Imaginary Guns From Half-Life and Portal Manufactured For A Real Good Cause

Gravity Gun for Child’s Play

Valve’s anxiety-fueled trilogy (Half-Life/Counter-Strike/Portal) has become a fixture in the pantheon of first-person shooter games thanks to its captivating environment of gray corridors, booby traps and hostile forces.

Half-Life, the originator of this universe, gave birth to a scary bestiary of weird creatures, disgusting aliens and aggressive mutants. It features a bright and taciturn Physics Ph.D’s transformation into a cold-blooded killer whose circumstances then make him the savior of humanity. In the second opus, this metamorphosis owes much to his weapon of choice, the Gravity Gun. A rusty and compact version of the traditional, futurist tech-y gun used in many video games, the Gravity Gun can pick up any object in the room, make it levitate, and launch it at your enemy with a sarcastic grin.

Portal pushes the idea of non-traditional weapons much farther. The game, which Valve released in 2007, stands out by appealing more to your intellectual skills and sense of logic, as opposed to your devilish destroy or duck-and-cover tactics. Portal’s gameplay is based on a brain-melting teleportation trick, activated by an enhanced version of the Gravity Gun. The Portal Gun is an ally to those who think the best way to escape falling rocks, steel picks or toxic aliens is to escape the room.

And now, the fantasy tool of many a hardcore gamer has come true. Not only do these two guns simultaneously exist in the same gaming environment, but this environment is no game—it’s the real world.

Harrison Krix, a 29-year-old Australian replica artist, has just unveiled a “real” Gravity Gun, as a follow up to last year’s “real-life” Portal Gun—but both weapons serve a much nobler function in real life than they do in the games. They’ve both been auctioned off for Child's Play, a fundraising effort and annual dinner that gathers members of the gaming world together to raise money and games for hospitalized children. Last year, the Portal Gun was auctioned for $14,000, but no word yet what the Gravity Gun fetched last week.

For replicas, they look much more realistic than the papier-mâché guns you see at sci-fi conventions, and could definitely pass for actual movie props. We’re wondering, what would happen if you open a portal with the Portal Gun, then use the Gravity Gun to levitate the Portal Gun, and throw it into the Portal? Krix didn’t say, but whatever happens, we have a feeling it would make our heads spin.

Gravity Gun

Portal Gun

All photos by Dan Almasy. See more here.