How The Last of Us re-created a 2003 arcade with the help of true enthusiasts
Enlarge / It took a lot of work for Ellie and Riley to play Mortal Kombat II in The Last of Us—and somehow just as much work, if not more, to be able to film it. (credit: HBO)
The Last of Us' HBO series went to great lengths to re-create a 2003 mall arcade for a recent episode. Two of the arcade enthusiast hired on for that scene have detailed the triumphs and technical limitations they encountered, at length, in an arcade history forum thread.
In the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us, a cordyceps outbreak overtakes the world in 2003, leaving things much as they were for the 2023 world through which Joel and Ellie struggle. In episode 7, a flashback shows Ellie and a friend powering up and exploring a full-fledged early aughts mall, complete with a beautifully neon-lit arcade, preserved by societal collapse just as it was in the first George W. Bush administration.
The arcade scene in episode 7 of The Last of Us.
Production designer John Paino told Variety that "Raja's Arcade" took its name and front appearance from the game's Left Behind DLC, but otherwise built it from scratch. All the games had to actually work because creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann demanded it, according to Paino. But the original games would have had cathode-ray tube (CRT) screens—which, as anybody using a camera back then would remember—are difficult to capture. "We rebuilt them on LED screens," Paino told Variety.