Probably the most realistic gaming costumes you’ve ever seen

This isn’t the first time Metroid characters have been brought to life in costumes, but they stay so true to the game’s appearance that for a split second, looking at the photos, you’ll think that they’re fake.

Originally released in 1986, the Nintendo game is a 2D side-scroller, and animator Daniel Cattell’s costumes look as though they’ve jumped right out of a Gameboy screen.

Cattell, a 23 year-old animation student at Rutgers-Camden University in New Jersey, created the life-size 16-bit costumes and in an interview with Nintendo Power, he explains why:

“I wanted to create an effective costume that stood out from others that I had seen and to do it with almost no budget, relying entirely on my creative abilities to make up for it. As an animator (and pretty skinny guy), I finally realized that I could make these costumes based on cardboard recreations of the 2D animated sprites of a game.”

To see all the costume photos, check out Cattell’s Deviant Art profile.