We all know the stakes were high during the Revolutionary War, but what if having a philosophical debate over independence was like battling a video game boss? What if successfully navigating your way across a ballroom to meet your beloved could help shape the future of a fledgling nation?
Welcome to Hamilton: the video game.
Nitya Chirravur is a professional freelance artist living and working in Toronto. And like so many other artists on Tumblr who have fallen for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s diverse |Revolutionary War production, she’s been churning out fan art for Hamilton. This month, she began a new series of works, Game4Ham, that imagines what the musical would look like as a Super Nintendo–style video game.
The series grew out of the image above, which combines the famed Hamilton logo — featuring Miranda as Alexander Hamilton standing atop a star — with the familiar invincibility star from the Super Mario Bros. franchise.
Chirravur originally intended to stop after just one Nintendo reference, but once the logo mashup was complete, she kept coming up with more ideas of what a Hamilton video game might look like. Check out this first-act confrontation between Hamilton and a random Tory colonist, which Chirravur reimagines as a boss battle where whoever shouts the best wins:
The combination of the game elements and the musical is remarkably complementary, because in many ways the stories within Hamilton really are battles — not just the literal Revolutionary War battles (although those are, naturally, on display in Chirravur’s art) but the class conflicts and philosophical debates that took place during that turbulent period in history.
The concept game Chirravur has dreamed up — which, alas, currently exists only in unplayable, illustrated form — opens with a preteen Alexander Hamilton fighting to surviving a dramatic hurricane, just as he did in real life. From there, the gameplay samples several video game formats, segueing from a Dance Dance Revolution–style ballroom sequence to more role-play-style quests.
Perhaps the best part? There’s even a bonus game, inspired by bonus coin-collecting challenges in the Super Mario games, that focuses solely on Peggy, the third (but not least!) of Hamilton’s three Schuyler sisters.
A self-identified South Indian/Canadian, Chirravur says her life changed eight years ago when she first encountered a little musical called In the Heights — Miranda’s other multicultural, Tony-winning musical.
"I instantly connected to the story of In the Heights," she says. "My parents are immigrants from India, and watching Nina [a Latina character who struggles to motivate herself to stay in school] onstage felt very much like watching myself. It was unique and personal and changed the way I thought about musicals."
While still a grad student, Chirravur began using In the Heights as inspiration for her animation homework, creating a few homages to the show on her YouTube channel. After someone at the production saw and liked her work, she was invited to come backstage to meet the whole In the Heights cast and crew. It was her first time seeing a Broadway musical.
"They were very generous with their time and invited me backstage," Chirravur told me. "Meeting Lin-Manuel was an experience I could never forget. He's very enthusiastic and encouraging. He inspired my love for Broadway and making art for it."
It seems Chirravur is paying that inspiration forward by inspiring plenty of other Hamilton fans. Her initial Tumblr post about the game has garnered nearly 20,000 notes, including one from Miranda himself.
"I'm just overwhelmed at how many people have said that they would play the game, and in fact, how many have written to say that they'd help develop it!" Chirravur said. "I know it can never be a full game, but the excitement is wonderful and more encouraging than I'd ever imagined."
Chirravur says she has lots of ideas for more Game4Ham, and she’s going to keep working on the project — "especially now that I got a little nod of approval from Lin-Manuel Miranda himself."
You can see the entire series of posts on Chirravur’s Tumblr.