I popped along to Brick Lane, London, over the weekend where the Truman Brewery was housing an outdoor Wreck-It Ralph exhibition, named 8Bit Lane, that included some 8-bit art exhibits and a playable building. Yes, a building. Below are some photos of some of the objects I managed to track down and a brief account of how I got on.
You can also view more details on the official site here (find all 8 objects and get access to an exclusive behind the scenes trailer).
A full size 8Bit London cab (with added Ralph) There was no sign of the driver, but I had run out of “quarters” to feed his meter anyway.
The main part of the exhibit was a massive building sized awning that had a picture of a building from the Fix-it Felix game world that Wreck-It Ralph is the antagonist in.
Using an app named Blippar (free on iOS or Android) the app first scans the image and plots out a number of points (left) Having then recognised the building it loads up the appropriate piece of software that uses the filled in detail of the building as the level in the game.
You then play what is essentially a flash game (with slightly poor controls) and must maneuver Fix-It Felix to repair all of the windows that Wreck-It Ralph has broken while avoiding the debris that he throws from the top of the building. The game itself it nothing too special and I had a few issues with it crashing — one brief time while first launching and again as I neared the end of the level – but the novelty of seeing the building digitally ‘come to life’ added to the experience greatly and I was glad I got a chance to pop along.
Also, there was an 8Bit Tree. I heard more than one person utter the phrase “Minecraft” while walking past.
8Bit Lane was only open over last weekend, so if you want to see more of Wreck-It Ralph in the UK then you will have to wait until he finishes loading into cinemas on February 8th. I can only assume it was delayed in this country as a homage to the amount of time we had to wait for a game to be released back in the 8-bit era.
