By Ya What.Photo: Courtesy of B3ta.com.
By Ya What.
Photo: Courtesy of B3ta.com.

By Andy_R.
Photo: Courtesy of B3ta.com.

Attention denizens of the digital realm: the latest Internet art history mashup has officially surfaced. It comes thanks to a forum called b3ta, which recently found one of its users challenging other members of the online community to transform images from the art historical canon into video games.

The prompt, which was posted on March 17, has yielded an assortment of inventive mashups, including a hilarious riff on Banksy’s iconic “flower thrower” stencil.

“Turn famous works of art into video games,” b3ta user HappyToast solicited, “or classic video games into art. Space invade Mona Lisa and hang Mario in the Louvre.”

Respondents quickly populated nearly seven pages worth of responses on the discussion board. One, however, would soon rule them all.

By Ya What.
Photo: Courtesy of B3ta.com.

The following day, HappyToast announced user Ya What’s mashup as the winner. The image, as seen above, is a digital juxtaposition of Microsoft solitaire cards spilling from Katsushika Hokusai’s iconic The Great Wave off Kanagawa.

HappyToast’s own proposal cleverly transformed a Mondrian painting into a game that’s reminiscent of the Blackberry (remember those?) version of Brick Breaker. According to designboom, the concept even attracted the attention of a designer who turned the idea into an actual game.

Others, of course, were clearly designed for the sheer purpose of amusement. Check out our favorites below.

By *Ninj.
Photo: Courtesy of B3ta.com.

By *God.
Photo: Courtesy of B3ta.com.

By Draconacticus.
Photo: Courtesy of B3ta.com.

By HappyToast.
Photo: Courtesy of B3ta.com.

By artifus.
Photo: Courtesy of B3ta.com.