Waiter, There’s a Book in My Soup // The Great Gatsby for NES

Sometimes the familiar rears its pretty little head in places completely unexpected. For instance, have you ever eaten a soy sauce flavored Kit Kat bar? Or maybe you’ve travelled halfway around the world to find someone who grew up in your hometown. In much the same way, the very same literature that once bored us to tears as teenagers can often make an appearance in the most surprising places. In this spirit, we’re happy to begin a new feature on The Stage, Waiter, There’s a Book in My Soup, through which we will explore the random and serendipitous ways that books keep popping up.

Today: The Great Gatsby for NES.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s timeless classic about lost love and roaring revelry in West Egg has inspired no less than seven international film adaptations. Its imagery is recognizable and revelatory: a giant pair of eyes, a distant green light, a bright yellow car. Through the titular Gatsby, the novel explores the life and times of the American dream following the Great War and the tenacious helplessness of even the wealthiest men to reclaim the happiness and love they once knew and believed in.

Sounds perfect for a video game, no?

The Great Gatsby for NES is the brainchild of co-creators Charlie Hoey and Pete Smith. These two visionaries took it upon themselves to produce an epic re-imagining of the book in a more pixelated form, complete with a predictable array of enemies: butlers, dancing flapper girls and angry crabs. The mocked-up cover art for the game even depicts Nick Carraway throwing his hat at the giant pair of eyes which are, of course, attempting to kill him with their laser vision.

There isn’t much more to say. If you feel even remotely guilty about skipping through this book when it was assigned to you in 10th grade English (or if you secretly loved it and have yet to admit that to anyone), you should probably go play the game, just to balance everything out. You certainly won’t pass any tests or learn anything meaningful about 1920’s America, but you’ll have a Charleston-filled good time.

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Have you ever found a book where it doesn’t belong? Share your story with us in the comments below or send us future post ideas via our submissions page. While you’re at it, don’t forget to follow liloQui on Twitter and Facebook and check out our homepage for more information about who we are and what we do.

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