Monday, June 23, 2008

Parodies of Parodies


In late 2006 the game Gears of War premiered on the Xbox 360. Set in a war-torn futuristic world, Gears of War told the story of Marcus Fenix as he and his buddies fought back against the Locust horde. The game was pure machismo - the characters all looked and talked like football players, with huge, huge guns complete with chainsaw bayonets. It was a pretty violent game to say the least.

An interesting counterpoint to this violent image was the preview trailer for the game. It presented the game as this somber, moody piece, with the trailer set to the music of Gary Jules' cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" (originally featured in Donny Darko). You can watch this trailer here.

The videogame community reacted positively to this trailer. Soon, a few other games took this trailer and twisted it into a parody of their own. One parody of this trailer, comes from Battlefield: Bad Company with the appropriately titled "Bad World".

But the real cream of the crop comes from the Leisure Suit Larry series. In this video, Larry runs around to the same tune as the original Gears of War trailer, but finds something very different in the end. Watch the others first, then watch this.

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