AI art is a hot topic at the moment, occupying a confusing space in our minds where on the one hand we fear what it will do to actual human-generated created art yet on the other we can’t help but be drawn in by its otherworldly envisionings based on the veritable galaxy of extant images on the internet.

As someone who’s a little less terrified of AI art than other people, I’ve been having a great time trawling YouTube and discovering slideshows of modern gamestransmorphoremixified by Midjourney into retro-styled movies. It looks like more and more people are doing this, and I’ve been particularly enthralled by stuff on YouTuber Ghoulgash’s channel where, among other things, they’ve used the Dream Studio AI image generator to convert images from Elden Ring and Bloodborne into pretty convincing stills from 1980s movies–complete with that distinctly soft focus lighting, lumpy prosthetic-faced monsters and bosses, and a healthy dash of 80s campiness.

Here are some of my favourite findings of Elden Ring and Bloodborne as 80s movies, which have soaked the inherent dullness of January in a nostalgia that I can't get enough of.

rykard

Like many of the bigger bosses from Elden Ring, I totally envision Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy as a janky and stiff animatronic with just one mouth movement and perhaps a little snarl mechanic to reveal his upper teeth.

rogier

Ahhh Rogier. When this guy with his flamboyant pointy hat first pops up out of nowhere to assist you in the Margit boss fight, did you really envision him as anything other than a dashing pouty swashbuckler with a rakish air of ‘come hither’ about him?

nepheli

Nepheli Loux, fully embracing the fact that she’s basically Xena, Warrior Princess.

fingercreepers

AI image generators famously struggle to generate hands properly, which actually works pretty well when generating those awful, awful Fingercreeper enemies, who themselves just look all wrong with their six fingers and decaying nastiness.

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Elden Ring’s locations generally aren’t quite as spectacular in 80s fantasy form as they are in the actual game (no big surprise there), but these renderings of Caelid and the Lake of Rot certainly have something to them.

caelid-and-lake-of-rot

Great though the Elden Ring stuff is, the tendency for AI art to generate images that look weird, otherworldly, and generally a little ‘off’ overlaps perfectly with the Lovecraftian horror of Bloodborne.

hunters-nightmare

The Hunter’s Nightmare from the Old Hunters DLC, for example, looks incredible. Sure, it looks like the Amygdala was replaced by tornado-like tendrils reaching down from the skies, but it all contributes to the wrongness of the location.

streets-of-yharnam

This shot captures the hostility of your first steps through the Streets of Yharnam beautifully. What’s going on with that guy’s face? We don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. It’s unsettling and it just works.

mikolash-1

Fan favourite Micolash, Host of the Nightmare, gets an almost doll-like makeover in AI, which perhaps makes him even creepier than the somewhat goofy original character.

mikolash-2

Though as a little bonus, I discovered this Micolash as generated by Big Geezer (just look at that horrid row of extra teeth - pure nightmare fuel). Shades of a particularly dark variant of The Joker, don'tcha think?

orphan

The Orphan of Kos was never exactly a looker in Bloodborne–neither in its 2015 or 1980s form. There’s elements of the old-school (I’m talking Night of the Living Dead old) George Romero zombie here. Just imagine this thing wailing and blubbering like a baby, and you’ve captured the horror of Bloodborne in all its glory.

Using AI to reimagine the popular games of today as movies of yesteryear could well be one of the big trends of 2023. There are already plenty of channels popping up, rangings from Star Fox as a 90s children’s TV show to Final Fantasy 7 as an 80s Sci-Fi movie. I, for one, am all aboard for this weirdly nostalgia-inducing trip that frames my favourite games in this way.

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