Robert Penney created a pixel-perfect animation of Stranger Things as a turn-of-the-1990s adventure game a la Secret of Monkey Island. Turns out that he's got a knack for these displaced artifacts, each pulled from a parallel universe where 20th century game systems still received rushed, sloppy games based on inappropriate movies and shows.
Here, for example, is an 8-bit game of Stephen King's IT made by a team that perhaps got to watch one trailer, on mute, before getting cracking in time for Christmas…
And here's Alejandro González Iñárritu's Gravity as a dismally bad genre platformer. Watch out for snakes!
Here's Scarif Resort Simulator, a Sim City clone crudely tied-in to the Star Wars universe.
Penney's Fictional Bad Games YouTube channel looks like a good one to follow. It's such incredible work I wondered if he had to code quasi-games to get such a convincing replica of bad, glitchy gameplay, but Penney writes that he makes each animation in Photoshop:
Yes it was incredibly laborious! But AfterEffects and Flash etc can’t really get that clunky awkward feel that a frame by frame animation can!
I also created all the music and sound effects. It was all inspired by an older project I created in a similar vein, but just box art – http://penneydesign.com/retro-games-with-modern-themes
