8 Iconic Movies Recreated As Old School Video Games

Or how to stop movie tie-in games from sucking horribly.

By Travis Greenwood /

Save for the occasional classic like Golden Eye 007, video games adapted from films have a long and mostly shameful history. Cranked out cheaply to capitalize on a narrow window of opportunity, most are plagued by poor design, curious power ups, half-baked plot points that make no damn sense and only a loose connection to the source material. Enter John McGregor, A/K/A Brother Brain, a prolific artist and illustrator based in New York City. His excellent Tumblr feed, overflowing with geeky mash ups that draw inspiration from both mediums, hints at the promise inherent in the combination - if only it could be properly finessed out. Instant eye candy for a generation of pop culture fanboys that grew up on a steady diet of Arnold Schwarzenegger flicks and NES cartridges, McGregor's work of late has been spun around a series of amazing pixel GIFs, what he calls Bits Vs. Pics, that "contrast old in-game graphics with their real world counterparts". Embedded below are 8 examples of his best work, almost all of which come with an '80s or '90s pedigree. Nostalgia FTW.

8. The Terminator

7. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior