There are a lot of reasons to love a video game. Great gameplay? You know I love it. Amazing story? I’m there for it every time. Fantastic graphics? I'll write home to mom! All of those things make me enjoy a video game. Whether it be music or an interesting world to explore, there are so many different ingredients that allow a game to truly shine. But none of them - not one thing on this planet - will make me love a video game more than having another video game in it.
To be clear, I’m not talking about a minigame. Lots of games have minigames. Lots of games consist entirely of minigames. I’m specifically talking about video games that are inside another video game. The most magnetic thing you can have. If you tell me there’sꦛ a game within your game? 🙈Hoo boy, I’ll probably buy it. I’m not joking. I love it so much.
The Best Games Are The Games Within Games
You know what first got me to play a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Like A Dragon game many years ago? You probably do because you read the headline. That’s right, it was the fact that your character could run to an arcade and play actual arcade games. The first time I did that, it felt like anything was possible. Rather than having to leave my apartment to go to an arcade, I can leave a fictional apartment and go to a fictional arcade.
When 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth came out, I took the very first chance I had to go to the arcade and play 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Virtua Fighter despite already owning many versions of Virtua Fighter. For some reason this is deeply appealing to me, a grown man. I want to waste my characters’ time whil🤪e wasting my own!
Infinite Wealth’s Comedy Works Because It Treats Its Own Absurdity As Real 🍸
Infinite Wealth is an extremely 'well, THAT just hapܫpened!' game where nobody says 'well, THAᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚT just happened!'
And when I played the original 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Animal Crossing with my friends in college, all of us desperately wanted to get the NES games for our houses. It’s also, if you ask me, the saddest loss in the series. They were literally the coolest things to find in the entire game! I get that Nintendo wants to sell older games over and over - or, at least, make them a bonus for𒀰 a paid subscription - but god there was no feeling🌌 greater than putting playable video games inside your fake home.
Building an arcade in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:New Horizons just doesn’t compare. You can’t🐻 play it! But twenty years ago, the presence of games somehow made our islands feel more real because this was how we’d probably relax on those islands in our actual liv﷽es.
Nor do they have to be previously existing video games! Arcade Paradise lets you build an entire arcade and then play the games in it. None of them are real outside of Arcade Paradise and it’s all the better for it. A few entries in the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Grand Theft Auto series have their own little games too. They tend to be parodies of/based on real games, but they’re still 𒈔there for the playing!
The Games Within Games Don’t Even Need To Be Good
When that update to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Cyberpunk 2077 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:added its own fake/new games, I immediately jumped in. I don’t remember a thing about them, but I certainly rushed to play. I’m saying I don't care if these games are fun or not or even memorable. I’d rather find all the games in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout 4 than the plot in Fallout 4.
Hell, I remember playing Namco Museum for the original 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation and having my mind blown at the ability to walk between arcade machines. To be fair, now the 3D museum segment looks like an indie horror game made by one person in seclusion. But at the time, the idea of moving between arcade machines was incredible.
And that’s ཧnot really even a game within a game! It&rsquo🌜;s just that I loved the chance to pretend I was walking around and stopping at different game cabinets. And, yes, the same magic trick worked on me again in Pac-Man Museum Plus.
If all this sounds a little stupid, don’t worry. It is! In 2002, we definitely already had emulators that could handle NES games. In fact, it was probably easier to find ROM🌊s for games back in the day when nobody was looking but that’s neither here nor there. But we wanted those NES games because they were a ⛄symbol of something within the game itself.
Not for nothing, playable means the item is actually usable, meaning it’s one of the fictional objects within the game fulfilling its real life purpose. Even when there really is no purpose to putting it in at all, like Zork in Call of Duty: Black Ops. Especially 𝓰when there r🍸eally is no purpose to putting it in at all.
So if you want me to buy your video game, all you꧂ need to do is put another video game inside it. It doesn’t matter what it looks like. It doesn’t matter how it plays. I want to s෴ee an interactive product on a fake screen while playing an interactive product on a real screen. That way, at least I know that my character can avoid saving the city/country/world the same way I can avoid work.
Stop Acting Like People Being Bummed Is A “Boycꦐott”
Fans shoul𝓡d be allowed to express their disappoi🤡ntment without being seen as a mob calling for a boycott.
