Ten 8-bit nostalgia-inducing short film alternatives to seeing PIXELS

PIXELS opens today, and if the reviews are to be believed, it's somewhere between "pointless" and "awful," and probably not worth spending eleven bucks on.  Instead, why not sate your 8-bit nostalgia for free with ten perfectly good, and genuinely entertaining, short videos?  Save a few bucks and get WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL? on streaming instead, and then you can just stay in your home and not have to deal with the type of people that would willingly spend the cost of a meal on an Adam Sandler movie.

1. PES's impressive stop-motion animated short that reimagines a number of video game classics


2. Lily Tomlin talking about Pac-Man addiction from a 1982 episode of "Saturday Night Live"



3. The incredible video for Royksopp's "Happy Up Here" about video game-related intruders



4. A 1982 animated short about a video game invasion


5. Alex Varanese's nifty stop motion short tribute to R-Type


6. A promotional film for the laserdisc game "Cliff Hanger" (using footage from Miyazaki's CASTLE OF CAGLISTRO)


7. Pac-Man reimagined as first-person driving game



8.  Eight minutes of commercials for food featuring video games



9. The vintage arcade game-inspired music video for The Montauk Project featuring a character called "Dookie-Poo"


10. Patrick Jean's original short film that inspired the feature you probably want to avoid



Bonus: The other stuff on this site tagged "Video games"

Spend Christmas with E.T. on your Atari 2600

Christmas Eve, 1982, was a time filled with wonder and mystery, as children across the country eagerly anticipated being able to play along with E.T., their new best friend.

Christmas was crap.

The kids show "Just Kidding" visits video game company Imagic in 1983

"Just Kidding" was a local TV show created in the Bay Area, and this segment from one of their 1983 shows is pretty amazing, giving a behind the scenes look at Imagic, one of the most reputable creators of home video games in the early '80s.  Seems like a good place to work.

The original concept trailer for an animated "Mega Man" TV series

The character of the long-running Nintendo video game franchise "Mega Man" was turned into a TV series in 1994 that turned the blue icon into something much more muscle-bound, but the original concept shows a design much more in line with the original video game.

Morning Cartoon: An arcade game and a forklift robot prepare for the future in 2010's DANGER PLANET

Created for the Cartoon Natwork as part of their anthology series "The Cartoonstitute," Derek Drymon's DANGER PLANET is a tale of a technological duo (including an arcade game that sounds a heck of a lot like Frylock) who team up to avoid obsolescence and end up in charge of a human baby.

Evening Entertainment: ARCADE ATTACK: SILVER HEROES VS. VIDEO INVADERS is a tale of pinball against video games

Both arcade video games and pinball machines have reached an unholy alliance now, fighting for their lives in retro arcades all over the world, but Mike Wallington's 1982 concept documentary features plenty of opinions on both size of the debate, as pinball wizards and video game junkies face off.

Amiga CD32 Commercial

Released in 1994, Commodore's Amiga CD32 was supposed to be a fighter in the next generation of gaming consoles like the Playstation and the Nintendo 64.  Instead, the console never even reached U.S. shores due to Commodore's bankruptcy, even though European sales were relatively brisk.  Here's a rare commercial for one of the console packages, featuring the decent Wing Commander and Dangerous Streets, one of the worst fighting games ever made.

Television commercial announcing the debut of the Journey arcade game in 1983

Journey! The name alone means excitement, and the Journey arcade game will allow you to play as every member of the band, any way you want it. Completely different from the previous year's Atari 2600 version, the 1983 arcade game was completely ridiculous, featuring digitized photos of the group in the game and gameplay that seemed dated even by then.

Birthday boy Michael Jai White in "Mortal Kombat: Rebirth"

Today marks the 47th birthday of Michael Jai White, a name in action films that should be much bigger than it is.  Perhaps best known to cult audiences as the star of BLACK DYNAMITE, White is both hugely entertaining to watch in action AND a fine actor -- not an easy combination to come by.  Here he is below as Jax in MORTAL KOMBAT: REBIRTH, Kevin Tancharoen's short fan film based on the "Mortal Kombat" video game that was used to sell the web series that became "Mortal Kombat: Legacy."  While the series that spawned it received solid reviews, the original short still shows so much promise that was never quite delivered.

Watch This Thing - News feature for 1985's Halcyon Laserdisc Video Game system

Laserdisc games outside of the arcade never really happened, but it wasn't for RDI's lack of trying, as they released the Halcyon gaming system in 1985 at a perfectly reasonable $2500 price point.  This ad features the gameplay of their NFL Football game which seems, well, technically interactive, anyway.  Rick Dyer, the system's creator, was one of the men behind "Dragon's Lair."  He did not find repeated success here.