Featured Image Credit: Coinbase/Oscar Hudson
Topics: PlayStation, Retro Gaming, Real Life
The PlayStation 2 era was a special one and while video game graphics have improved extensively over the last couple of decades there’s something inherently charming about what once was.
While they weren’t “realistic” by any means the in-game characters you’d see in classic games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas were arguably ahead of their time.
It was a unique style and one that many gamers have a lot of nostalgia for, which is why the latest advertisement from bitcoin company Coinbase is garnering a lot of attention.
Coinbase partnered with filmmakers like Oscar Hudson to create an ad that turned real-life into a simulated PlayStation 2 game.
Advert
The advertisement follows a businessman attempting to break free from a monotonous, corporate life.
Represented as simply another player in the game of life, the character goes to work at a job he clearly hates before eventually escaping the tedium and breaking through the walls.
In the end the character escapes into real-life with the video game visuals fading away, and everyone looking slightly more normal.
Rather than use computer-generated visuals the team behind the project decided to go a step further, as explained by Hudson in a breakdown of the ad. Hudson said “everything on screen here was made by hand and performed by real people” with “low-res” costumes, set-dressing and even actors “wearing lycra masks of their own faces.”
Some puppets were also utilised to represent in-game markers and arrows.
The result was an incredibly impressive display of both creativity and a passion for video game history.
The resemblance to an old-school PlayStation game is uncanny, to the point where the behind-the-scenes footage is actually somewhat unnerving.
Again it needs to be said that the whole performance is immensely impressive, and viewers lapped it right up in the comments.
It was even used as a slamdunk against the overuse of AI in creative spaces, with one of the comments on Instagram reading: “AI would never be this creative.”
For those inspired to play some of the games this advertisement was based on, let us recommend some of the incredible games currently available on PlayStation Plus right now.
Alternatively check out GAMINGbible’s list of 12 best video games from the year 2000, many of which have a similar graphical style to what was used in the Coinbase ad.