A collection of epistolary fiction about video games that don't exist
170 posts
Latest Posts by gamesthatdontexist - Page 3
Suzanne Treister 1991-1992 Fictional Videogame Stills
In the late 1980s I was making paintings about computer games. In January 1991 I bought an Amiga computer and made a series of fictional videogame stills using Deluxe Paint II. I photographed them straight from the screen as there was no other way to output them that I knew of apart from through a very primitive daisy wheel printer where they appeared as washed out dots.
The effect of the photographs perfectly reproduced the highly pixellated, raised needlepoint effect of the Amiga screen image. Conceptually this means of presentation was also appropriate in that it made it seem like I had gone into a videogame arcade and photographed the games there, lending authenticity to the fiction.
The first seven works on this page form a series titled, ‘Q. Would you recognise a Virtual Paradise?’
Many of these works were shown in London at the Edward Totah Gallery in March 1992 (view installation) and later that year at the Exeter Hotel in Adelaide, Australia. In 1995 the 'Q. Would you recognise a Virtual Paradise?’ series was shown in London at the Royal Festival Hall in the exhibition It’s a Pleasure, curated by Leah Kharibian.
Recent venues: Somerset House, London, 2018 view installation ; Akron Art Museum, Ohio, USA 2019 and tour; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, 2019/20 view installation
The original Amiga floppy disks which stored the image files are corrupt, but the photographic art works remain.
The weirdest part about the Ms. M&M post is if you google “Bambi Ps2” you get an entire fanon wiki for a PS2 Bambi game that doesn’t exist and is entirely made up, including list of bugs and glitches that don’t actually exist, because there isn’t an actual Bambi game for PlayStation 2 or any Bambi game at all for that matter
How about a Tomie game?
A few mockup images from pixel artist, Mak Bad Gam.
1998 - mobile phone customers are surprised to find a game 'Black Gloves' preinstalled on their new phones. The gameplay is based on a long, skeletal arm finding its way to a sleeping victim. Multiple reports of phone owners being hauled from their beds spur an unusual mass recall
alternate universe late 90′s arcade game ideas: the beat-em-up classic Dynamite Deka aka Die Hard Arcade but instead based on the Fifth Element with Korben Dallas and Leeloo as the 2 players. Ruby Rhod is an unlockable character (once you get to Fhloston Paradise) who uses that “bzzz BZZZZZZZ” line (when he wants everyone to get away from him) to launch opponents across the stage. if the game is a success Sega will further develop “Crazy Fifth Element Flying Taxi” with Cheb Khaled instead of The Offspring, McDonald’s instead of KFCs for fare destinations. we missed out on some potential hits yall.
Post-cosmic-horror apocalypse surreal exploration simulator
This NES game I found at the thrift store is kinda weird
Music by Slime Girls
The 12 Tracks of Christmas 2019 Track 3: Nightmares Won’t Chill (Course BGM #04) [from “Nightmare Busters”], by Denji Koshiro Original Track: Chilling Air
Don’t worry, folks; this album ain’t gonna turn into “R.I.P.1.0.3. x XMAS 2019”. Pinkie swear, this is a one off.
Nightmare Busters is an older project of mine that holds a special place in my heart; it was the first fully-fledged Gonkaka project I ever worked on and completed, as well as the first (and so far, the only full-length) chiptune project I’ve put together. If memory serves me correctly it’s initial release on 103 Records was the first release I ever charged for- this was before the “pay what you want or get for free” clause was mandatory. It definitely shows it’s age compositionally, as well as my inexperience in terms of sound design- not helped by the inconsistency of sound design between tracks (each piece basically uses entirely different sets of waveforms/“instruments”, which is not at all period-accurate for what was supposed to be an arcade game from the late 80s/early 90s)- but it’s only with the benefit of experience and hindsight that I can say all of that. And of course, none of that takes away from the fact that I sat down and put the time in to create an entire album using software I was pretty much completely knew with on a mobile device, working on rough “game design” documentation alongside it with help from Dio (who provided the excellent cover art). I did grow discontent with it after a period, and strongly enough to actually take the initial release of the album down, though cooler heads would eventually prevail and the idea to re-release it swam around in my head for a while before it eventually dropped in 2017, with the story surrounding it reworked to frame the version of Nightmare Busters that music was written for, in Gonkaka/Nincom lore, being an overly ambitious prototype from a freshly established company that collapsed under it’s own weight. The story does state however that Nightmare Busters was eventually revisited by Nincom, re-imagined for the console that in-universe stands in for the Playstation.
That’s where this song comes in, but first I should probably explain what Nightmare Busters is about. Like, the in-story game, I mean. Strap in folks; this is gonna be a long one. So much so in fact that I’m going to throw up a readmore to preserve the sanity of mobile users, but I encourage you to read further!
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Common Types of Fake Video Games
The Violent Video Game
The AAA Pastiche
The Silly Title
The Specific Parody
That Time Spy Kids had a game called “Game Over”
The Ones that Actually Sound Real
The Ones that End Up Being Real
Yuna Itoh, a Californian parapsychology student with a lifelong fascination of the supernatural, has found herself dealing with a crisis of faith. The countless personal investigations she has undertaken into haunts and horrors have always turned up empty, revealed to be nothing more then mistakes or fakery. Coupled with a lifetime of scepticism and even insults from her peers, she finds her belief waning, unable to shake the thought that the course of her life thus far has been a mistake. It’s in this bout of existential ennui that Yuna learns of- and becomes fixated with- a supposedly haunted estate in England that once belonged to the wealthy and prestigious Barnbellow family. As the rest of the country suffered during the Second World War, the Barnbellows continued to live comfortably and indulgently, with nary a care in the world. This peaceful ignorance was shattered entirely with the kidnapping and subsequent murder of the youngest child, Edward Barnbellow, a tragedy that wounded the clan and the local community alike, but none more so then the family matriarch Jennifer Barnbellow. For weeks on end she wailed in agony, crippled by despair with no attempts at aid soothing her. Even so, none could have foreseen how the story would end: an empty house full of corpses, blood streaked across the walls, and Jennifer having spirited away, never to be seen again. Tales speak of her spirit wandering the estate, wailing and crying for her beloved son. With the deadline for an important case study and accompanying thesis looming, Yuna comes to a decision; she decides to travel to England and visit the Barnbellow’s former home in person, ostensibly for her studies. However, deep down, she sees this as something of a moment of truth; one final test to determine whether or not forces beyond our understanding do exist. Yuna is going to get her answer, and it will change her world forever. Gonkaka is proud to present this promotional single for Nincom’s upcoming survival horror title Barnbellow’s Estate, due to be released October 2nd XX99. It is one of several intense themes intended to score moments when Yuna engages with nightmarish creatures she cannot beat and must instead escape.
I Hear You Run, I See You Hide (Pursuer Theme #1) [from “Barnbellow’s Estate”]
released June 30, 2019
composed by Decon Theed
cover designed by Decon Theed
DOWNLOAD INCLUDES CORRECTLY SIZED COVER + UNEDITED COVER SCAN
David Czar - Oliver! | famicase | meteor
Oliver is a talented dog with a passion for skateboarding! Perform crazy tricks, challenge rivals and race around the vibrant city. Will you prove you are the top dog?
raid v1 available now • video games + design • @raidmagazine
my submission for http://raid.community/ v1.0, ty for the invite @simon-no 🎮 available now! — D.E.A.T.H. Blossom [Delivering Every Angel Towards Heaven], named after the sudoku solving technique, is a hybrid survival horror/puzzle game where the player wakes up in an abandoned mental ward in a locked cell. Upon escaping their room, they discover they aren’t the only captive, and must solve a series of puzzles to rescue others from their respective cells.
GoodBoyGraphics | ILLOBEATS - Cosmic crate diggers of the musical Milky Way blast off and set out to explore the grooves of the Solar Sound System in search of new intergalactic instrumentals! - [MY FAMICASE EXHIBITION 2019] (Tokyo, Japan / meteor)
2019′s Famicase designs are here! ⊟
It’s the best time of the year when Tokyo-based game shop Meteor opens up My Famicase Exhibition, its annual gallery of Famicom cartridges adorned with labels for made-up games from talented artists around the world. My timeline is filled with amazing cartridge art – I picked out and embedded ten cool pieces I spotted on Twitter!:
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Sweet Home (Walkaround Ambiance #1) [from “Barnbellow’s Estate”] (Gonkaka)
This is something long overdue; actual music for my Barnbellow’s Estate project.
For those of you that haven’t been around long or don’t follow my exploits closely, Barnbellow’s Estate is a Clock Tower inspired project that has existed, in some form, since about 2007, though it has gone through quite a few tweaks and changes within that time frame. Like a lot of my projects, it started out as an idea for a game I was certain I’d somehow make, but once reality caught up with me a bit I rejigged it into a “fake soundtrack” Gonkaka project. Because I might not be able to make full games, but I CAN make soundtracks and write an obscene amount of flavour text!
There are two primary modes of ‘gameplay’ in Barnbellow’s Estate, were it to exists: one wherein you explore the impossibly large estate the game takes place in, solving puzzles, reading lore, and engaging with all manner of survival horror tropes; and one wherein you have to escape from the designated pursuer of whatever area of the estate your in, using the environment to your advantage (either to hide from or hinder said pursuer), or in a pinch, use Yuna’s digital camera to stun and temporarily disable them. This is a piece that would play during one of the former sections- specifically, it’s intended to be the primary walkaround music for the very first area of the game (the hysterical laughter and/or sobbing sample that I messed about with in the final section is a giveaway here, as it’s intended to tie into the game’s first pursuer; the Vengeful Mother, whom makes an appearance in and has some of her backstory expanded upon in this short story I wrote). It’s also a good demonstration of the general sound direction I wanted to take the walkaround tracks in: a sorta free-form, experimental semi ambient style with more melody driven breaks and a shot or two of some 80s-styled synth patches for cheesy horror flick fair.
This piece does have some more specific sources of inspiration, though; the use of rave stabs owes itself more to the music from G Darius than more dance-floor ready tracks, as G Darius’ score did tend to make use of orch hits and rave stabs in unsettling and sometimes dischordant ways (here’s an example track). The track’s general vibe also owes a lot to the Ancient Castle Stage music from the first Devil May Cry - the idea to use some effect-ladden and otherwise messed with samples of orchestra tune-ups and an opera singer belting out in a freeway in particular were inspired by the sudden appearance of a pleasant string melody overlaid atop the offputting ambiance (the big, bombastic organ/string section also owes itself to the Ancient Castle Stage track). The name is also a deliberate reference to the NES/Famicom horror title Sweet Home, because I don’t think I’ve made my love of that game quite clear enough yet.
Fun trivia fact: this is technically a stealth remake of an older attempt at the first-area-walkaround-track for Barnbellow’s Estate, called “Tragedy United Them”. About the only thing it borrows from the original is that organ section, though.
This song includes the following sounds from freesound.org:
orchestra warming up (BeeProductive)
underpass (Simon Gray)
Chamber Ensemble Tuning 2 (Cunningar0807)
G51-09-Woman Sobs and Laughs (Craig Smith)
Today is my day off so i decided to do some summer cleaning, and i found a box of my old SNES cartridges in my crawlspace, haven’t looked at them since high school. Has anyone heard of this one? It has to be a weird bootleg but i’ve never seen it before. It won’t play, just goes to a black screen with ambient music playing. Kinda spooky.
Exorcist 8-bit (NES) - Final Area BGM by explod2A03.
Happy Slapper ‘93 (Mighty Obnoxious Yellow)
I’d originally planned to do something entirely different for the next cut in my ongoing “music I make on advice from my therapist” series, but as is damn near always the case with me, plans change. The idea to do a speedy oldskool Rotterdam Techno track with some mighty slap bass came to mind as if from a dream at the start of the week, and several hours over the next few days were lost to making it a terrifying reality.
This track is another piece for one of my many, many, many Gonkaka projects; Relentless Riders. An arcade racing/driving game that, were it a real game, would be somewhat Ridge Racer inspired, but with several twists. For starters, there’s no actual opponent vehicles to race against, and the courses aren’t circular; the race is instead against the clock, and the courses are straight shots with a defined beginning and end (so it’s a bit like OutRun in that regard, too). Another major difference is that it has a defined narrative, which I’m going to try my hardest to sum up in brief:
Relentless Riders takes place thousands of years into the future, after a brutal war fought that raged for centuries has left the planet almost completely decimated and the human race in the hundreds. Said war was fought using machines that were able to alter the fabric of reality itself, with every creative and unspeakably cruel way that power could be used and abused explored by those that fought in the war- hence why the planet is in such bad shape. The survivors of the war congregated together and created a safe haven at the most remote point of the planet, vowing to create as utopian a society as possible within their means. As you can imagine, however, resources weren’t exactly in abundance to begin with, and in the years since the colony was established circumstances have only grown more dire. With little hope left, they turn to a legend stating that the original reality warping device- the most powerful of the machines and the one that served as the base for all the others- lays untouched, still operational, in it’s original location; a laboratory at the heart of the only part of the planet untouched by the war, known as “The Vanishing Point”. With this machine’s help, they could undo the damage wrought by millennia of fighting; they could renew the world entirely. Problem is, the Vanishing Point’s location is an incredible distance away- on the complete opposite end of the remaining landmass that the colony was built on. It’s a one way trip, and with no indication that legends are factual, it could all be for naught. Seeing no options left, four volunteers step forward to make the impossible journey- Ayako, Yoshie, Tomoko, and Mariko- working with the few mechanically and scientifically remaining individuals to construct supercars capable of withstanding the hostile world beyond their borders. Each of the drivers have their reasons for volunteering: Ayako, having only known cities made of steel and titanium and beginning to feel burdened by the scientific knowledge that has shaped her life, dreams of experiencing an unsoiled world full of flora and fauna; Yoshie, the sole remaining member of her family, seeks to escape to a happier world where the sorrow she’s known for entire life is a distant memory; Tomoko, a spiritual individual who no longer finds comfort in her belief system and unable to fully believe the legend is true, wants to experience one last burst of freedom and fun before the inevitable end; and Mariko, an eccentric individual who learned quick to use her bizarre nature to try and offer some brevity, knows the machine at the Vanishing Point contains information on the world of the past- including info on a chocolate bar she’s heard many tales of and is desperate to try. Their cars built and their affairs settled, the four drivers depart from the colony with nothing but a small selection of ‘classical music’ from many aeons ago blaring from their speakers, to boost their morale.
… That wasn’t very brief at all, was it?
As for the track itself; it couldn’t possibly be more inspired by Shinji Hosoe’s early work in the ridge racer games if I’d tried, though there’s a touch of the old masters of Rotterdam Techno- Holy Noise, Euromasters, King Dale etc.- in there as well. Whilst older Rotterdam Techno was fast pasted and had its fair share of heavy kicks and quirky samples, the early stages of the genre didn’t quite go to the same extremes as it would in the latter half of the 90s and beyond (this was an age before Speedcore and Extratone, after all). In terms of actual specific songs, this owes itself to Speedster, Speedster Overheat, and though it’s a newer track Rotten 7 [Remix] from the Ridge Racer series, all of which were composed by Hosoe. It’s mostly the former two, what with their Slap Bass Action™, but the bittersweet chords were drawn from the latter a little. The bittersweet angle was a detail I specifically wanted to include; to keep in tandem with the narrative of Relentless Riders, I want the music for the project to have a forlorn tone to it. Not to the point of being morose and miserable, mind, but just enough to tug at the heart strings a bit.
Oh, yeah; why’s it credited to “Mighty Obnoxious Yellow” and not “Gonkaka”? Another of the ideas for RR was to have the race BGMs be assigned to fake acts made up by Gonkaka (aliases for aliases; we’re through the looking glass), though M.O.Y. is actually the name of a project that Gonkaka’s bassist, Takayuki Mitsuyoshi, and their string player/head tech guy Denji Koshiro were in together before Gonkaka formed, wherein they blended electronica with their chosen instrument talents. Hence why the slap bass is off the chain here, and why the violin makes an appearance at a few points. The name and general idea are a reference to Oriental Magnetic Yellow, the name of a Yellow Magic Orchestra cover/parody band formed by Shinji Hosoe, Nobuyoshi Sano, Takayuki Aihara, and Hiroto Sasaki that they worked on between soundtrack gigs. The title of the song is a two-pronged pun; “Happy Slapping” was the name of a 'fad’ from my secondary school days wherein you would suddenly slap someone, usually from behind, yell “HAPPY SLAP” as you did it, and some other dickhead would film the whole affair on their phone. And, as well established, the song’s got mad slap bass in it ayyy.
Why yes, I DO think through this shit so thoroughly for pretty much my sole enjoyment, how did you know?
As a fun bonus, I’ve included some early character design concepts for the four riders: these were drawn about three years ago, and desperately need updating, but hey ho!
APOGEE - A fictional survival game where you must escape the moon of a Class-V gas giant before it reaches its apogee.
Point of Origin: A Retrospective on Schadenbergiana
I’ve mentioned a few times over the years that I’ve not just cooked up entirely fictional games to go along with the music I write under my Gonkaka alias, but indeed an entire fictional company with it’s own history to go along with them, Nincom. After having a lot of fun putting together a retrospective for one of my ongoing Gonkaka projects, Efiáltis, I decided to dig deep into the back catalogue of work I’d done and do something similar for a Nincom game I had already finished writing the music for a long time ago; Schadenbergiana. Along the way, a point about the preservation of old games made it’s way in there too. This piece of metafiction was written for the 2018 Halloween Countdown over on Random Lunacy, and can be viewed there with embedded music players.
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Ever since day one, Nincom has been defined by it’s dedication to uniqueness and the fervent ambition- traits which have found the company in hot water more then once, and most famously before they even got their first game out the door. Theirs is an attitude described by many as “weird”, fewer as “punk”, and by their dedicated fans as something that “sets them apart from everyone else in the game’s industry”. The company has recently celebrated their 32nd birthday with a release that has been rather aggressively marketed through various online channels; The Nincom N-Sides Collection, a compilation of some of the companies rarest and most obscure releases, each of them painstakingly emulated as accurately as possible using emulators programmed in-house. In honour of this momentous occasion, we’d like to cover what was perhaps the hardest Nincom game to find in any capacity and even harder to get emulated correctly; Schadenbergiana.
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CHRONO BREAK
Fanmade Trailer by Simon S. Andersen
Apple Quest Monsters DX is now available in digital form!
Just over 100 pages containing 85 lovingly crafted monsters, a map, photos and more! https://splendidland.itch.io/apple-quest-monsters-dx
You can buy a print version too! https://splendidland.bigcartel.com/product/apple-quest-monsters-dx
So, I was trying to think of more stuff to draw to finish off the day, and I figured I might as well draw some Black Skies, given it’s relatively quick to do thanks to the style!
The Zelda-y influence is pretty clear from this pic, tho to be fair, the mood such a hypothetical game would go for combined with the sources of inspiration would mean those’d work well together.
@gamesthatdontexist, I think you’d dig this…