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Games

Super Mario Bros. Gets Really Real

With augmented goggles, this could be the Mario game of tomorrow.

There’s a current online trend of creating hybrid videos by mixing video games with real life, perhaps pre-empting a time when augmented reality will turn these fantasy videos into a part of our everyday experiences. Freddie Wong is a prolific producer of such fare, as are Corridor Digital, visualizing with wit and a fair bit of After Effects skill how games like Rock Band might work in an augmented world. A recent addition to this fusion subgenre is Real Life Super Mario Bros. from Andrew McMurry, which puts a human (his brother Seth) into the role of the leaping and bounding plumber. A further twist is added in the choice of an unusual weapon, creating not just a mixed reality but a mixed gaming genre as well, as platformer meets shooter.

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This hybrid form is a type of digital folk art, indigenous to the culture of gaming and the internet, an experimental style that has its origins in the tradition of mixing live action and animation. The videos are obviously there to entertain, things we watch in the office while taking a break, but it has the added thrill of being a looking glass into a potential future (although maybe with less explosions), when augmented reality gaming moves from fantastical imaginings into physical reality. And what then will we be watching to entertain us when we should be working?

Below is Corridor Digital’s real life Angry Birds and Freddie Wong’s real life first-person shooter video, just in case the day has a lull or you feel the need to procrastinate.