I’ve recently fallen down a rabbit hole of fake video games. Not fake like fraud, but fake like art; games that don’t exist to play, but do exist to tell their stories. I’m super into it but finding more is kinda difficult, so here we are!
What fake games do you like? Why do you like them? Pictures, links, videos, whatever.
I really enjoyed Petscop (video 1/25 linked) and Valle Verde (video 1 linked, Spanish with subtitles), both series are let’s play style, exploring fake games to tell their stories. Petscop is much more narratively involved, and tells a great story (you’ll probably want an explainer video afterwards… it’s involved) while Valle Verde is more ghost-in-the-machine horror.
I found this rabbit hole through this video, from Super Eyepatch Wolf about fake video games, why they are made and how they “work” as an art form. Their content is weirdly enjoyable to me, and pleasingly entirely too long. Plus they have their own fake video game.
Edit for clarity: Fake video games is a super broad category. Pictures with gameplay hud that implies a video game, videos of gameplay or cutscenes styled after games count (even those weird live action “games” people record for TikTok count), books or stories that describe gameplay for games that don’t exist count, even soundtracks modeled after game sound tracks count. So if it’s a game or part of a game that doesn’t exist, it counts!
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The Giant’s Drink from Ender’s Game always seemed really compelling to me. The emergent gameplay reacted to your state of mind and serving as some sort of arcane test of your mind.
Ooh, good answer!
Those books were so important to my teenage self. Such a shame Card himself is such a whackjob.
Ooh yeah that’s a good one, I have a big long think about that every time I read that book.
If Sugar Rush looked as good as it does in Wreck-It Ralph, I think it’d be a fantastic kart racer.
Also Roy from Rick and Morty. Holy shit, a game that could compress time would be fucking insane, even as mundane as it is.
Oh man yes actual time dilation as a core mechanic of the game sounds awesome. Disorienting as hell, but awesome.
I bet a game like that could be used for therapy, too, like in a big way… let people live out where their life is headed, or the life of someone they’d target for hate crimes or whatever. Let them struggle. Maybe they’d come out wanting to make some changes. That’d be cool af. I’d totally playtest that. Repeatedly. And end up like time-frozen Jessica after she wakes up 😜
Came here to say this. The OG fake game (and kinda the OG gaming creepypasta too!)
Its even in the Simpsons!
Polybius is based off of Tempest
Ahoy’s video about Polybius is very excellent.
Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada
If only because I would love to be recruited into space for beating a video game.
By far my favorite movie about a video game that doesn’t exist.
I want to build myself a Starfighter arcade cabinet.
It would mostly run MAME, but also… it could run Starfighter!
NGL, I was hesitating on building a MAME cabinet, but having one with the art and build of a legendary fake game? Sounds perfect.
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Starfighter, obviously.
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Sugar Rush and Fix it Felix Jr.
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Does a tabletop game with an AI video DM count as a video game? If so:
Does a tabletop game with an AI video DM count as a video game?
you mean this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek%3A_The_Next_Generation_Interactive_VCR_Board_Game
Granted, it’s not AI, but this is basically what that scene was based on.
BRB, checking archive.org for a minute…
Edit: https://archive.org/details/STTNGBoardGame
Now I just need to replicate (pun intended) the physical game pieces…
But yeah, I think an LLM / deepfake Martok that responds to your open-ended D&D-style gameplay would be way better. I feel like we might just about have the technology to pull it off IRL!
Man, played that a bunch as a kid, then we found a copy again at a random estate sale!
Just ended up Youtubing the VHS tape, though
Global Thermonuclear War exists in the form of DEFCON.
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Aight, if there are no wrong answers I wanna mention a real old one I’ve had a soft spot for since childhood: The Dreamcast-like music video Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers.
There aren’t a ton of examples from pre-social media, I wonder if there are any others that people can think of that’re even older?
Edit: Actually reading a few there are some from the 90s, like Simpsons. I forgot all about them, lol.
Buy me Bonestorm or go to hell!
Not a game, but a game console: BMO from Adventure Time.
I love BMO 🥹
For me, the game Pierce’s eccentric millionaire father privately commissions in Community.
I swear I’ve played a real Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne game.
Edit: Found It
Even just looking at the sprites, that’s really impressive.
I love to hate the video game depicted in the X-Files episode First Person Shooter. It is about some kind of VR game that is so realistic that people die in real life. The single enemy NPC Maitreya is just too good at killing.
When they entered the game it looked just like real life. Except the most enticing gameplay they could think of was standing in front of each other and shooting all guns they had.
It was released in early 2000 so there should have been tons of games with enticing gameplay to pull from. But no, standing somewhere for a long time and shooting big guns is exactly how trained FBI agents would act.
A couple of extra things about this.
The episode was co-authored by William Gibson of all people. The fact that one of the key authors that gave us cyberpunk as a genre, went on to write a painfully mediocre TV episode about virtual reality, still leaves me kind of stunned.
WRT to “live-action standing-in for VR”, it can be done artfully. Avalon does a great job of using practical effects and creative set locations to portray cyberspace. Also: there’s a lot of run-and-gun here, and nobody stands around. Which is to say: they really whiffed hard on the x-files episode, as there’s clearly a better way to do this.
I’d say this mostly failed on the direction side. Less budget in VFX and more in action could have made a lot of difference.
That sounds like x-files, and I’m not super surprised lol
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I love fake demakes of modern games. My favorite one is Elden Ring for the SNES
That looks way nicer than what I remember of the snes.
It’s plausible for the PS1, though.
Demakes are so interesting. They are more constrained than coming up with something new for an old system, but, seemingly because they use IP people are already familiar with, they can leave more unsaid/unshown and just implied, and still have it be cohesive.
That was a really good one, I can see why it’s your fave!
This was so well done, very cool!
Isekai MMOs specifically Sword Art Online. If it weren’t life or death peril, it would be fun.
Those have always been a weird thing to me. Like, yeah, I definitely enjoy simulating the fantasy life, but there’s something to the being life or death, and being stuck in it, that makes those actually work. If it wasn’t a forced thing, they’d just be generic and boring. The recent one, shangri-la frontier, kind of fails to engage me (I mean to say, I enjoy it, but verisimilitude is broken) simply because it’s so forward about the main character(s) having plot armor, and it partly has to be so forward about it because the characters aren’t stuck in the world, so there’s no explaining away things like sword art online did by having all the characters be ‘equal’ in terms of time played.
Not a video game, but I’d love to play Cones of Dunshire from Parks and Rec. That and the video game that was in Big.
I always wanted to push my Farmer (Yes, my humble Farmer) directly into the central cone.
Not sure if it’s really what you’re asking about but the Aqua Teen Hunger Force series has a few fake video games during the series. The Video Ouija episode has two, “Video Ouija” (a game where you summon/talk to ghosts) and “Insult Master” (a game where you insult your opponent), I’d play either of those if they existed LOL. e.g.
Frylock: Okay, Meatwad. Time to put the game up. It’s gettin’ late.
Meatwad: Come on!! Just one more dead person, please? Just one more dead guy.
Frylock: All right, one more.Meatwad: Spirits that haunt this house. Tell me…what was we talkin’ 'bout?
Game Ghost: My sister’s baby.Meatwad: Oh yeah, one them other dead boys told me about that. How she doin?
Game Ghost: She’s dead. We’re all dead.A game I’m not sure I’d play is the one featured in the Black Mirror episode Playtest. It’s basically an augmented reality game that auto-generates your personal fears that you get to experience in realtime. Maybe it’d be interesting to try once, safely, but I don’t know how often I’d want to test my sanity in that way.
I’ve never watched Black Mirror, but as someone who occasionally has nightmares there’s no way I’d play a horror game that is powered by my own thoughts
Your mention reminded me of a false pretense game from Adult Swim called Glittermitten Grove. I would consider that itself a fake game in the way a storefront might be a fake cover for a drug operation, except the drug in question is Frog Fractions 2.
Video Quijia would be cool as hell if it was multiplayer and the game was just fighting to move the planchette. 🤣
Yep those all count :) I’ll have to watch those episodes again! Same with the black mirror one, those are all good but man I gotta be in the right mood for ‘em… lol
Holy crap, I’m jealous of you for being able to get into something like that. I think I actually understand what you’re talking about, but I can’t even read a book without my mind wondering off.
Oh man, I get into everything, especially if someone presents it to me with enthusiasm. I love learning about new stuff, and super bonus if it alters my perceptions or broadens my horizons :)
Heh. Enthusiasm. I remember that one. Long time ago. These days, I’m just jaded and cynical.
