The film was shot in Champaign and Chicago, Illinois. Press Start is scored by American video game music composer Jake Kaufman. The two characters played by Daniel and Carlos Pesina in Press Start, Sasori and Lei-Gong, are pastiches of their respective characters in the original Mortal Kombat game, Scorpion and Raiden. A sequel, Press Start 2 Continue, was released in 2011. Press Start focuses its parodic tone primarily toward the era of 8-bit and 16-bit video games, but references more modern games as well. Games parodied range from Donkey Kong to Halo. The film also satirizes all aspects of gaming, including collectible card games, Saturday morning cartoons, comic books, and trends of turning games into breakfast cereals. Press Start tells the story of a suburban youth in a videogame world who discovers his adventurous, if berserk, destiny when he's recruited by an ill-tempered ninja and a tough-as-nails space soldier to save the world from a tyrannical, but comically insecure, sorcerer.