Viral videos: Back to the Future bonanza and Fallout 4 Wanderer trailer

16 Oct 2015

Less than a week away from the official Back to the Future Day, people are jumping on the Doc and Marty bandwagon, while gamers are finding it hard to contain their excitement ahead of the release of Fallout 4.

Back to the Future Day – College Humor

Taking place on 21 October, Back to the Future Day will mark the day in the legendary first film when Marty McFly and Doc Brown travelled into the future to a world of hoverboards, hologram sharks and self-tying shoelaces.

At College Humor, however, they take the fun of the film and bring it to a dark place looking at how reality has somewhat dashed our science fiction hopes.

Geopolitical turmoil, the death of the newspaper industry and climate change are just some of the topics that squash all our hope and optimism for the future.

Thanks a lot, College Humor.

Uploaded: 14 October 2015

Back to the Future diner

Sticking with Marty and Doc, the two actors who played the roles – Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd — have a much more upbeat discussion in the trailer for their upcoming video discussing what the film got right about 2015.

What they both appear to agree on is that we do indeed have 3D movies (although in reality it was a hologram) and fingerprint scanning technology.

But we’re still a long time away from self-tying sneakers and dog-walking robots it appears.

Whatever you do, though, don’t take away Christopher Lloyd’s fax machine, as he admits he still uses one today.

Uploaded: 14 October 2015

NASA shows Jupiter in 4K

We’ve been treated to some great space spectacles this year, most recently the images provided by the New Horizons spacecraft of Pluto and Charon in the highest detail we’ve ever recorded.

Well, now, we have also gotten some rather incredible 4K-quality footage of the solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter.

With the help of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, this is one of the first products to come from a programme to study the solar system’s outer planets each year using Hubble.

NASA says the observations are designed to capture a broad range of features, including winds, clouds, storms and atmospheric chemistry and will help current and future scientists see how such giant worlds change over time.

Nice.

Uploaded: 13 October 2015

Fallout 4 – The Wanderer trailer

The gaming community has reached peak hype, it appears, for the release of Fallout 4 on 10 November, with the release of a new live-action trailer for the post-apocalyptic game.

It’s been five years since the last game in the franchise was released, which looks at a post-nuclear war world in an alternate future where robots and artificial intelligence exist but culture is identical to that of 1950s America.

To the tune of Dion’s The Wanderer, we see the new lead character and his faithful canine companion, Dogmeat, take on the mutants in the wasteland.

Uploaded: 15 October 2015

Barbie ‘Imagine the Possibilities’ ad

The folks over at Barbie know how to put together a good viral ad, it seems. Entitled ‘Imagine the Possibilities’, this ad features a series of girls taking on the roles of lecturer, veterinarian, business executive, football team coach and palaeontologist.

It’s pretty adorable to hear a girl talk about the human ‘bwain’, but it promotes a good message for girls and women to aim high in their future careers, even if it is just an ad to promote the dolls.

Uploaded: 08 October 2015

Extra Gum: The Story of Sarah & Juan

Getting kicked right in the feels with this advert from Extra Gum. Who would have thought that chewing gum could be the bridge between a successful relationship?

“A girl. A guy. And a stick of gum. See their love story unwrap,” the tagline for the video says and, to be honest, that sums up the entire video.

In between all that, of course, is the awkward first date, the snow fight and the saying goodbye ahead of a long, distant journey.

As far as adverts go, it’s a little better than what would be described as ‘chewing gum for the eyes’. And no, there are no apologies for that pun.

Uploaded: 07 October 2015

Japanese samurai slices baseball at 160km/h

When it comes to compiling the week’s viral videos, very few things peak your interest more than seeing incomprehensible (to me) Japanese text for its title as, typically, it’s something bizarre.

Well, this week, we see a Japanese samurai only go and cut a baseball fired at him at a speed of 160km/h in half using a samurai sword.

That’s some pretty impressive cat-like reflexes, Japanese samurai guy.

Uploaded: 13 October 2015

Legend of Zelda symphony

A musical number for our final entry coming from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, ahead of the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes for the Nintendo 3DS.

With shots of Link on his fantasy adventures playing in the background, a symphony playing the songs of the series – which has been going since 1986 – plays all of the songs with some serious gusto.

You don’t even need to know the games to appreciate good symphony music when you hear it, which this most certainly is.

Uploaded: 14 October 2015

Back to the Future DeLorean car image via Mooshuu/Flickr

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Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com