In Honor of GTA IV, the funniest YouTube clips about the series

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at 8:11 AM May 04, 2008

As a fan of both Conan O'Brien and the GTA series, I've been enjoying the recent convergence of the two interests on late night TV. Conan offers a "nice" version of GTA IV using real in-game footage:

The Conan clips are a primitive example of machinima, a burgeoning artform that uses videogame technology to do to movies what blogs did for publishing.

Machinima (pronounced /məˈʃiːnəmə/ or /məˈʃɪnəmə/), a Portmanteau of machine cinema,[1] is a collection of associated production techniques whereby computer-generated imagery (CGI) is rendered using real-time, interactive 3-D engines, such as those of games, instead of professional 3D animation software. Engines from first-person shooter and role-playing simulation video games are typically used. Consequently, the rendering can be done in real-time using PCs (either using the computer of the creator or the viewer), rather than with complex 3D engines using huge render farms. Usually, machinima productions are produced using the tools (demo recording, camera angle, level editor, script editor, etc.) and resources (backgrounds, levels, characters, skins, etc.) available in a game.

But my favorite GTA skit isn't machinima ...