A Classic Red Hot Chili Peppers Music Video Is Now A Video Game
Red Hot Chili Peppers are one of the most recongizable rock bands in the history of music, and now one of their music videos has been turned into a video game.
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The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication” is one of the American rock band’s best-known hits, a top-notch earworm that hasn’t left us ever since its release in 1999. The song’s accompanying music video, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, takes for of a fictional open-world video game in a California setting. It’s by far the group’s most popular music video on YouTube, with over 900 million views. It also made a boom at the time of its release, and it has been a dream of RHCP fans to try and play the fictional game depicted in the “Californication” music video. Luckily for them, now they can.
As reported by PC Gamer, a game developer Miquel Camps Orteza created a video game based on Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication” music video from 2000. Orteza himself wanted to play the game, and considering that no one ever made it by 2022, he challenged himself to do it. The result is a fun little video game that allows players to select an avatar — one of the band members — and play the game through seven different levels, based on a scene from the music video.
Admittedly, the game in the music video looks fantastic, considering that it was made in 2000, and Orteza’s attempt to recreate it is certainly a fun way to pay homage to one of the best albums the band ever wrote. It’s a nice way to spend up to an hour completing the game, which doesn’t feature the iconic Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song, presumably due to legal reasons. However, there’s an in-game button that links to the music on YouTube. It would be nice of them to “lend him” the rights to the song for the game. Even George Lucas gave Star Wars fan film-makers his blessing.
The game’s overall design seems rudimentary, but it does allow the fans to play something they saw in an extremely popular music video from 22 years ago. The game itself is available to download on both PC and macOS and has seen a positive response from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ game-loving fandom, some of which have waited for more than two decades to play this game. Unfortunately, Red Hot Chili Peppers have yet to comment on what they think of the game made in honor of their best-viewed music video.
It’s worth pointing out that this isn’t the only instance of fans making or remaking highly sought-after releases. Less than a year ago, a fan of 2003’s The Simpsons: Hit & Run video game made a remake using Unreal Engine 5 to impressive results, and another fan made the show’s iconic meme into a video game as well, just last month. As far as the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication” video game, hopefully, Ortiz won’t stop working on the project. Perhaps the band acknowledges his effort and extends their rights to the song to find its way into the game.
