Mission: Find the jaguar shark. Step one: Smoke grass. This is how Wes Anderson’s 2004 film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou would begin if it were an 8-bit video game. David and Henry Dutton of Cinefix, a YouTube channel that bills itself “the ultimate destination for true movie buffs,” have rendered the movie as a Nintendo-esque short, complete with David Bowie soundtrack (only this time the songs are played on what sounds like a Casio keyboard rather than sung in Portuguese).
In their 8-Bit Cinema series, they’ve retold nearly 40 popular movies — from The Big Lebowski to Fight Club to Frozen — as 8-bit video games. The term 8-bit refers to the third generation in gaming, which began in 1983 with the release of what would come to be known as the Nintendo Entertainment System. For The Life Aquatic, the Duttons decided to use 16-bit to capture the film’s vivid colors and textures.
Video games today are so realistic that the Call of Duty Kevin Spacey is almost indiscernible from the real Kevin Spacey. But it’s always nice to take a trip back in time to our pixelated past.
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Write to Eliza Berman at eliza.berman@time.com