Deck your halls (see what did there) with artist Chris Lange’s set of stellar Punch-Out! collages.
Are video games art? Yes! …Maybe. Okay, okay, I don’t know. Nor do I want to poke a stick at the angry bear of a debate that polarizing topic is. I’ll say this though, if I ever had an empty space to fill on a wall, then I would do so with one of Chris Lange’s pretty video game-inspired collages.
Living in Washington D.C., Chris Lange is a talented artist and a big Nintendo faithful. And one of the ways he shares his passion, is creating superb one-of-kind collages based on cherished characters from the Nintendo library of games. How are they one-of-kind, you ask? Each collage is made from the torn pieces of old Nintendo Power magazines. Which is funny, seeing how his pieces have been featured in Nintendo Power several times before (oh life, you witty jokester, you).
This go around, Chris has set his paper-shredding sights on Punch-Out!. Note the single exclamation point my friends, which directly indicates I speaking about the original for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
1987’s Punch-Out!, or Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! as it was truly called back in the day before “you know who” went plum loco, is a memorable boxing game that had some rather wild characters as your boxing competitors. Some of whom, I must admit,teeter quite closely to “Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffanies'” levels of awkwardness (I’m looking at you Great Tiger and Don Flamenco).
For better or worse, that’s all part of Punch-Out!’s old-school gaming whimsy; an inseparable essence that Chris made sure was apart of every piece. And while you can’t grab the originals for yourself (hopefully, those will go on display at someplace special), you can buy a set of nine 5?x5? prints over on Etsy for $49 (USD), shipping not included.
As for my personal favorites out of the Punch-Out! bunch, I like Soda Popinski, King Hippo, and Don Flamenco. Those three are really nice. What’s also nice, while I’m at it, is this incredible At-At computer case mod and these 14 kickass illustrations to celebrate The Avengers movie, which I haven’t seen yet (I heard it’s the bomb-diggity) – so, no spoilers!
