8 Bit
Taking a look intothe futuremay sometimes seem bleak, so why not look intothe pastfor some learnin’? It can be fun AND cause seizures! Once video games infiltrate all parts of our lives, what do we have left to do? Make documentaries about them. The trailer above is for8 Bit: A Documentary About Art and Video Games, which premieres on October 7 at the MoMA (check for artist list and times) in New York.
Then there’s the documentary formerly known asPlayabout video game musicmentioned a while ago. It’s still in production, but their site has uncut footage up for your viewing. If you set aside the misguided fanboy love for (now producer) Tommy Tallarico, the material seems diverse and will probably make for a good doc, and hopefully not a Tallarico promo video. [“Before him, the music was just an afterthought to the game.” — As if Haruomi Hosono and Nobuo Uematsu never existed: that’s just plain IGNANT.]
Still, it seems that everyone’s making a documentary on one aspect of video game culture or another. There’s the Street Fighter doc,Bang the Machine, the insider history of Atari,Once Upon Atari, and even aPBS Special. The Discovery Channel has two, which you can watch after the jump, along withGamer Br, a documentary about Brazilian gamers, in its entirety.
