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Games

Video Games Characters Emerge In The Real World

“Link, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Hyrule anymore…”

Aled Lewis is a designer and illustrator who likes to mash things up, mixing the worlds of popular culture into comedic images. Blurring the fictional worlds inhabited by some of the most iconic and notorious cartoon, comic and video game characters, Lewis makes disorienting, hybrid combinations that can result in a pixelated Bart Simpson catching a 3-eyed ghost from Pac-Mac, Peter Pan stabbing Guybrush Threepwood, or Donkey Kong tearing Mario’s head from his body. Whatever he does, they’re always playful, knowing, and witty, treating his subject matter as a pool of culture he can dip into and blend into an amalgamation of referential copyright breaching humor.

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And his latest collection of mash-up pixel art takes his love of video games and cross breeds it with the real world in a series called “Video Games vs. Real Life.” It works well because it’s not over-complicated, instead, it’s incredibly simple, expertly photoshopping these well-known characters into a corresponding real world setting similar to their digital habitats. So we get Zelda strolling across a field, the Double Dragon duo side-scrolling through mean streets, a karted-up Bowser driving across a beach, E Honda caving in a car’s door, or the rider from Excitebike leaping across London’s Tower Bridge.

Hyrule Field

Keeping The Mean Streets Clean

Koopa Beach

Hyaku Retsu Harite (aka Hundred Hand Slap)

Off The Dirt Track

For the full series check out his Flickr page.