Games That Don't Exist

A collection of epistolary fiction about video games that don't exist

[systemst91]

New album for the "OST Composing Jam: Overtime" competition, created in just one month.

Enjoy the album, it's free to download. 😉 https://system-st91.itch.io/air-runners-ost

[gamesthatdontexist]

WetSocks OST

The album is available on Bandcamp here! https://thuswinnie.bandcamp.com/album... WetSocks is a conceptual video game created by SELSTA (@selectionstation) and scored by Winnie (@thuswinnie)

[gamesthatdontexist]

[gamesthatdontexist]

Nebula & Quasar

[dosbox]

The King in Yellow - Multimedia Interactive (1996, Win95 CD-ROM)

[777770211324416]

画风我挺喜欢，一个叫

MOCK SOUL 的游戏喵。

[sabrebash]

Goats Gruff

Inspired a lot by Darkest Dungeon and Fear and Hunger lately

[welele]

¿Yakuza o cuál es este?

[the-talon-ted-meem]

Video game graphics are getting way too real

[123472oodkkxkxkx-deactivated202]

THE IDLE ANIMATION HWKSJCLSLS

[akilah12902]

As far as credit to the original creator, I believe this is [KOMAZAWA ISOLATION]

[skyfire85]

Full props to the creators, that’s amazing work.

[gamesthatdontexist]

Illuminatus was news to me, until I heard from contributor Janne Sirén, who highlighted this fictional game that was once reviewed as an April Fools joke for Finland’s gaming magazine Mikrobitti in 1989. It was perhaps similar to what Zzap!64 did with Mindsmear. Janne has essentially provided most of the text and information which you will read here, which has been invaluable for putting this page together. Illuminatus was an Elite style trading game, which caused quite a bit of a stir back in the day, because for many weeks/months – people felt the game was real. It even appeared in printed mail order advertisements in later issues of MikroBitti (where traders even fell for it). Distributors would call the magazine, asking how to get hold of the game and many readers were desperate to find a copy in the shops. The entire thing was thanks to mastermind Niko Nirvi, who wrote for MikroBitti back in the day. Niko depicted the game as one which would expand upon the idea of ​​Elite considerably. As well as the usual space trading, looting and fighting – there would be tactical and strategic warfare in both space and on planets. There would be advanced artificial intelligence and the possibility of multiplayer. The article on the game suggested it was being developed for the Atari ST, by fictional German programmers Jürgen Sternreise and Erik Dorf. Of course, none of it was true – and many young gamers would be completely disappointed once they learned of MikroBitti’s trick several months later. Many wouldn’t forget the game, and it seemed still dreamed of seeing it some day. An interesting twist was that Finnish demo crew Future Crew were inspired to actually implement and create the game some years later. All of this would be based on information that was gleaned from MikroBitti’s original article. However, their work was never to be finished, and disappeared without trace. The question is whether anything could exist of that actual development. How far did it get? Or was it yet another hoax overall? Well, Jack Yarwood (who kindly highlighted our post about this game at Time Extension) contacted members of Future Crew, where it was confirmed that development never progressed beyond just discussions about how the game could be done. Sami ‘Psi’ Tammilehto had apparently written some very bare bones basis for an engine, but then it was quickly abandoned. However, Jack has revealed that MikroBitti were involved in commissioning the project with them – so further investigations are being checked out on this. Many years later the game was still in the thoughts and memories of those who were caught out by the trick back in the day. Finnish computer culture magazine Skrolli would resurrect memories of the title through a somewhat playful and jokey article in 2014 to pay respects to the trick that MikroBitti played. In conjunction with the first issue of the international edition of the magazine, a special playable demo was also created. So now you can finally play something of a game that never existed. You can learn more about this great and fun creation via their free PDF magazine: https://skrolli.fi/numerot/skrolli-2016-1e-international-edition/

Taken from Games That Weren't

[gamesthatdontexist]

Zzap 64 were always a magazine to have a laugh at times, and they did it in style with one particular April edition of Zzap! 64 with this “amazing” looking game introduced one day back in 1986. Here are the Zzap articles to show what happened. Mindsmear was promised to consist of the most advanced graphics and game play that the C64 had ever seen – with fully moving, smooth scrolling bitmap backdrops. All created by Bob Stevenson, and looking very impressive indeed. What caused a small amount of chaos was when Zzap announced that the creators of Mindsmear needed a publisher. It resulted in many top C64 companies ringing Zzap’s Ludlow headquarters to enquire about the game and find out more. Unfortunately, their faces fell as Zzap told them that this so called wonderful game was all but a April Fools joke. Bob Stevenson had joined together with Zzap to create a couple of mocked up screenshots to fool people, and it worked a treat! Thanks to Julian Rignall, we learn that it was Gary Liddon who was the mastermind behind it all. He looked into the feasibility of the tech to ensure that the story was solid, and consulted with Nick Pelling to get it right. Gary then asked Bob Stevenson to produce a set of fake screenshots, which Doug Hare then coded up later into a small demo that would be uploaded onto Compunet. After the stunt, many musicians would compose tunes in the hope they would get picked up for the game. This included Barry Leitch and the late Anthony Lees, as well as various others. We’ve added over the years many of these tunes which we believe to be intended for the game, all into a download. We’re not quite sure if this was before or after the prank was revealed. Zzap announced the prank to the world in the very next issue, and apologised to a member of a certain company who really fell for it in a big way. So, there was never anything playable of the game at all – just a series of screenshots. You can thankfully at least download a demo of a selection of the screenshots which were mocked up (press A to advance through the sequence). There is one screen missing with the map overlay, which we hope to find someday (This may have been mocked up by Zzap themselves separately from the demo). If you have a copy of this, please let us know!

Taken from Games That Weren't

[arcadebroke]

sukinapan

[groovycorner]

MIAMI NIGHTS 1984 - GUNBLAZE ASSAULT - FULL ALBUM

[celo000o]

please go watch vermis malum pleaseeee pleaseeee please please pleasee PLEASE pls pleas

[spicymancer]

Here comes a new challenger!

Meet Yuna!

More of my fighting game OCs can be found here.

[frogdetective]

No One Can Find This "Creepy Dinosaur" Game... | Escape: Triassic Hall

[gamesthatdontexist]

[bregflr]

Some concepts for Lancer Crpg: Tropicalia

this is an small art project that I made to show how i'd like an lancer game to look like, it took a long time to made everything and while it doesn't look the best I'm really proud of it