The Big Lebowski Reimagined as a Classic 8‑Bit Video Game

The above video brings togeth­er two things that few peo­ple of my gen­er­a­tion can resist. The first hard­ly needs an intro­duc­tion: at the risk of anger­ing Coen Broth­ers fans with the com­par­i­son, their 1998 cult hit The Big Lebows­ki has gen­er­at­ed at least as many end­less­ly quotable lines as Cad­dyshack did almost 20 years ear­li­er, and it appeals to a sim­i­lar con­tin­gent of slack­er wiseass­es. The movie gave Jeff Bridges—son of Lloyd, broth­er of Beau, and cer­tain­ly a star in his own right before he played The Dude—the kind of cachet most actors only dream of. I’m not say­ing he wouldn’t have won his 2009 best actor Oscar for Crazy Heart with­out Lebows­ki, but I’m not say­ing that he would have either. And then, of course, there was the renewed inter­est in the “sport” of bowl­ing, Hol­ly­wood weirdo and self-iden­ti­fied gun nut John Mil­ius (who inspired John Goodman’s char­ac­ter), and the creamy vod­ka cock­tail.

The sec­ond thing: the 8‑bit video games that, believe it or not, rep­re­sent­ed a rev­o­lu­tion in home gam­ing, and gave us the first Nin­ten­do and Sega sys­tems and games that, true con­fes­sion, used to keep me up all night, like the var­i­ous ver­sions of Mega­man (which you can play online here). The games now have leg­endary sta­tus and their defin­i­tive­ly col­or­ful, blocky aes­thet­ic has been—or was at least a few years ago—the ulti­mate in geek nos­tal­gia chic, along with a new wave of “chip­tune” music made with, or inspired by, the 8‑bit chips of the games of our youth. So what, I ask, could be more fun than bring­ing Lebows­ki and 8‑bit gam­ing togeth­er for a 3‑minute bowl­ing game? Very lit­tle. As C‑Net describes the video above, it’s “an expe­ri­ence we only wish we’d had back in the 90’s.” Made by Cine­Fix, who have pre­vi­ous­ly ani­mat­ed Pulp Fic­tion, The Hunger Games, Blade Run­ner and a string of oth­er hits as 8‑bit shorts, the 8‑Bit Cin­e­ma Big Lebows­ki isn’t actu­al­ly playable, but it should be. Regard­less, it’s as fun to watch as you might imag­ine a mash-up of the Coen Broth­ers and Super Mario World would be. Get your nos­tal­gia on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness