A collection of epistolary fiction about video games that don't exist
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Latest Posts by gamesthatdontexist - Page 4
Gonkaka Project Breakdown: Efiáltis pt. 1
So, this is something I’ve meant to do for a while! If you’ve followed my music close enough over the years, you’ll be familiar with one of the aliases I use, Gonkaka, and how it’s used for Video Game-styled songs and Chiptunes. One of the things I intend to use that alias for is full-fledged faux-soundtrack concept albums- albums styled to appear like they’re soundtracks for “real” games produced by the “company” Gonkaka works for in the lore of my various music aliases, Nincom- that are supplemented by writing and art to both help sell the concept, and give an indication of what the game would be like if it actually were real (so it’s kinda pulling double duty as fiction writing and design document). I’ve flirted with the concept a couple of times over the years- Battlemania: An Evil Supreme OST and Nightmare Busters Prototype Tracks- but I have accumulated a wealth of ideas for Gonkaka projects over the years that I’d like to work on. Problem is, I’ve… not actually written a lot of those ideas out, even the base stuff I’ve thought up that can be expanded on later. This little writing exercise- wherein I describe one of the most fleshed out future Gonkaka projects I’ve got so far, Efiáltis (which is heavily inspired by Splatterhouse, natch) as someone writing a guide / breakdown of it from the outside- was an attempt to actually start documenting these ideas in some concrete form. It’s not fully complete yet- it only goes up to the end of Efiáltis‘ third stage, as that’s where most of the concrete ideas for the project lie- but it will definitely be expanded upon. I will also be doing similar writing type things for the other Nincom titles I’ve dreamed up, again in an attempt to actually get me to document said ideas rather’n just leavin’ ‘em floatin’ ‘round my brain. Enjoy!
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“Efiáltis” (Εφιάλτης; a rough Greek translation of the name “Nightmare House”) is easily Nincom’s most infamous title. Though the company is no stranger to either the horror genre or for games with somewhat depressing or bittersweet stories, Efiáltis is utterly uncompromising in both aspects to the point that it turned a lot of players off when it was first released in 1990, unto a market and an audience that wasn’t used to games as bleak or as graphic. Also controversial was the game’s choice of protagonist and the character that the plot dictated they were to save; they were clearly depicted to be a Lesbian couple, with no uncertainty. The fact that it has gained a tremendous cult following through emulation in recent years, however, suggests that rather then being an out-and-out failure, it was simply ahead of its time.
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Made a little pixel animation for a friend, done in the style of an encounter from an old DOS space exploration game; Starflight. Looks like Scifer is going to have to brush up on his SpaceBunny-ese if he hopes to resolve this encounter diplomatically!
Done entirely with an EGA palette of 16 colours, which was pretty much the best you could get in 1986. ;)
Everybody rumored…nobody believed.
original resolution
Video Game Idea: A Shmup inspired by US labor history, particularly in Appalachia in a way that @afloweroutofstone and @lang-lassiter might dig.
Basically a group of miners working in horrible conditions on a planet far in space go on strike. The corporation who owns the planet collaborates with the Galactic Federation to take ‘em out. The player character is an old; beardy hillbilly-lookin type veteran of some long-ago space war who still owns the ship he used in it, albeit in somewhat ramshackle condition.
It’d be part classic SHMUP/rail shooter/aerial-dogfight-game, but also part resource management as you have to pick up parts from destroyed foes to repair and add on to your ship, because it;s constantly breaking down and in need of repairs.
As for the inspiration…
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Splattle Sibsters
Happy splatfest! I played a bunch of Splatoon 2 today while also watching a stream of Battle Brothers. So here’s a mashup of those. Please enjoy tactical squid com-splat.
I’ve been enjoying Splatoon a whole lot. The core loop of ‘battle -> get cash -> buy clothes -> repeat’ is very enticing! I love a good dress-up game. I’ve only just started to dip my toes into Salmon Run, as my interest in the Turf War starts to wane (splatfests aside). I had very little interest in ranked until recently– I got really into ARMS’s ranked mode for a couple weeks, which has rekindled my interest in it for Splatoon.
Battle Brothers’ tactical-minis fighting seems pretty neat! Unfortunate that the writing seems to be on that low-fantasy “it’s not realistic if women have agency” bullshit. All in all I’m happy to watch streams of it rather than play it myself.
As an aside– I think a splatoon tactics game could be really cool, although I don’t know that battle brothers’ approach is *quite* the right fit. Battle brothers is really focused on formations (as far as I’ve seen) while Splatoon has a big focus on using your colored turf to increase your mobility (swimmin’ as a squid, super jumps)
“The arcade is the warmest place to hide.”
I never got around to posting the finished version of this for some reason? Well anyway, here’s a little thing I made last year. It’s supposed to look like old promo/cover art for an arcade game. I think I did a decent job at catching that aesthetic.
Ah yes, that's what people typically think the title refers to. But due to the lack of anything car-related in the game or any depiction of Mansell in the game itself, people still question who the title actually refers to.
Fourteen obscure NES/Famicom ROMs that were never released in North America, according to a neural network:
Power Punker (Europe)
Business Gaiden (Japan)
Astro Robin Hood (Japan)
Entity Rad (Europe)
World Championship Shting (Japan)
Star Trek - The Atlantis Bone (Japan)
Insection - The Arcade Game (Europe)
Captain Player Earth (Japan)
Magic Dark Star Hen (Japan)
Murde - The Fingler’s Quest (Europe)
Metal Fighter Blaseball (Japan) (Rev A)
Smurf the Edify (Japan)
Skate or Space Dive Bashboles (Europe)
Chack'van, Ultimate Game of Power Blam (Japan)
Nigel Mansell’s Font Fighting (Japan)
A few of these I can elaborate on:
Astro Robin Hood is an obscure JRPG with a "Robin Hood IN SPACE" theme. Like many RPGs of the era, it's mostly a Dragon Quest clone, but you can a build a party of out several available Merry Men.
Star Trek - The Atlantis Bone is a Japan-exclusive Star Trek game, framed as if it were an episode of the Original Series. Some claim the story comes from an unfilmed TV script for the show, but this has never been confirmed. Japanese fans say it represents the show better than many of the other Star Trek games of the era.
Insection - The Arcade Game is based on a bug-themed space shooter made by an obscure European dev. Oddly, the actual arcade game was never finished or released, as the games were developed concurrently and the arcade version was canceled due to financial issues.
Metal Fighter Blaseball - An oddly misspelled baseball game with a sci-fi theme, similar to Base Wars. Some cute sprites based on tokusatsu characters and aliens, but otherwise a pretty standard baseball game for the era.
Nigel Mansell’s Font Fighting - Japan-exclusive "action education game" meant to teach kids English and to improve handwriting. Borderline unplayable. No is sure who Nigel Mansell is. EDIT: While some assume the title refers to the race car driver Nigel Mansell, the game doesn’t feature driving a tall, nor does it have Mansell’s likeness, so your guess is as a good as anyone’s.
Fourteen obscure NES/Famicom ROMs that were never released in North America, according to a neural network:
Power Punker (Europe)
Business Gaiden (Japan)
Astro Robin Hood (Japan)
Entity Rad (Europe)
World Championship Shting (Japan)
Star Trek - The Atlantis Bone (Japan)
Insection - The Arcade Game (Europe)
Captain Player Earth (Japan)
Magic Dark Star Hen (Japan)
Murde - The Fingler’s Quest (Europe)
Metal Fighter Blaseball (Japan) (Rev A)
Smurf the Edify (Japan)
Skate or Space Dive Bashboles (Europe)
Chack'van, Ultimate Game of Power Blam (Japan)
Nigel Mansell’s Font Fighting (Japan)
Alien Mystery: The Golden Tensei Gensei (Marvel Station: Secret Commando) (2003, Eypan) (GBA)
Video Games That Maybe Only Exist in My Head, Part 3
Star Farm (Sierra On-Line, 1986).
I made this ad design of Olympic Curling「オリンピックカーリング」, my FAMICASE 2018 ’s entry.
Thank you for all your support!!
ICE WARS was a fantastically-popular vector scan game, featuring a thinly-veiled representation of the Soviet invasion of the Aleutian Islands early at the start of what became World War Short. It was also the game that turned struggling Vectorpoint into a major power in the field of arcade gaming, sponsoring three sequels, as well as the spin-off game SNOWMOBILE CARNAGE, one of the only vector-scan games ever to be rated AR for graphic violence. A tamer set of graphics was included on some supplemental ROMs, but they proved to be so unpopular that they were discontinued (and it’s one of the cases where the more-restricted version of the game ended up commanding higher prices on the collector market).
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Obviously ICE WARS is based on BATTLEZONE (1980), itself a fantastically-successful tank simulator (and one of the first realtime 3D games). It’s also an amazing technical achievement given the computing power of the time. The designers, Ed Otberg and Owen Rubin did so much to conceptualize digital space and set out basic rules for gaming within it.
I learned a lot in the process of making up these screens and designs (themselves based on vehicles created for the Microgame ICE WAR (1979) by the eponymous Elohrir, though I wonder if that designer turned out to be someone else.) Probably the biggest lesson was that games like BATTLEZONE are really dominated by negative space. You don’t shoot at the vector lines, because your target lies in-between them.
I can finally show you my entry for this year’s FAMICASE Exhibition!
It’s called Olympic Curling.
Game description:「オリンピックカーリング」もうすぐオリンピックです! トレーニングと準備が欠かせません。あなたのチームが出場できるよう、がんばろう!!
Video Games That Maybe Only Exist in My Head, Part 2
Everything is Terrible (Acornsoft, 1982).
Video Games That Maybe Only Exist in My Head, Part 1
Nebulous (Infocom, 1984).
GBC demake for Breath of the Wild ⊟
I will never stop posting Link’s Awakening-adjacent content on this site. Shout-outs to Nintendo Wire for producing this video demonstrating what the Switch release could look and sound like on a Game Boy Color:
If you’ve somehow missed it, make sure to check out this ambitious Breath of the Wild mod that allows you to explore the world as Zelda – this one will actually be playable eventually!
BUY Breath of the Wild: Expanded Edition Guide, BOTW Link Nendoroid
Witness all of Famicase 2018′s brilliant designs ⊟
All 250 entries from this year’s My Famicase Exhibition – Meteor’s showcase of cart designs for made up Famicom games – are now available for you to click through and enjoy! This is way more convenient than opening a million tabs from Twitter’s #famicase hashtag, and you can get a better sampling of the contributions from Japanese artists. Plus, there are descriptions for all of the concepts, though you may need to open Google Translate for some.
The designs we featured above come from Anna Dittmer, イイヌマ, ヤマダユウス型, 廸, NEKONOKO, イズ, Dima Goryainov, rayzones, Chris Furniss, and Liam Higgins. You can see all of the cartridges on display at Meteor’s game shop and gallery in Nakano, Tokyo until May 13.
► THE NEW CLUB TINY IS HERE Support Tiny Cartridge!
Does it look like a good old gameboy action game? I wish it exist, BlackZone : the Silent Doom. You could control this robot guy with the massiv lightning arm, he would be a super engineer because there is not enough engineer as heroes of games. A cross engineer-detective.
What Is Black Skies?
Well, I may be cheating a bit for the drabble, but I might as well write what exactly that vector graphics-y game idea I was talking about is.
Black Skies, for the long and short of it, is a science-fantasy Zelda-like game idea that’s been bouncing around in my head for a while now, with a pseudo-vector-graphics style and a world inspired by pre-gaming-crash-styled games and the 70s-type sci-fi and fantasy it drew from, set in a world that has moved on, where you’re a lone mercenary set on rescuing a princess from a malevolent force of space demons .
Of course, the idea, as it stands so far, is a fair ways more complex than that, but read on for more info there…
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There are too many amazing Famicase designs ⊟
I wanted to feature my favorites from this year’s My Famicase Exhibition – the annual showcase of Famicom cartridge designs for made up games, hosted by Tokyo game shop Meteor – but there are too many splendid pieces to pick from. By the time I got through half of the designs posted on Twitter with the Famicase hashtag, the number of open tabs I had threatened to crash my web browser, so here are ten standout cartridges I’ve found so far, including a number from friends of the site we’ve talked about here before.
The artists we’ve featured above, starting from the top left: Duncan Corrigan, @pyong_pyong, Adam Tierney, Austin DuBois, William Greenawalt, Philip Summers, Jordan Rosenberg, Sebastien, @data_doge, and Cory Schmitz.
Meteor will have around 250 Famicase designs up for display at its gallery until May 13. It’s my dream to one day make it to one of these, so if you’re in the area, please do not miss this opportunity to pay Meteor a visit!
► THE NEW CLUB TINY IS HERE Support Tiny Cartridge!
So, I think I did some concept stuff for it ages ago, but here’s some art design stuff for a game idea I had, sort of a melancholy-y vector-graphics Zelda-like inspired by the aesthetics of pre-crash video games.
On the right is the heroine, on the left is what is basically my idea for a design of the “goomba” species.
In my head, the game idea’s called Black Skies, and I’ll tell you more about it if you wanna hear…