Good day. A popular Kerbal Space Program video-maker has recreated a famous scene from the movie Twister, down to lip-synching the actors’ chatter with that of the Kerbals driving. They’ve also recreated the diverse and quirky array of weirdo vehicles the film’s storm-chasing scientists drive, and watching the kerbals bounce them over the terrain is a delight. This is no joke one of the best establishing scenes in the movie, as the adrenaline-high chasers chatter while Van Halen’s Humans Being blares in the backround:
“Shine on, shine on.”
Creator Ravenshaddow titled their post (opens in new tab) “There’s No Way I’m Allowed To Have This Much Fun.” To which I say, friend, you are having the fun and nobody can stop you.
theres_no_way_im_allowed_to_have_this_much_fun from r/KerbalSpaceProgram
1996 action-thriller disaster film Twister, directed by Jan de Bont, starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, is a classic for its mix of lurking cyclonic danger and high-octane tornado stuff. Here’s a link (opens in new tab) to the scene in question, synced to about when the Ravenshaddow video starts—though Ravenshaddow cuts out a brief middle bit. Run in parallel for maximum enjoyment.
Shout out to creating a kerbal complete with little red hat emulating the fit of Dustin “Dusty” Davis, played with remarkable aplomb by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman. It’s the breakout performance for Hoffman that some might say made his career. If there’s any actor I’d have wanted as the delighted, oblivious Jebediah Kerman in a theoretical animated Kerbal Space Program movie, it would’ve been him.
This is not the first Ravenshaddows video I have laughed at. Their machinimatical shenanigans have spanned a broad array of laughs. There’s this insane jet powered mountain climber (opens in new tab) or a wildly overblown blimp (opens in new tab). There’s a weird ’80s cel-shaded bomber (opens in new tab). There’s a golden, lifted Cadillac Mars rover (opens in new tab). There is even a video where they used Kerbal Space Program to recreate Need for Speed Underground 2 (opens in new tab).
Shine on, indeed, Ravenshaddows.
There is a long and beautiful tradition in videogames of recreating things which are not videogames using our various tools. For example, this legend recreated an entire Radiohead album using Mario 64 sounds (opens in new tab). There’s a whole game called The Bus about driving around a 1:1 scale Berlin (opens in new tab).
For my part, though, I’m not sure anything will ever top the perfect recreation of Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime except it’s Half-Life’s G-Man (opens in new tab).
