Ever wondered what might happen if classic video game characters like Mario, Megaman and Link suddenly found themselves out of work? Series creators Jackson Stewart and William Rot explore that scenario in the hilarious short film The Cartridge Family: Battle for Employment, which premiered on the gaming site Screw Attack.
The short, which you can watch in its entirety below, is the pilot for a planned sitcom about the lives of 8-bit video game characters who are magically released into the real world by an unwitting gamer.
The cast includes many familiar genre names – including Almost Human co-stars Graham Skipper and Brian Gillespie as “Sergio” and “Twink,” with Curtiss Frisle (ACME Saturday Night) as “Roboman” and A.J. Bowen (You're Next) as the exasperated gamer who tries to acclimate his new pals to the real world... with hilariously violent results. There's even a Re-Animator connection: Barbara Crampton, star of the classic film, plays a game store customer, and Jesse Merlin of Re-Animator: The Musical has a memorable role as a lascivious wizard.
William Rot, who directed the episode (and whose animated short Trick was one of the coolest entries in 2010's Halloween Horror Nights Scary Good Film Competition: watch it here), said some scenes had the cast and crew laughing hysterically... despite the fact they were filming on the hottest day of the year, and the L.A. video store set had no air conditioning.
"The walls of the store were floor-to-ceiling windows that acted as a large magnifying glass for the sun," he said, "and to compensate for those windows we had to use extremely powerful lights. It was like shooting in an oven!"
Look for more updates soon at the show's official site... but first, hit the couch and press play!