D.A.R.Y.L:  Never saw the entire thing, but some robot kid (main char) played Pole Position (Atari 2600?)

Cloak and Dagger:  Cloak and Dagger arcade game makes an appearance.  Probably some other games (Atari 5200).

X-Files:  One episode centered around a guy playing Virtua Fighter 2 in the arcade and the game was used to determine when the guy played the game.  The ranking screen included time stamps that aren't in the actual game.

The Goonies:  I think cloak and dagger is in that one.  The scene is right at the beginning of the movie when Chunk(?) is playing game and then turns to watch the cops chasing the bad guys.

Starcade:  A game show about video games.  Pretty cool (aka nerdy) at the time.  Contestants competed on answering arcade gaming questions and playing featured arcade games for a the best score in a set amount of time (usually a minute or so).

Some nikelodeon game show about games... Nick Arcade(?).  It was also like Starcade but featured console games.

Silver Spoon:  Rich kid and father always had a number of arcade games in their living room.  Usually if there was a scene in the living room you could easily make out a number of arcade cabinets.

Tron:  arcade scene + Tron arcade game scenes.

Terminator 2:  another scene in an arcade when Arnold and T1000 first find John Connor.

Double Dragon Movie:  There are some arcade games strung around parts of the movie.  Double Dragon arcade was probably in there somewhere.

Wow!  I can't believe I remembered all that stuff.  Most of movies/tv shows are at least 20 years old.  I'm old. :cry:

Keranu

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« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2006, 09:39:23 PM »
Various arcades in Karate Kid.
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Adding PCE console specific layer on top of that, makes for an interesting challenge (no, not a reference to Ys II).

TR0N

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« Reply #5 on: January 30, 2006, 11:23:44 PM »
Depeche Mode video "Every thing Counts" you see a band member playing, Shinobi 8)

JamesBond "Never Say Never" in the casino sceen you see a whole lot of, Centipede cabs.

What's Happenig Now! Tv show you can see a, 3 Stooges arcade cab in the diner.

Silverspoon TV show,Pac-man mini,Gorf,Tempest,Dragons Lair,Asteroids.Man that kid was a lucky sob :wink:

A-Team in the frist season, Murdock room at the looney bin had a Pac-man machine :shock: Realy since when.. do crazy ppl get there own arcade machine hmph :P

Wargames see, Matthew Broderick playing, Galaga :idea:

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Michael Helgeson

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« Reply #6 on: January 31, 2006, 12:38:36 PM »
Back in the 80ies I had a promo music video tape of The Cure,and it had Outrun playing during a entire music video. I am not sure if any of this appeared in the normal release of the tape or in a music video.I think it was either a promo tape of Staring at the Sea or In Orange.

Keranu

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« Reply #7 on: January 31, 2006, 01:35:38 PM »
Oh yeah, Cloak and Dagger was great! A movie that's all about the game! I loved it.

By the way, the arcade/golf place in Karate Kid is called "Guolf n' Stuff" ;) . What can I say, I'm a Karate Kid nerd. 8) They also played some cool light gun game in there, but I don't know what it is. You can also hear Ms. Pac Man sound effects I believe.

And the arcade game in T2 was After Burner, which was pretty cool to see.
Quote from: Bonknuts
Adding PCE console specific layer on top of that, makes for an interesting challenge (no, not a reference to Ys II).

Michael Helgeson

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« Reply #8 on: February 01, 2006, 12:47:42 AM »
Lets get real old school.
Dawn of the Dead original movie has arcade scene.Lots of ugly classics in that one.

Soylent Green had a arcade game of Space War,aka Computer Space.

I think one of the Scanners fliks had a scene with one of the Taito gun games in it,where the guy basically killed the game.

Childs Play 3. The little kid either had a Lynx or a Game Gear. I dont remember which.

Hackers had a clone of WipeOut running on  a huge screen.Hackers mind you sucked. I still remember the whole"guys drooling over laptop"scene where they are like"It has a dot matrix screen,28.8kbs modem...." So limited yet somehow able to surf the net in a3d generated manner,yea right. That movie made people with computers look bad,and managed to do it the whole time without showing a glimps of Doom or Mega Race,the then top selling games for pc of that time period,94-95.WTF was up with the people who made that movie.


Speaking of bad movies. You guys should look up info on the director of Blood Rayne,Alone in the Dark, and House of the Dead 1 movies. It seems he makes bad movies on purpose because he profits on some kinda tax break scam in Germany or something of these movies when they sink.

esteban

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« Reply #9 on: February 01, 2006, 03:50:50 AM »
I just remember the classic Seinfeld episode with George and Frogger. Pure gold.

Also, Sesame Street has an old sketch that is inspired by Super Mario Bros. If you watch Sesame Street today, Elmo's World features lots of sound effects from SMB3 (?) and onward.

Nightmare on Elm Street (Freddy's Dead) had a cheezy Super Mario Brother sequence as well. I saw that stupid movie in the theatre and not even a SMB scene could redeem it.
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TJ

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« Reply #10 on: February 01, 2006, 04:21:23 AM »
Grosse Point Blank features a Doom arcade game...which doesn't exist.

Keranu

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« Reply #11 on: February 01, 2006, 09:17:54 AM »
Hackers is one of the best movies ever made, good one Michael :D . I don't quite remember seeing clips of DOOM in that movie though, but I wouldn't doubt it. However, here are TWO other video game related things not mentioned: In the scene with Joey at the police station in the booth with toys, one of the agents is in their with him and wearing a power glove. Also at the end, when they are "hacking the Gibson", Dade Murphy puts on this hilarious visor with a little plastic screen that goes down one eye. I think this is some video game object, but I don't know for sure. In fact recently I saw pics on this video game site of someone wearing that same object, or something very similar.

In the movie Strange Brew, there is an arcade cabinet that Bob and Doug play. I can't remember what it's called off the moment, I'll have to check that out again. You didn't actually see the gameplay, but on the side of the cabinet it had this satellite in space with USA and Canadian flags and you could hear some sound effects. Doug says what the game is called and so does the arcade cab, but I can't remember off hand, Captain something.

There was some video I saw when I was a kid in school about "keeping your cool". It would show different situations with these two kids and it would go to this screen with a temperature bar and saying if you should go cold, hot, or cool and they would always end up cool. Anyways there is a scene where the two kids are playing Off Road cabinet.

National Lamphoon's Vacation has a few. In the beginning when Clark Griswald is planning out the old family vacation, he uses a awesome old-skool 80's computer, which I don't know what it was, but it seemed to have Atari joysticks plugged into it so probably some Atari computer (ST?). When the family arrives at Uncle Ed's house, Rusty and Ed's son talk about Atari games and name a few; Pac Man, Asteroids, and Space Invaders I believe. There are two shots in the movie where a Coleco mini table top of Frogger can be found, once in the car all the way in the back and once when Rusty is in Ed's house. There might be more shots.

In Mallrats (I think), they are playing some hockey game for Genesis. I think in some other Kevin Smith movie they also play a hockey game for Saturn, but it might have been a completely different movie.

Swingers: There is a funny scene where the guys are playing a hockey game for Genesis and one of the guys said how he was going to make Wayne Gretski's head blead and he ended up doing it during a funny part.

Arcade is a hilarious cheesy movie with Seth Green made in 1995 I think and it's about this super cheesy virtual reality arcade and home console which turns out to be real. There might be some popular arcade titles in the underground arcade scenes.

What About Bob has a scene where Siggy is playing a Game Boy by the docking bay.

Can't Buy Me Love has an arcade scene with Donald and Kenneth, and Kenneth plays a couple of games which I clearly remember Hang On is one. There are also some other various arcade cabs in the background which you can spot out.

Pirates of Silicon Valley has a scene with Steve Wozniack laying in a hospital bed after a plane crashing playing some airplane game for Atari.

Fast Times at Ridgemont high has an arcade scene or two with various cabs. I believe Ms. Pac Man was one.

Robo Cop has an arcade scene I'm pretty sure with a game or so that you can point out, but I can't remember at all what it is. I keep thinking NARC.

There are a ton more I know off too, but I'll try thinking of some of them later.
Quote from: Bonknuts
Adding PCE console specific layer on top of that, makes for an interesting challenge (no, not a reference to Ys II).

Keranu

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« Reply #12 on: February 01, 2006, 09:18:25 AM »
Oh crap I forgot to add to that post Dr. Giggles which has Dr. Mario being played in it!
Quote from: Bonknuts
Adding PCE console specific layer on top of that, makes for an interesting challenge (no, not a reference to Ys II).

Michael Helgeson

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« Reply #13 on: February 05, 2006, 07:32:49 AM »
No,Doom was not in Hackers,I was pointing out that that avoided using any of the top money grossing pc games of the period,and instead of pushing and really promoting and making computers look cool,they made the whole scene look bad,real bad,with a gay hispanic guy,a doper from Transpotting,Tin Tin from the Crow movie,AngelinaGaylee and a supporting cast that couldnt act their way out of a paper bag.

Keranu

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Movies/TV Shows With Video Game Cameo Appearances
« Reply #14 on: February 05, 2006, 02:58:14 PM »
Haha, oh do I love that cast. I've seriously seen Hackers probably at least 20, but it's probably more than that. "My BLT drive has crashed and my modem has gone AWOL."
Quote from: Bonknuts
Adding PCE console specific layer on top of that, makes for an interesting challenge (no, not a reference to Ys II).