Fictional Video Games

Have you ever watched a movie or TV series where the characters are playing a game, and you just wish that you could too? Or maybe you’ve seen a fictional video game that you’re glad isn’t a real thing? We’ve spent a lot of time researching some of the fictional video games that developers really should start thinking about bringing into the real world and the ones they should never even think about creating!

The OASIS – Ready Player One

“This is the Oasis. It’s a place where the limits of reality are your own imagination.” We don’t think we’re too far away from experiencing something like the OASIS, especially with advancements in Virtual Reality Gaming, that centres the universe of Ready Player One but equally, there’s a lot for us to learn before we level up our real-life technology to exist in an Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation (OASIS). While starting as an online gaming platform, the OASIS gradually evolves into a globally networked virtual reality world that most of humanity now uses on a daily basis – bringing this into the real world really could be amazing or disastrous.

Sugar Rush – Wreck It Ralph

Okay, so we know we’re not that far off racing games with the likes of Mario Kart and Forza dominating the gaming world but there’s something about Vanellope Von Schweetz’s candy tracks that make us want to play - preferably without the glitch! Not only do we love the scenery, but the “Children of the Candy Corn” sugary racers are simply too sweet to resist. We only see one racetrack in the movie but if the rest of the arcade game has the same sweet treats, we want it!

Bandersnatch – Black Mirror

Bandersnatch follows the story of a young programmer who is adapting a fantasy gamebook into a video game in the 1980s. Choose-your-own-adventure games are very popular and after Bandersnatch launched on Netflix, we saw similarly styled interactive shows hitting our screens too. What we don’t want is the element of breaking the fourth wall and (spoilers) finding out we aren’t in control of the game or life like we thought we were. Becoming a character in a real-life choose-your-own-adventure is something we can live without, keep this idea off your brainstorm list, game devs!

Bonestorm – The Simpsons

Bonestorm is an ultra-violent fighting game released around Christmas time in Springfield. The marketing campaign surrounding the game is very aggressive, in the TV ad we see the house shaking, a gangster-looking Santa crashes his sleigh through the wall, and his two reindeer growl and snarl at the kids. “Santa” then uses a bazooka to shoot Bonestorm into their console before declaring “You want excitement? Shove this up your stocking!” We just want to know what it is about this game that brought out a different side to Santa.

Nuclear Launch – WarGames

Although not an actual game, the main character in the 1983 film WarGames, unwittingly accesses a United States military supercomputer programmed to simulate, predict, and execute nuclear war. If anyone’s ever tried the Nuclear Secrecy NUKEMAP, you’ll understand how terrifying it would be to accidentally have control of this power. We’d like all nuclear simulations to remain protected against aspiring computer hackers for the foreseeable please.

Are there any fictional games we have forgotten that you want to see (or don’t want) in the real world? Let us know on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook!