As the cop talks to the junkie gamer behind the counter, we can see several Playstation 2 games.
The only ones I can make out are Killzone and ATV Offroad Fury 3.
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[VGMP] Stay Alive - Easter Eggs
Rory Joscelyne • 17 January 2024
VGMP: Stay Alive - To Find the Game References
The other
Alice Krige video-game horror movie of 2006!
Stay Alive was an ill-conceived combination of gaming and goth cultures, which should have been far sexier than it wound up being. It only had two stars, Frankie Muniz (Malcolm in the Middle) and Alice Krige (Star Trek: First Contact, Silent Hill) - and they cut Krige out of the movie entirely until the Director's Cut came out!
There are many verbal references during the film. An older cop states he was Q*Bert champion a while ago (though this is likely to mock the nerd he's talking to), the Konami code makes a verbal appearance, Fatal Frame is mentioned at the beginning - Silent Hill 4 is mentioned early on too. Despite these nice little tidbits, Stay Alive is a little lacking in strong gaming references - and what there is finds itself concealed by being largely out of focus.
Early on we see most of the equipment the main characters are using to play the game. It's a rather uninspired array of PC controllers, though the old-school joystick to the right of the frame is a fun addition. Sadly we never see anyone playing it.
Just a side-note, you may notice a black bar on the left hand side of the images, that is inherent to the source. The Director's Cut DVD was obviously sourced from a poor master.
A blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference appears when the main characters are searching their dead friend's room. I can't make out the title, but there's a gaming magazine here that promises some juicy details on Legacy of Kain 2 and Castlevania 64.
Oddly, Legacy of Kain 2 came out in 2001, with Castlevania 64 released in 1999. It was unusual for games to take longer than 2 years in production at this point in time, and according to Wikipedia Legacy of Kain 2 didn't enter production until late 1999 - whereas Castlevania released in January 1999.
It looks like their friend bought a lot of magazines. This time we can discern that it is Nintendo Power magazine, with the one on top including a 3D CGI render of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Not gaming related, but there's a very prominent wall-art for Katsuhiro Otomo's anime movie Steamboy on the main character's wall. It's never mentioned, it's just there across multiple scenes.
ALIENWARE
A three-image gallery of the most blatant product promotion I've seen in a movie for a long while. Stay Alive uses quite a few Alienware related computers and laptops throughout the film - which is obvious but not egregious. Where the cross-promotion goes too far is the frequent showing of the reflective laptop, which is used in the finale to reflect Elizabeth Bathory's image back to herself - with Alienware badge taking up almost the entire frame.
THE GAME STORE
The Game Store includes the vast majority of gaming references, for obvious reasons. Here we can see a floor-standing Unreal Championship standee, a ceiling-hanging Area-51 promo, in the very back-right you can just make out the Halo 2 standee which is (sadly) never fully caught in the frame.
To the left you'll also see several boxed Dreamcast consoles, which is a surprise for a film released in 2006, as well as an array of what appear to be PC parts.
NARC also gets several appearances on screen, with this being the most prominent - the ceiling-hanging promo.
More Dreamcasts, but also the appearance of boxes that look like Nintendo 64's for sale. The one to the right of the Cop's head is definitely an N64.
An array of video game controllers. The Xbox DVD Remote Controller, a third party Gamecube controller is to the left of it. To the top right you can see an array of official Sega Dreamcast controllers.
Spyro the Dragon artwork is visible behind the store clerk, however it is heavily out of focus.
A Playstation 2, with Dreamcast controllers either side of it (There's a blue one off-camera left). While the orange one appears to have two more buttons than a Dreamcast controller, which might suggest the black & white buttons for Xbox Original, the lack of a secondary stick means the two extra buttons are alternative L & R Triggers. These were commonly added by third party controllers for 2D Fighting Games.
Game Informer Guidebooks (Similar to the Prima Guides in the UK). In our episode, we incorrectly stated this company was purchased by IGN, but according to Wikipedia it is still going under the GameStop brand in America.
Final shot of the movie includes two more third-party Dreamcast controllers, a Playstation controller of some kind and a Justifier Light Gun. The appearance of this particular light gun is odd, because it was only ever released for Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo and the original Sony Playstation. It's wildly out of time here.
Another copy of ATV Road Fury 3 is blurred in centre-frame, and what appears to be some kind of rhythm game - however a quick internet search wielded no results. If you know the title of this game, please let us know on our VGMP Discord.
Blue Streak, speeds by... Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) is Hollywood's first big blockbuster attempt to bring Sonic to the big screen. A much more popular effort than the 1996 anime movie, this one sees Sonic come into the "real world", but that doesn't mean that it isn't jam-packed full of Easter Eggs. And some of them are references to other Sega franchises.
First things first - DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE. Kung-Fu Master may have the licence for the game, and it may include a few scenes at Arcades, but the story is nothing to do with gaming - and the story it represents is a literal crime. A vile, vile crime. With that out of the way, there are some interesting arcade machines visible throughout this film - all of which are here. So you have been saved from having to watch this vile garbage - and saving you the criminal act of watching it.
We look into all the Easter Eggs in the Paramount+ series of Knuckles (2024)
Also known as Sonic the Movie, the Japanese OVA was actually a run at a possible series that never materialised, instead leaving us with two episodes hastily stitched into a "feature". And boy, did they push taste and decency for some of this. Other than Robotnik chasing underage skirt, it's largely inoffensive. But unfortunately that story angle wound up kick-starting a long running VGMP joke of Sonic adaptations having to reference breast milk (which the 2020 Sonic movie also references).
I love The Wizard. It's so bad. The first major disagreement between Rory and Jamie in VGMP, Rory fully recommended The Wizard as a movie, whereas Jamie fully rejected it. It's not hard to see why this movie caused such a rift of opinion - it genuinely tries to be a deeper and emotional story, but it's still a Nintendo marketing product (and an out of date one, at that). One thing The Wizard does have, is a lot of videogame references.
The House of the Dead movie brings together two major events in film. It's the first foray by Uwe Boll into video game adaptations - the start of a terrible career. And it was the last ever movie to use the turn-table technique for 360 degree shots, as it was too dangerous to keep using - much like allowing Uwe Boll to have a film career. This film doesn't have many proper references, instead lazily throwing in random micro-shorts from the first three House of the Dead games (in no particular order, for some reason).
The first appearance of Jon Gries in a video game culture movie, and he would return in Noobz (2012) to steal yet another movie. Joysticks is an awful comedy movie, attempting to cash in on cheap teen humour of the time with a big dose of objectifying women. But to it's credit, it does showcase a lot of great arcade cabinets from 1983, and all in fantastic condition too! These screengrabs are ripped from the limited-run Blu-Ray release of the movie, which represents the best this film has ever looked. However this was a relatively low budget feature of it's time, so don't expect prestine visuals.
Tron is an undisputed 1982 classic that had a major impact on 80's culture and gaming aesthetics as a whole. And yet, when we reviewed it, it turns out the movie itself is a big bag of style over substance. The main videogame the movie revolves around is Space Paranoids, and it is not a real game. Several videogames were later made of Tron, but none of those appear in this movie.
The Controller / Video Game Earth Force, is a terrible film from 2006 with graphics that make the PS1 look like Advent Children. Starring Bob Rue as William Fence, this film has become infamous within VGMP as it is the film that nearly caused Jamie to leave the show.
Gamebox 1.0 is an odd 2004 movie starring the guy who played Harvey in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. You could technically call it a dramatic horror, if any of it was dramatic or a horror. As you can see from the shot above, the details were so vital to this film that there's a guy at "work" just staring at a blank screen. Regardless of the low budget nature of the film, there are still a surprising number of references hidden in this movie.
