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Photographer Jason Lee has raised the bar on real-life depictions of Angry Birds, even adorable ones, with this photo of his kids. He explains the making-of to My Modern Met:

The girls have been playing their own version with stuffed animals and stacking up various objects, so I thought, hmmm, this would be a fun picture. I really wish I had a big enough slingshot, but I had to improvise. The setup was pretty straight forward, but the most difficult part was getting the younger daughter up in the air. I had to settle for this tried and true method, which is kinda embarrassing to say the least.

Genius.

(Anneson Souza via UFUNK)

There's something about gaming mechanics that inspires the stickler and the parodist in us all, which is why real-life video game parodies so tickle our fancy and the fancy of gamers. Maybe it's because -- for older games, anyway -- we know they can be silly, but want to believe in them and the worlds they represent? (see: Super Mario; Donkey Kong; classic RPGs.) Maybe it's because we need to reassure ourselves that, for all the time we play them, they're not actually real? (See: Grand Theft Auto; WoW; The Sims.)

After the jump ten of our favorite real-life parodies of video games: