Henrik Ohrstrom, 18, is serious about two things: video games and roller coasters.
So why not combine the two?
Well, that’s exactly what Ohrstrom did on Aug. 22 at Disneyland in California.
Ohrstrom, his friend Kyle Hoffer, and two others snuck a Nintendo Gamecube, two controllers. and a poster board shaped like a TV onto Splash Mountain and decided to play a fake game of Super Smash Bros. Melee for the on-ride camera.
The result was a hilarious photo that reached Reddit’s front page. The post on the social news site collected more than 680 comments and 10,795 upvotes.
“All I can really say is that Kyle and I love Disneyland, and we don’t do this for popularity,” Ohrstrom said in an email interview with the Daily Dot. “We do this because we love the thrill of having to constantly innovate and think of something more intense.”
The Super Smash Bros. shot took weeks to innovate and plan, said Ohrstrom of Scripps Ranch in San Diego, Calif.
For starters, the duo took a screenshot of the game, had it printed at Kinkos and glued it to a piece of black poster board cut to the size of a small flat-screen TV. Some tinfoil was added to the board to create the TV effect, Ohrstrom said.
At Disneyland, which has notoriously tight security, Ohrstrom wore a long parka with the poster board strapped to his back and “pretty much waddled in to the park without being spotted with it,” he said. The controllers were stuffed in Hoffer’s pocket and the Gamecube was stored in a backpack.
The four guys first did a test run without holding up the objects to get the angle just right, Ohrstrom said. Then came the money shot.
“Nothing was lost as a result of the ride picture,” Ohrstrom said. “Everything is in my room and I’m going to try and save it forever.”
The Gamecube and controllers did not sustain any damage on the ride and are fully functional, Ohrstrom said.
No one at the Splash Mountain photo booth noticed the photo except the clerk (who laughed) and helped them buy it , he said.
The Gamecube photo is only one of many Ohrstrom and his friends have staged. They’ve used a tin can telephone, made a cup of coffee, and launched Angry Birds with a slingshot. Last summer the Ohrstrom and his friends played a game of Monopoly.
