Have you ever just sat around and wondered, "How do I market the great classics to children in a way that's both accessible and educational?" I know I have. All day. Every day. My failed "Gravity's Rainbow" board game kind of convinced me to close up shop for a while, especially after all the lawsuits I incurred from faulty kid-shaped rocket ships.
So I am naturally envious of the two (?) brilliant minds behind the recently released "Waiting For Godot" and "Great Gatsby" video games. Oh yeah, you can spend hours trying to solve the boss level on the Beckett-Atari cartridge. Seriously, play it here.
Great Gatsby is a little weirder, if only because of the back story behind it. The people running GreatGatsbyGame.com claim they found an old Nintendo cartridge at a garage sale, and it turned out to be a laser-shooting, giant crab-destroying adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's book. This is the cover:
And you can also play the game online, naturally. Man, when we tell our kids what 2011 was like, I hope we're able to say that we spent an inordinate amount of time making "fake" games you can actually play, replicating the style of technology from the '80s.
If anyone is to blame for this, it's definitely digital artist Cory Arcangel, who turned a Nintendo hack into art for his "Super Mario: Clouds" project back in 2002. Who knew a plumber who spent all day eating magic mushrooms could have an existential crisis?
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