ClassicRadar: Games invade Google Street View

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Did they really think no-one would notice?

Street Fighter II

The New Zealand Story

OutRun

Resistance: Fall of Man

Road Rash

Shenmue

Virtua Racing

Viva Pinata

Originally posted on 25 Jun, 2009

Photoshop features are probably my favourite kind of feature to make on Radar. But adding images to Google Street View was a pretty difficult one to do, as there's often quite a lot of camera blur. You'd think blurry images are easier to manipulate, but you've got to try and keep the whole thing looking like it was taken at the same time. The Viva Pinata tree looks particularly lifelike, and I was quite pleased with the Chimera in the Resistance one.

I was a little disappointed that several people thought these pictureswere real and that Google Street View had been hacked or something. Or maybe even that the characters were in the original photos. Who knows.


Above: This is real too. Actual dinosaurs that pretended to be claymation figurines. Damn clever beasts...

Things you may have missed? The 'Sprunk' billboard on Broadway in the GTA pic, or maybe the flag at the top of the castle in the Mario one. Also, the car door and its shadow are basically drawings as there wasn't anything there to manipulate.

Finally,the words'amazing images' in the intro text used to link to a rather flattering image of an attractive female pedestrian... but Street View hassince been updated to look ata van. Shexy.

03 Apr, 2011

Justin Towell
Justin Towell
Freelance Writer

Justin was a GamesRadar+ staffer for 10 years but is now a freelance writer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zelda BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.