The Bizarre World of Fake Video Games

[Music] welcome traveler to a distance place a world of both impossible Beauty and unimaginable horror a land where the brave will select one of 12 characters will you choose the mighty minor Knight the lonely ratman or the destitute mad pricker can you Marshall their strengths and Venture across a vast Realm where only through hardfought battle and victory will both the treasures and Mysteries of this land spill themselves onto ye be it what lies in the Dead Man's Garden the Bounty that awaits at the popa's catacombs or the madness that lies within the glass Purgatory oh no a world of monsters both Grace and foul have ye the stomach to Face Down The Abominable stench Champion will you discover the secret of the goblin knce but heed my words young hero do not fall prey to the Sinister temptation of the dubious friend step forward my champions for this is the world of vermis a brand new video game from plasto entertainment and vermis is not real and you know it's not real because that's the that's the name of the video hello it's me back from my journey down another internet hole to bring you another one of these videos this time we're talking about the Strange World of fake video games much like explaining to your accountant that the wizard costume you bought is tax deductible fake video games can be a little hard to understand at first as you could be talking about anything from Kickstarter game development scams AAA game trailers that were never real Sony you [ __ ] Liars mobile phone apps where honestly I I have no idea what's happening here or Hollow night silk song but we're not talking about any of those because I don't care I I do care about Hollow night silk song I I bet that will be good what we are talking about is the bizarre phenomenon of people creating games that just don't exist and maybe you're thinking John what does that even mean what are fake video games none of this makes any sense to which I would respond no it doesn't look just watch the [ __ ] video on the 11th of February 2012 a 1 minute and 19-second video was uploaded to the internet the video was simple just a still image with a song playing over it but the Curious part was the title Persona 5 tight RPP title screen uploaded to to a channel called Atlas xp5 and curious because a atlas was the publisher of popular video game series Persona and B at this point Persona 4 had been out for 4 years but there hadn't been a single word on Persona 5 except this video and suspicious of that seem there was something so real about it the song itself was a beautifully composed piece of jazz fusion that fit in well with series composer Shi mear Ro's previous soundtracks and the illustration featured could have been ripped directly from the art books of persona character designer Shori soima both elements combining into something that felt bafflingly real but even more so when in the weeks that followed more and more tracks began to appear on Atlas xp5 and you could hear the entire game in these songs the boss battles The Hangout Music the shopping sections but soon it wasn't just music being uploaded to Atlas XP 5's accounts concept art promotional posters environmental design and even animated trailers began to appear and perhaps most intriguing full character profiles revealing a cast of classic Persona archetypes from the silent Sigma gamer protagonist to everyone's favorite inferior male companion but where things started to get bizarre was when actual screenshots of the game began to appear detailing actual gameplay systems like a social media mechanic as well as a controller layout for what looked like an emotions driven dialogue system soon even pitch decks for the game story were being uploaded unveiling a narrative that featured interdimensional old gods and an in-game apocalypse the player would survive and while that maybe felt a little Bleak for the Persona series it fit perfectly with persona's darker parent series Shin Mame tensei a return that a portion of the fan base had been robbed for those fans now passionately speculating about the validity of this game speculation that went into overdrive when an official 2013 teaser trailer of Persona 5 seemed to reflect the themes of manipulation and control that were present in everything Atlas xp5 had revealed from the artwork to the story details to even the titles of its songs and with this a tantalizing inevitability crept into Focus someone within Atlas was leaking Persona 5 and when 2 years later the official trailer for Persona 5 [Music] dropped it was a completely different video game so what in the sweet Kachi Ram Sama was this well the truth is by 2015 cracks had already started to appear in whatever this was the internet had grown up a lot in the three years since that first video that initial tightrope title screen theme being traced back to a single from Jpop Duo Vivid Blaze with all other tracks on this page being traced back to similar musical acts or soundtracks that were little known outside Japan and while it's speculated that some of the artwork at least is original I was able to trace enough of it back over the course of an afternoon to the point that I seriously doubt that meaning that what we're actually looking at here is a bizarre magpie's nest of dozens of different pieces of media scavenged from across the internet and then chopped and spliced together into something that creates the illusion of a real video game name this is what became known as Persona 5 imagining project and its existence raises some interesting and precise questions one why does a piece of media like this even exist two how was it able to convince so many people three what is even the appeal of a fake video game from an audience perspective four why would someone put so much time and effort into making it and five finally have I Wast wasted a significant portion of my life making this video except for that last one we are going to answer all these questions in relation to Persona 5 imagining project but also a bunch of other weird [ __ ] and so to start why does a fake video game even exist and in a way that answer is simple see any idiot can make a fake video game for example [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] okay that was actually uh advertisements for my fake anime SLV video game that I pretend is real through t-shirts featuring the brand new Kimberly Angel longsleeve tea for people who either are or would like to be around a psychologically unstable clown girl I'm going to knock 20% off everything for the next 48 hours or until I remember to turn the sale off so you can buy some if you want ipat tools.com I promise this has actual relevance to this video it's it's not just me being a nightmare capitalist person though it is that too like a lot of people I have always wanted to tell a story or create some kind of fictional universe so I thought what if I use YouTuber merch to piece by piece suggest a fictional interconnected world and through clothes tell that story fake video games work exactly the same way they let us take ideas for stories worlds and experiences and let us ask what if this exists Ed as a video game and that question what if can come in a lot of different forms but one of the simplest and honestly most fun is the idea of dakes by the way I broke my finger which is why I have to wear this and you're not let make fun of me dakes ask the question of what if a modern video game existed on an older console so take something like Elden ring a title whose massive lush world pushes current generation Hardware to their limits so it's kind of interesting to think about what if that gigantic world was then crammed onto a PlayStation 1 well the Elden ring Dake trailer answers that question and it is bizarre looking at it it's The Uncanny feeling that this is the game you know but coming from a different time what's kind of insane though is that we can push that question even further back another entire generation in fact with 64-bits Elden ring video this time I'm asking what if Elden ring existed on a Super Nintendo and it's [ __ ] cool but there are entire communities of artists doing this taking games and dragging them backward on the generational timeline asking questions like what if Horizon 0 Dawn was a Super Nintendo game or genin impact was a PS1 RPG or if tears of the Kingdom run on an N64 I think what makes these posts so popular is that there's something compelling about watching an artist deconstructive video game recognizing the core parts of it and then showing creativity in how they preserve those parts through something as massive as a regression in generation but for as cool as all this is there is also artists doing the exact opposite this is powerquest and power Quest kind of rules it's Pokemon with robots through a weird Adventure Fighting game unfortunately due to the hardware of the Game Boy the lack of visual detail means that idea of of little battling robots gets kind of lost instead looking like a more generic fighter and that's not a slight on the developers they were working within the limitations they had but what's so cool about snake pixels reimagining is how it frees powerquest of those limitations using the increased visual Fidelity to create depth which lets its background elements like the dog and the cat give us a sense of scale and the visual context to understand just how small these little Fighters actually are and as a side note I really love the addition of this book bag it creates this kind of after school atmosphere like two kids have met up tossed all their school [ __ ] aside and are now battling their tiny robots all making for an image that feels more like power Quest then power Quest this is what I love about snake pixels work they'll take the core of what's cool about a game and then rebuild it visually in a way that frees it of whatever limitations held back the original and those limitations aren't was technical take for example the original Chrono Trigger easily one of the most beloved games of all time that bafflingly never got a true sequel I know chronocross89 break were reportedly subsumed by Final Fantasy 11 that Chrono break trademark expiring in 2011 meaning that whatever this potential sequel might have been we will never know but the closest we'd get would be 23 years after the release of the original Chrono Trigger in the form of snake pixel's fan-made Chrono break trailer an animation that asks what if Chrono Trigger got that sequel what a new adventure starring Luca and Magus might look like giving us a glimpse into this world that was never possible this is something really fun about fake video games no matter how great an idea is for an actual video game there's countless different limitations that can stop it from existing technical Financial a company's belief in an IP or an expectation around what it should be but with a fake video game those limitations disappear and we can just ask what if Zelda was a 2d fighting game what if Amy Rose had her own platformer or if Street Fighter looked like a Saturday morning cartoon or Pokemon had actual interesting art direction or if Disney and Nintendo had a crossover fighter or flcl was a tag battler or aelan a turn-based fighter or JoJo a visual novel or Golden Boy a pointand click adventure or if Juni eos's go is a PS1 survival horror or Silent Hill a skateboarding game oh that's in that's in poor taste or Pokemon was Australian or oh God this one's really wild if House MD was a DS game with fullon fake screenshot mockups fake gameplay sections even a fake listing on Metacritic oh my God that's [ __ ] real people have been uploading fake video game mockups to the internet for pretty much as long as the internet has existed in its current form one of the earliest I could find was from 16 years ago just 2 years after YouTube was created resident evil rangus and I show it not just because I think it's cool and I've never heard anyone talk about it but to highlight the insane amount of effort it would take for someone in that era on that Hardware to create something this convincing but there are so many insanely ambitious projects like this to this day like pkug gami which asks what if early Pokémon games could exist in the style of the original Ken sugamori concept art which for the record are some of my favorite illustrations in existence what are you and the result is something that has this uncanny Nostalgia so completely different to what these games were and yet so beautifully faithful to them another example being curiomatic Impossible trailer for Mother 3 that asks what if that world was rebuilt in the style of the plasticine models from the original Earthbound players guide dragging at the core of Mother 3 and rebuilding it in this simultaneously impossible but faithful way one project that takes that concept to the absolute extreme being on re boy's dream bound asking what if the world of Kirby existed as this bizarre mashup fusing the aesthetic of Earthbound and the gameplay and mechanics of Paper Mario and everything from the gosh darn gorgeous pixel art to the tactile feel of the men is so convincing in answering that question even though it is just an animation it's so hard not to see it as an actual video game fake video games exist because they let us ask what if and so in the case of Persona 5 imagining project it was someone asking the question what if a darker Persona sequel existed the tied back to the series roots of shin Mami tensei that is the basic appeal of fake video games and as you may be able to tell from the runtime of this video there is a more complicated appeal that we will get to but for now I want to move on to that second question what is it about fake video games like imagining project and dream bound that our brain looks at them and doesn't see animation or illustration but video game here's an illustration from the artist arai 2 and it's awesome a powerful rendering of a dramatic moment from Pokemon Ruby however I have removed one small detail of it and watch what happens when we add it back in personally when I look at this I see a cool illustration but when I look at this I see something else I see something that asks what would you do in this scenario would you fight would you switch Pokemon would you run and when presented with these options my mind can't help consider the scenarios that each might lead to and by extension asking what is the wider world that contains this moment and what other moments within this world might look like and I think what's actually happening here is really interesting when we see a screenshot of a video game one of the primary ways we recognize it as a video game are Hood elements like health bars weapon selects and point or XP counters visual elements designed to convey specific information to the player that helps them decide how to engage with this world and if you've been playing video games for any length of time its visual signifiers like this that your brain has become hardwired to interpret as video game and if we remove those visual elements that feeling that this is a video game is lessens making it feel more like a traditional image but if we inverse this and add those same visual elements to a traditional image it raises that same feeling nudging our brains into interpreting this as a video game and that's why it's so hard to look at something like dream bound and not at least on some nearly subconscious level see video game that's the idea of mechanical context incorporating visual elements of video games into a traditional illustration or animation to create the illusion of a fake video game so the question now becomes how much does mechanical context actually change how we view a piece of media and to answer that question I have quite an unusual example spent long enough on Tik Tok in late 2022 and at some point you may encounter a video in which the viewer from a firstperson perspective is approached by an unusual wide-eyed girl excuse me sir my husband's missing and I really need him do you think you could help me find him thanks this is Molly moon and the majority of her videos go like this Molly approaching the viewer with an excuse me sir excuse me sir excuse me sir and then asking them to follow her to a second location all the while her unblinking gaze monotone speech and strange mannerisms implying that she is something pretending to be human however on November 2022 these videos changed excuse me sir can you walk me home thanks why don't you come in for something to eat I'm hungry it was the same idea of Molly approaching the viewer with the same ominous tone but now the videos had adopted the aesthetic and mechanical context of an old FMV pointand click adventure something you could feel in every part of the video from its garbled compress audio to its jittery jumping frames and particularly in the choices it now presented the player with choices they'd have to navigate in an attempt to survive Molly choices that just to be clear were not real this was still just a non-interactive video on Tik Tok and yet look at the difference this addition of mechanical content text made Molly's video is going from getting views in the hundreds of thousands to the tens of millions despite the fact that the basic idea of these videos was the same the addition of mechanical context meant they became something else nudging the videos into the realm of suggesting this wider interactive experience that asks the viewer what would you do and while Molly was not the first or only Creator to do this she stands as an example of the impact mechanical context can have and if you want to see just how powerful this idea can be we need to talk about the work of hosi backyard hosi backyard is clearly a very talented artist the work is gorgeous precisely technical yet retaining an intense amount of expression and personality however what I think makes Hoshi backyards work so powerful is how they use mechanical context they recently created a series imagining Demon Slayer as a souls likee and what I think is so powerful about these images is the intense amount of consideration that's gone into not just what this game might look like but how it might feel as my patrons pointed out to me what Hoshi backyard has done here is lifted the UI and gameplay of seiro Shadows die twice and fuse those mechanics with the story and world of Demon Slayer blending the two into a fake video game so Sumptuous and convincing everything from the taste way the camera is positioned behind the player to frame the action two how your lock on reticule will flash red to indicate Critical Hits two even the fake PlayStation trophies that pop on the demon execution screen it all combines into not just images that look cool but feel like something you could reach out and play and the result is these images going bananas viral hosi backyard creating several other projects like this including a fake video game on the MAA spin-off series magial record transforming that show/ gashapon nightmare into a non-existent video game by fusing it with the mechanical context of Legend of Zelda breath of the wild and as someone who was not into record God I want to play this game I can't help picking over every little detail in order to understand what it might feel like but to me the most powerful and immersive project hosi backyard has made isn't based off any existing property but their own origin original World unlike hosi backyard's other work Lost Property control organization isn't based on an existing IP and doesn't use the UI of any actual video game Instead This is a built from zero fake video game and because of that the experience hosi backyard is able to craft is completely unique one of the most enjoyable aspects about consuming fake video games is looking at screenshots and piecing together the kind of EXP experience they might be with a skillful artist able to suggest so much through just mechanical context even in a single image but we can tell that combat is a part of this game the protagonist has a gun what looks like multiple weapon slots as well as a health bar and possible stamina SL manaar it doesn't seem to be the main focus instead the camera's position is tight on the player much like the secondary camera angles used in stealth games like Metal Gear Solid 2 designed to give you more a view of your enemies than your immediate surroundings and that combined with the protagonist pose crouching behind a wall as well as the enemy design itself ghostly security guards shining flashlights in search of the player combined with the vision cones of the enemies shown in the mini map as well as the audio WB form monitor that could be used to gauge the noise from the surrounding environment your own heartbeat or possibly Silent Hill style monster static either way it all suggests an experience where stealth is preferable over direct Comba where slow careful movement through the environment as you take notice of your surroundings is critical the objective checkbox as well as what looks like a na'vi esque assistant suggesting that the player is not necessarily the victim caught up in some Supernatural ordeal here but rather on a mission here to achieve a specific purpose now that is already an incredible amount of information to convey from one single screenshot but possibly most curious is the presence of a 20 4H hour clock that implies a day and night cycle and suggesting that there could be way more to this game and when I say could what I really mean is is I wanted to make the point of how immersive just a single screenshot of Lost Property can be but the truth is Lost Property control organization exists across dozens of different images each one adding a little piece to what the experience of this game might be like there being portions of the game where you socialize with classmates as well as spend time with members of some kind of shadowy organization there are dialogue options classroom scenes a level up screen melee combat crafting menus boss battles and when we combine them all together we get a startlingly clear picture of what Lost Property control organization could be a survival horror orpg with a Persona esque Day and Night system where you spend your days building bonds with other characters making narrative choices leveling up your stats and preparing your equipment before traveling to the Lost Property control organization in the evening where you'll be briefed on that night's missions missions where you venture into haunted locations stelting past its enemies as well as experiencing horror set pieces with the objective of tracking down the area's boss monster whom you must defeat collect the haunted Relic that spawned it which is what I'm guessing the giant backpack is for before escaping that area with Supernatural forces pursuing doing you some of which may even follow you back out into the daylight sections and God damn that all sounds so [ __ ] awesome despite the fact that Lost Property control organization exists as basically just a collection of pngs on Twitter they combined to create an illusion so believable and compelling it's garnered a massive fan following a fake video game that people are themselves building on to their existing not only Lost Property fan art but even fan inter a of what its menu music might sound like as well as animations of what its different scenes might look like in motion that is how an immersive experien hosi backyard is created here that is the power of mechanical context despite everything we've raved about with lpco there is a deeper layer to how it uses mechanical context a strange detail about these screenshots is that despite how skilled hosi backyard is there is in them a strange Brokenness a lot of the backgrounds in particularly on closer inspection feel scraped together from compressed textures and saw edged polygons moments where a spill of flashlight will cause the environmental detail to crush into a rized mess of jagged pixels the blood on the game over screen in particular looking like some lost relic of the PS1 era so what is happening here is hosi backyard actually just some kind of hack well obviously the answer is yes obviously the answer is no but I think what's happening here is really interesting as a medium video games are unique in that they've only been around a relatively short period of time and in that time what they are and how they're conveyed has evolved dramatically if you look at a film from 25 years ago and compared to a modern film of the same genre there are going to be differences but it's mostly in the details the fashion the Fidelity of the cameras they're shot on to smaller nuances like film grain or color grade however compared to video games of the same series across that same time frame and you might as well be looking at two completely different mediums and that's because unlike pre-rendered animated films video games have always had to generate their visuals in real time on real Hardware forcing developers to make major visual compromises in how they convey their worlds and the result of those compromises is the aesthetic of video games from the stylized pixel art of the Super Nintendo era to the low polyan Scapes of the PS1 and Nintendo 64 to even these shiny sophista futures of the ps23 and 360 era these Aesthetics are all in different ways compromises born from limitation and the reason those same Aesthetics never appeared in other mediums is because other mediums never face those same limitations even the earliest computer animated films there's a quote I really love from the artist and composer Brian Eno whatever you find weird ugly uncomfortable and nasty about a new media will surely become its signature CD Distortion the jitteriness of digital video the crap sound of 8bit all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided that is what's happening in the background of hosi backyard's work not a mistake but a conscious effort not only to call back to the aesthetic of old video games but to create the illusion that this is a world struggling to exist within the hardware of some fictional console and not only does it immensely up the immersive quality of Lost Property it shows us something really cool that fake video games can do use mechanical context on this deeper subtler level emulating the feeling of these hyp specific eras in gaming and particularly in a fake video game like ghost bleed ghost bleed exists entirely as a Youtube cuts scene compilation for a game that of course does not exist and from its Goofy low poly character models to its ridiculous liveaction Cuts scenes a dialogue that is about as awkward as me trying to buy some eggs that will make sense later where is everyone there are plenty of dead people but no living people to explain why H maybe they shopped till they dropped you don't need me to tell you that ghost bleed is a lampooning of the original PlayStation 1 Resident Evil but if it just stopped there I wouldn't be talking about it what I love about ghost bleed is that rather than being straight up ridicule there is here a palpable love of the hardware and limitations of that era of games I am looking for my daughter Rita have you seen her she looks like this something you can see in not just the low poly Alias and pixelated visuals but in how ghost bed obsesses with capturing the mechanics and Aesthetics of that era there are big glowing item pickups there are codec there's even fake PS1 CD reading noises as its fake cutscenes load incredible and it all creates this kind of Innocence one that's not only palpable in the big blocky oblivious faces of its characters but in their personalities in their complete lack of understanding of the danger they're actually in ouch officer Rodriguez are you hurt and I really genuinely love this well it's easy to look back at the original Resident Evil now and see it as this outdated relic of survival Horror's past what this was was a group of developers given technology and creative capacity that would have been unimaginable just a few years prior and you can see the shaky wobbles of those first footsteps everywhere in this game from the goofy liveaction Cuts scenes to its immortally awkward voice acting and yeah it's silly but it also teams with the innocent ambition of a group of people really learning to do something for the first time and it is that innocence that ghost bed captures so beautifully to the point that it becomes more than a parody it becomes this kind of uncanny piece of nostalgia and in terms of fake video games creating uncanny Nostalgia ghost bleed is just the beginning there's this video called PS2 with my friends in 2001 and it shows four boys experiencing a Playstation 2 for the first time and God damn everything about this video from the games they play including the Zone Of Enders demo disc of Metal Gear Solid 2 easily the most 2001 piece of media in existence to the Box TV they play it on to even just the console resting on the cream carpet below it I remember this I have been these people this video is a time machine this kind of content is typically called Nostalgia cor images videos and even sounds designed to bring you back to a specific time and specific place in a way that can be comforting uncanny and often deeply Lial the Aesthetics of old video games are a huge part of nostalgia core for reasons that I'm going to trust you understand at this point in the video but where things start to get wild is when people take those nostalgic scenes and rebuild them through the mechanical cont text and visual language of old video games creating the illusion that these worlds are now being crammed through a PS1 even using UI like item menus and save screens as well as popular fonts from old video games all filtering through what looks like these screen tears and scanned lines of old burnt out monitors and the result is these hyper nostalgic uncanny worlds places you have never been games you have never played and yet feel so familiar and even comforting in a lot of these pieces there's a kind of longing a yearning for some lost part of your past like these places used to be a part of you but at some point they disappeared from your life and now years have gone by you're older lonlier and tired but somehow in this moment you found your way back to this impossibly nostalgic space and it's okay to rest it's okay to enjoy life in that simple way that you lost so long ago and man I get it I miss how the light hits a cracked PS1 case as a Lincoln Park CD skips gently in the background the smell of Domino's Pizza cardboard filling the room as you and your friends play Street Fighter Alpha 3 you never realize it at the time but those were the simplest moments of your entire life and they're gone now now you pay taxes now a good 40% of conversations you have are you asking questions about things that you will never care about you you drink too much coffee because you don't sleep right and and somehow that makes sense to you remember Zach Morris star of '90s Youth comedy Saved by the Bell and generational symbol of Boyhood Rebellion well he's 50 and he looks like this now you you go to the shop to buy some eggs because because omelets don't have a lot of calories but the the credit card machine isn't working and the shop assistant says that you can just pay in cash and and you tell them that you don't have any cash and and then you both just stare at each other for the longest 5 Seconds of your entire life and you clarify that you you you do have cash it it's just that it's just in the ATM so you you walk to the back of the shop but for some reason the ATM says your credit card isn't activated and you don't you don't know what that means so you turn around and you just start walking out of the shop but as you do your gaze once again collides into the vacant distant stair of the shop assistant and you're still walking but now you're both just staring at each other and it feels weird and then you just feel the words crawl out of your mouth see you later and the confused empty look on the shop assistant's face haunts you the entire rest of the day until it's 3:00 a.m. and you're awake on the [ __ ] clutching your phone cuz you drank too much [ __ ] coffee and one of these animations floats onto screen and for a moment it's like yeah that please I would like to go back to that I would really like that some of you are too young to understand what I'm talking about don't worry you will mechanical context is what makes a fake video game feel real and so tying this back to imagining project while it's lighter on mechanical context than a lot of the other fake video games we've talked about it you can still see it through button prompts on its menu through controller layout out in its conversation mechanics what looks like XP bars in its visual noveles dialogue scenes all just enough to nudge our brain into seeing video game this is how it was so convincing which brings us to our next question why did people want to believe this what is the appeal of experiencing a game you cannot play from an audience perspective and to answer that question we must once again tell into the murky Waters of gamees past hello this seems to be the perfect time to tell you about my new media book club style podcast versus wolves in which myself and my friend woolly versus enhance SL ruin each other's lives with different media-based recommendations that you can follow along with each episode sprinkled with stories from our personal lives like the time I ended up at a strip club and all the dancers made fun of me that was months ago I have not recovered here's my co-host woolly whom I have allocated 4 seconds to convince you of the merits of this podcast uh uh yeah no so um well we kind of great job woolly Link in the description now back to whatever the [ __ ] I was talking about what you're looking at here is a poster SL piece of box art SL Magazine advertisement for the game Double Dragon 2 The Revenge and as you can see it is a work of [ __ ] art from the dynamic composition that drags your eyes through this world of violence and romance to the neon skyscraper punctuated Skyline it said against to the logo stated with such Brazen graphic boldness it might as well say mother [ __ ] at the end all combining into this image that is some Heavenly Fusion of every 80s action movie poster you try beholding this box art as a child in a game shop in 19 1989 and not break down into tears of raw desire so desperate are you to enter this world to become the Double Dragon now imagine that feeling when you slam the cartridge into your Nintendo Christmas morning and you experience this [Music] my point here is really not to talk [ __ ] about the graphics of a 30-year-old game but just to point out that the world presented by this poster and the actual experience of Double Dragon 2 were uh quite different this used to be really common because of the limited capabilities of Hardware companies would have to build an idea of a game and its world in the viewer's mind in order to sell them on it and it meant there was a kind of abstraction happening when you played games you was the player accepted that this 17 pixel tall man was really just a representation of this radical dude in other words companies would use secondary media to flesh out A Game's characters and world to give players a better idea of the experience they weren't meant to be having in a way that the hardware didn't allow and this secondary media came in so many cool forms magazine ads box art gaming walkthroughs even the sides of arcade cabinets but probably the best known pieces of secondary media for games were manuals often gorgeously designed little paper TOS packed in with games that in the time before wikis and online fan communities were these Treasure troves of additional information context and lore about the worlds you weren't meant to be experiencing often coming with these really elaborate illustrations and even world maps some like the Link to the Past Walkthrough even having these intricately designed little illust ations of every piece of equipment in the game famously the Earthbound manual was a fullon in Universe travel guide with photographs and artwork of its different locations fake newspaper articles written by its characters reacting to the events of the story and even photos of these beautifully made little plastic scene models of nearly every character and enemy in the game so ask yourself why does this exist and sure you could argue it was a packed in game guide cuz Nintendo was terrified the West wouldn't understand what the [ __ ] Earthbound was but I think it's more than that I think this was designed to help create an image of this world beyond what was possible in the game so if you've ever looked back at Old survival horror games and wondered how people found them so pant [ __ ] terrifying this is a big part of it as a player you accepted that when you played these games you weren't seeing this you were seeing this you were weren't seeing this you were seeing this you weren't seeing this you were seeing th [ __ ] sorry sorry I I I don't know how that got in there that was the power of secondary media the capacity to create a wider World beyond what the game could do and I think there was a real art to that which is why I think it's such a shame that ever increasing graphical Fidelity meant that we stopped needing secondary media in games but it leaves us with an interesting question what what happens when you create secondary media for a game that does not exist Apple Quest Monsters DX uh exists as a manual for a game that is not real chronicling a fake RPG where the player battles and collects Pokemon style monsters it has a fake world map fake screenshots and even has a cover that uses plasticine models similar to the Earthbound travel guide which makes sense as its creator Splendid land came to the idea from their childhood memories of reading old game guides for games they had never played and the imaginary worlds those guides created and what's so special about apple quest is how beautifully it captures that admittedly very specific feeling there's a full-on gameplay section explaining that you the player have nine star points which you spend by reading through the game's massive 80 monster beastiary and cting different monsters for your team each monster having its own type attack habitat and star cost meaning that it's up to you whether you want to spend your points on a large team of low-level monsters or blow it all on one or two ultra powerful boss creatures and those are difficult decisions because of how compelling so many of these monsters are featuring these gorgeously Illustrated little Sprites as well as some genuinely excellent character descriptions number 10 nor bird ever since it became a bird people have commented how much more confidence it has it ate 400 Birds to achieve this form my personal team was Apple Warrior who cost a single star and is one of the weakest monsters in the game but who I had to have because I needed to pair him with his rival carrot Warrior who if we're being real is is just Vegeta but a Cara next up is Mr Enigma who is really only there because he fright me and I don't want him as an enemy and rounding out my team with a pair of Boss Monsters the power beetles a pair of emotionally supportive lesbian bodybuilders and I trust I don't need to explain that any further making your way through apple quest beastiary and selecting your team is how you experience apple quest and that in itself is compelling but what's awesome is the story that unfolds as you do as you read through the beastiary the game throws in little narrative bread crumbs even foreshadowing the game's final boss Orchard Guardian Seven Stars and strongest of all monsters and you can feel that climax Drawing Near as you read further into the end game the monsters growing more powerful and strange until finally hey spoilers for a game here that doesn't exist skip here to avoid and also people should buy this it's on itch.io it's it's two books 50 and it's better than most actual games I've played you reach the orchard Guardian who has been murdered by little apple Warrior his own weakness driving him mad creating a lust for power only for his best friend and rival carrot Warrior to try and stop him before he's transformed into the Lord of Eden a 12st star power monster only to be defeated by you and your team and forgiven by his best friend carrot Warrior the final monster of the database being the two Spirits ascending to Heaven together together because no matter what you become there's always still a trace of the person you were and the people that really love you will see that God I need to go back to therapy what's special about apple quest is how thoroughly it creates the illusion of a real game world and primarily not even through mechanical context like we've been talking about but by building a game through the supplementary material of a games manual apple quest not even being the only fake video game that does this there are others like fever Knights a game that exists purely through an official walkr for a game that once again it's not real or taking this one step further Bird world a fake RPG that exists not only through a beautifully Illustrated fake manual like apple quest featuring location art NPCs party member profiles including how to recruit them and even a level up table showing what attacks they learn and when but also through a fully composed soundtrack covering the entire fictional span of bird World suggesting everything from a non-existent opening menu with its fake title theme to even an ending title crawl with The Melancholy piano of its final track goodbye birdworld the combination of both birdworld manual and its soundtrack combining into a powerful image of what this game would be an RPG rooted in the era of the super Nintendo this was an innocent hopeful time for roleplaying games that were often less about stopping whatever world-ending threat that the plot hung on and more just exploring a gigantic colorful and weird world and the joy of discovering what waited there Bird world with its laidback soundtrack and colorful art capturing that feeling beautifully but where Bird world as a concept gets kind of insane is that this fake video game also has a fake sequel as games advance from the Super Nintendo era to the PS1 maturing audiences as well as evolving Hardware meant that RPGs took a darker more introspective turn with games like Xenogears Final Fantasy 7 and Ace or cadela often taking place in these Grim worlds whose problems were more complex than any one single threat and what is so special about return to Bird world is that it takes that evolution of RPGs and works it into its story taking place 1,000 years after Bird world but now the colorful light-hearted Universe has suffered a great Calamity resulting in a far Bleaker feeling game an evolution you can see in everything from the artwork of the manual which has gone from these soft exaggerated cartoonish characters to Sharp angle designs that feel more in line with the illustration work of tetsu Yura it's simple flat Landscapes now bathed in Shadow but most impressively listen to how this same evolution is conveyed in the return to Bird world soundtrack here's the theme of enoi Village from Bird world one which I have to keep talking over or this video will get copyright struck but you can hear what a jaunty tune it is and here is enoi Village's theme from Bird world 2 and oh dear listen to that despair listen to this place now desolate and hopeless and while the soundtrack does keep some of the nautical absurd from Bird world 1 it also punctuates it with far darker tracks like the world descends into chaos whose metallic discordant sound speaks to a planet pulling itself apart the idea of bringing a game world to life through a soundtrack is so cool but the crazy part is Bird world isn't even the only fake game that does this Louis zong's Boss Rush is an album of Boss music for a game that of course isn't [ __ ] real it is great and it deserves its own section but God I I keep discovering new fake video games just like the games I talk about in this video this video will never exist if I do not commit to just finishing it unlike the other fake video games we've talked about rather than showing you what a game might look or feel like these games instead create the illusion of a game through secondary media and that's exciting and you can see how this applies to imagining project a fake video game we experience only through a fabricated press leak which creates this entire other layer of intrigue what is this game on the other side of our limited Viewpoint and that can be a really fascinating question and it brings us to one of the strangest and most mysterious fake video games in existence over the extremely long course of making this video I put a call out to my Twitter followers for fake video game recommendations and as ever my human powerered search engine did not disappoint but one of the most striking returns wasn't so much a fake video game as it was a single mysterious image a picture of an old desolate house drawn in Stark black and white pointalism like it's being generated on some old beat up processor its atmosphere thick with a subtle dread and the text you sense a presence somewhere in this room proceed whatever this was I wanted to see more the only problem being that more didn't seem to exist the only information I had to go off was a Tumblr tag ghost Gods leading to a Blog that no longer existed even when viewed through the way back machine it showed a page empty of artwork it was frustrating and I'll save you the tedious internet scavenger hunt that followed but I did eventually find an old archive blog of all ghost Gods work post did by ghost Gods themselves even detailing their reasons for deleting the original and while I fully understand the pull to delete everything you've ever done and disappear from the internet I think it's a real loss in this case what really got me about that first image was the atmosphere and my God was that just the beginning within ghost God's work there were environments that captured everything from a kind of melancholy coziness to others an ambiguous tread like something here is wrong you're just not quite sure what other pieces were more unsettling some even showing these beautiful and horrific nightmare creatures but what really struck me about so many of these images was the vague sense that they were all part of some interconnected World which you could see in series like these sketches detailing some horrific abandoned swimming pool a building that seems to have grown some kind of bizarre star sentience its walls pulsating with strange growths organs dripping through its water slides parts of the building disappearing into gaping Ms and nashing teeth I love these pictures there's a real feeling of exploration in them they don't feel super polished or finished instead like the development of an idea something to be fit into a larger hole which is why you may find it unsurprising that there is also here posts illustrating loading screens inventory menus and contextual choices as nestled deep within this deleted blog there lies a fake video game field trip what looks like a surreal y Nikki like orpg maker game in which the player is pulled deeper and deeper into a bizarre world of strange environments given the nature of this archive it's hard to say for sure which pieces are part of field trip and which aren't but even just the process of trying to figure that out is compelling the feeling that through this deleted tumbler you are peering into this old forgotten world of a video game that never existed and trying to make sense of it and there's something a little spooky about that right like walking around an abandoned house nothing but the furniture wallpaper and Decor traces letting you know that someone used to be here but just like an old abandoned house fake video games can create a tremendous amount of unease with one simple idea what if you are not alone here what if something is in here with [Music] you the legend of pus is a strange one an arcade cabinet that appeared around Portland Oregon from 1981 to 1984 so addictive that massive lines would form in front of it some of its players later suffering from Amnesia vomiting and Nightmares stranger still were the rumors of Men In Black coats that would be seen performing maintenance on the machine who didn't collect its coins but were collecting something they're being rumors that pus was part of a government-run mind control experiment given some of the wackier exploits of the US government none of this is as unbelievable as you'd think there were actual newspaper reports of video games causing sickness in the 80s and the FBI really were monitoring arcades but mostly for drugs as opposed to mind control was what theyd want you to think the truth is there is very little proof that plebius ever actually existed but what there was was an article in a 2003 game pro magazine which disseminated pus myth to a wider public marking the first widespread urban legend of a video game housing some kind of malevolent force and it was just the beginning because around that same time frame the first traces of creepy pastes were materializing online with internet user networks like uset now reaching a level of ubiquity that meant those spooky internet stories now had communities through which they could spread one of the most popular kinds of creepy pastas being fake video games and there were a lot Sonic.exe was a broken Sonic game where the player is pursued by a nightmarish version of Sonic Ben Drowned was about a boy who found a corrupted version of Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask only to be haunted by a bizarre statue within it that begins to seep into his real life Herobrine was a Minecraft creepy pasta about a strange white-eyed figure that could sometimes be seen stalking the player from a distance Mr mix was a typing game so difficult it caused panic attacks in players the few who reached its final level discovering something so disturbing that they refused to speak about it I could go on here and I shall Mario 128 Luna pale Luna the theater misfortune.gb Animal Crossing deadtown every copy of Mario 64 is unique the haunted Nest Godzilla game Mr Bones Wild Ride dying Happy who are you running from the Butcher's Nursery into the forest playing along with Evelyn jvk1166z.esp anyway that's actually probably enough for you to get the idea Covetous never forget new game minus Pokemon snow on Mount Silver Pokemon Lavender Town Syndrome Pokemon strangled red Pokemon come follow me Pokemon Black like before the actual Pokemon black Pokemon Dead channel Pokemon buried alive Pokemon Lost Silver Pokemon ashes coma Pokemon oh God Doo's going okay I I made that last one up what I want to ask here is why what is it about fake video games that make such fertile ground for horror and I think that's a combination of two things one as we've talked about all fake video games really are are these little abstract worlds and two the best definition I have ever heard for horror is that horror is the dissolution of our world's boundaries what this means is that in order to exist in our world and feel like it has some semblance of safety and Order there's certain rules we have to accept as reality that we are safe within our homes that our loved ones would never hurt us that the dead cannot come back to life or that we are the dominant species within the universe it's those boundaries that make the world make sense and horror happens when those boundaries dissolve what is a haunted house but a space where the rules we understand the World by break and through those cracks in reality we see something sinister fake horror video games work exactly the same way but what's so cool is how they can convey that idea through the language of video games there's a specific thing that happens when a video game's World breaks glitches if we accept a video game's boundaries to be the lines of code that twist together into the rule sets that Define these worlds glitches are what happens when those rule sets begin to contradict and snap character models warp textures distort and NPCs begin to behave in bizarre ways and it can be kind of amusing but it's also sort of spooky a tear in this reality letting us see into parts of it we are not not meant to and what's so cool about so many of these fake horror video games is that they'll use the idea of glitches of a corrupted video game as the visual representation that its boundaries are dissolving its world breaking down and asking what if through those cracks in this reality we see something staring back at us now granted a lot of those stories did conclude with all the subtlety of the phallic motorcycle guy from the seven remakes but don't think that should take away from just how cool a concept this is and there's a lot of modern fake horror video games taking this idea of a broken video game housing some Insidious entity and evolving it in some really creative and disturbing ways the Lacy series is a collection of fictional Let's Plays where the player controls Lacy star of a not real 207 Flash game as she works different jobs through different mini gamess and everything about them from their color pette to their gameplay Echoes this hyper effeminate and very specific era of flash games and it's convincing there are loading bars there are poorly designed albeit very believable menus and artwork that has this kind of how to draw manga roughness to it however as you continue through these videos the kinds of things Lacy is tasked with become strange and cruel the world around her begins to warp and break the artwork corrupting into these distorted and distur disturbing images all implying a far darker reality than the player originally expected and it's awesome to me it captures the very unsettling Vibe of mid 2000s internet a place less so of Monolithic social media platforms and more tens of thousands of disperate user run websites meaning stumbling into something that you really shouldn't have was common Lacy's captures that feeling beautifully but also through the corruption of this world it forces you to ask the question of how does something this [ __ ] up come into existence and the kind of person who would make a game like this the fictional creator of these games not the actual Creator who seems fine Lacy is interesting because it evolves that core concept of some Insidious entity or Awful Truth at the center of a broken video game but there are a lot of modern horror fake video games exploring that's same idea pet scop is another fictional LP series about collecting these delightful Little Creatures before grad ually peeling back the layers of this reality and revealing the disturbing truth as the why it exists Crow 64 Builds an entire media campaign around a cancelled N64 beta and through its broken world can we see the disturbing effects that cancellation had on its creator and his family diminish is a less horror focused series communicated through a fabricated let's play in which an unseen person plays through a fictional Ultra difficult video game created by his dead sister the memory of her communicating with him through the trials he has to endure in this game all these games are cool and interesting and worth deep Dives but unfortunately I have only so much blood in my veins but there is one I just have to talk about a fake video game that takes the concept of an Insidious Force hiding inside a corrupted Game World to a whole other level Valverde begins like a lot of all creepy pastors do someone finds a videotape in a forest and when they watch it they see better footage of an old unreleased video game but it's in this footage that valde begins to peel itself apart from everything else it opens with a fake PlayStation bootup screen there is a language select a strange memory card reader screen even an roduction movie that is skipped by the player by the time you hit valverde's title screen it already feels bizarrely real this is too much effort to be an actual fake video game right and that uncanniness does not go away as upon selecting a new game a fully animated opening Cuts scene plays the player then taken through a character creator and Zone select and from here we touch down in a gorgeously designed Village of of limited polygons but infinite charm the little villagers going about their little lives working their little jobs as a new resident of this Village your goal seems to be nothing more than to integrate into this community the fox mayor whose authority has been vested him by something called The Smiling one I'm I'm sure that's fine gives you a house whose previous owner left a long time ago and has never come back that's also fine clear there is nothing of concern Happening Here we could stop right there and Val Verde would already be one of the most impressive fake video games we've talked about everything from its lowii Graphics drowning it in uncanny 32-bit Nostalgia to its mini gamess to just the care that's been put into its menus intricately designed and bursting with different icons suggesting so much of what this experience might be it all completely captures the feeling of staring into this little video game world through some lost better footage and that is when Valverde has you where it wants you as the feeling that there is something else in this world with you begins to creep in [Applause] it begins when the fox mayor attempts to introduce the player to the other people who have moved to this island but where dialogue should be is instead cracked glitched out text ghostly portraits in place of character art what is happening here the more of Alverta you experience the more of those questions you'll ask what's with the unsettling amount of religious imagery in this game why are the Landscapes that surround the village so strange and random who are the people in these portraits and why does it feel like they're watching you as those questions pile up the peaceful Video Game World of Valverde begin to Splinter and break textures bulge and crack villagers start to act in strange uncanny ways as the Serene landscape vacillates and warps around you glitches tearing open holes in this reality that reveal its deeper layers twisted and frightening places stalked by Massive and impossible beings and soon Valverde feels less like the pristine Little Village you arrived at and more like some abominable Abyss an ever expanding void pushing through the corrupted world of a video game but where that feeling hits a ludicrous Peak is when the player encounters something impossible deep within Valverde a second fake video game tharsus a strange third person action survival horror entirely different from Valverde with its own cutscenes its own visual style a player select both a third and first person mode its own menus this strange pocket reality now seeming to bleed into valverde's other worlds and this this is when I stopped understanding what Valverde was the moment it went from an abyss and became an infinity and as for the malicious entity that lies at the center of that Infinity all the way at the bottom of valde we encounter is an artificial self-determined God who has locked itself away from this world so terrified is it by what it has created now constantly generating New pieces of this place designed to lock all of humanity within this nightmare so that our sins not upset the real God any further lest we draw his wrath at least uh that's that's what I think is happening I don't know Valverde is such an amazing evolution of the concept of some Sinister entity lying at the heart of a fake video game straight up one of the coolest things I have ever encountered on the internet but it brings us to a problem criminally Valverde doesn't have that much of an audience its second part featuring that second fake video game and artificial God has at the time of writing less than a 100,000 views meanwhile Valverde explainer videos get many multiples of that which just to be clear is not the fault of the people making these explainer videos and particularly light mind who urges you to go watch the original and he's right I think it's a problem that comes with how online content like this is sometimes consumed that there's this belief that discovering the secret message of a piece of media is more important than what that media feels like to experience and personally I think that's a belief for what prankers to me the emotion you feel while experiencing a piece of art that is the art if you want to feel the abyss likee experience that is Valverde and what is so special about it sit down in a dark room and just fall down these videos let Valverde happen and if you want to go down the rabbit hole of explainer videos after that go for it but you should never be taking your opinion on any piece of media from any YouTube video especially mine I think modern Simpsons is good if you want to know what is so special about these worlds you got to walk around them yourself that is the appeal of experiencing a fake video game from an audience perspective and if we tie this all the way back to Persona 5 imagining project this was the first time a lot of people had that experience and were able to engage with how [ __ ] cool it is which leaves us with one last question what is the purpose of making a fake video game as a Creator why would someone pour so much time and effort into doing this and that friends brings us to quite possibly the most bizarre fake video game in existence even by lumpy touches uh very high standards Breaking Bad Game Boy is [ __ ] bizarre Tak Breaking Bad one of the most respected and influential TV crime dramas of all time and transmogrifying it into this grotesque story of body horror where the cast of the show become these nightmarish Kaiju beings and commit bloody battle across the skyline of Albuquerque somehow through that story retaining the drama and even thematic narrative flow of the TV show that already is a [ __ ] insane idea but his is even further lunatic IED by being compressed down and squeezed through the low five format of a Game Boy using the visual language and mechanical context of the games of that tiny console there are shop menus there are QuickTime events there are fullon gameplay sections with onscreen instructions it is weird but it is also one of the most uniquely compelling experiences I have ever encountered on the internet but even more than that it is an idea that should not exist and yet it does one that left me with a single burning question why why take a concept as insane as Breaking Bad told with Kaiju body horror and then squeeze it through the medium of a Nintendo handheld what possesses a person to create something like this and that is a question I grew so obsessed with that I eventually reached out to lumpy toou and asked them directly their answer was unusually enlightening rather than making essentially a Breaking Bad fan movie from start to finish I'm just showing bite-size Snippets of gameplay from the larger narrative a part might highlight a story beat or game mechanic and then in the next part we've time skipped forward what did we skip over viewers enjoy filling in the blanks imagining high quality gameplay maybe a platform or pointand click adventure game some of my favorite comments are people making walkthroughs for a game that doesn't exist they've analyzed the footage and extrapolated game mechanics levels strategies Etc it's awesome seeing lumpy touch reflects so much of how I felt about fake video games and how they invite the viewer to collaborate was honestly really validating and made me feel like slightly less of a crazy person I think one of the reasons I have been so willing to pour such an ungodly amount of time into this [ __ ] video is because I genuinely think fake video games invite the viewer to engage in a way that few their art forms do and the fact that they don't actually exist that they are not complete projects is a huge part of that because it forces us to ask not what is this but what could it be and I think that's a really powerful thing something that would arguably be lost if these were real complete video games and it was on that incomplete nature that lumpy touch said something else that for me slid into place the final pie of the puzzle in understanding why people create fake video games originally when I set out to make content I envisioned myself as a Game Dev rather than animator unfortunately uh making games is hard making fake games means I can sort of scratch that itch build these worlds and not invest seven years of my life I think this point is a big deal we are now several Generations into people growing up with video games as the dominant form of media and video games being such a huge part of of people's lives from such an early age of course they're going to want to replicate that art the only problem being is that making games is really [ __ ] hard while you do have exceptions like bloodborne cart a fake video game that Pinocchio its way into becoming real video game development is a vipers nest of multiple creative arts and Technical Sciences all pulling each other apart the worst game you have played is a Miracle but with fake video games they allow people to create the illusion of those realities without the monolithic barrier to entry which means so many more people can build those worlds so many more ideas can exist so to put all this together persona's IP obviously is not available and the technical skill and manpower to actually make it happen would have been completely impossible this could have only existed as a fake video game and in those terms it was successful it was compelling even a decade after this was categorically proved to be a hoax there are still people building onto it and cataloging it and to add one last delicious layer of intrigue the actual Creator was never found the atlas xp5 YouTube channel going silent after the actual announcement of Persona 5 only for six years later to post two final cryptic videos suggesting that maybe there was actually something more real here but who [ __ ] knows I don't but if you would like to know more about Persona 5 imagining project I'm going to link to a phenomenal video by YouTuber blue who did an incredible job in detectiving all this information together but as it stands it's through imagining project we can see so much of what is so strange and special about fake video games which means now that we understand all this we can now answer that final question have I wasted a significant portion of my life making this video Okay I lied we we are going to address this and to do so we are going to talk about one final fake video game and if I'm going to be honest here it was this fake video game that is the entire reason this video exists meaning the last hour and 20 minutes have have really just been one long introduction God I'm bad at this I remember one of the first pieces of the artist plasto that stood out to me it was an illustration of the character honey from the Sega Saturn game fighting vipers and I love honey a lot of ' 90s fighting game characters had this really cool Street fashion spliced with martial arts gear look that to this day I still think is awesome and honey with her Gothic Lolita dress blended with chunky protective gear chest plates elbow pads and shinguards it captures that look in such a cool way her in-game story is that she wants to enter the fighting vipers tournament to promote her fashion brand and beyond that the most interesting things about her is that she's called candy in Europe and she also has an unlockable furry Persona in Sonic the fighters that's uh basically everything you can know about the character and so when you imagine fan art however Beyond her look there's not a whole lot to really draw on and yeah the bloody smudge trailing across her cheek the streak of red on her pristine White Glove her face contorted into this ghoulish grin her eyes curling upward into light the Eerie way she's looking up at you it's like you the viewer have just heard her but she's delighted about it as if the piece is asking what if at the Center of Honey's cute veneer is a frightening and violent person it's kind of chilling and if plastu can create something this unsettling from this [ __ ] character it should tell you how good plasto is at creating unsettling imagery their illustrations often feeling like these development sketches for some lost horror movie frequently obscuring monsters behind scenery so that you never see the full thing but generating an incredible amount of tension and Intrigue some even creating horror from the mere implication that something might be there lurking in the darkness and that's an idea that's come up over and over in this video right the ability for an artist to imply something more than what we can see and in the same way fake video game artists do this with the mechanical context of video games plaso does the same through dozens of different mediums and formats sometimes it's a news report warning of strange creatures with the ominous text they are silent sometimes it's packaging for Halloween masks that look just a little too real but one of my favorites is this image of two creepy faces and by itself it is unsettling but look at how much meaning and context plaster injects into this piece by printing that image as the missing notice on the side of a milk carton with a tag that says evidence three ask so many questions about what happened here and the kind of story that contains this moment plasto is exceptional at this combining different mediums and formats to create these strange narratives often mashing together multiple images in the same composition like it's some stream of conscious work in progress for a final piece that we never see and it's weirdly unsettling especially when it creates narratives that's suggests something awful and frightening like this piece where we see an image of a girl stepping forward with a welcoming look on her face and then some kind of grotesque creature its head encased in a metal device clutching what looks like a newborn child then the same girl's face contorted in Terror the same face again now collapsed and broken and finally an empty chair sitting next to a memorial picture of the girl as a shadow of something looms head a frame sometimes plasto will even build these narratives into entire worlds across multiple different secondary pieces like a city flooded with a demonic red light where there are no people only bizarre elongated entities that stalk its streets and peek out at you from behind doorways another being a bizarre reality where small plush likee creatures wander these broken desolate Landscapes encountering these awful otherworldly beings and massive grotesque nightmare creatures all while their perception of themselves and the reality around them warps and distorts and yet another of these worlds is a nightmarish School building where something is very wrong where uncanny monsters stalk its hallways and Bloated Abominations Lurch from the shadows and as a side not I really love the detail here that the monster has the same hair color hair clip and even eye patch as the girl at the bottom of the stairs suggesting so much about what might be happening here the reason I'm going so deep on plasto's more traditional work is that through it you can see what a weirdly perfect fake video game artist they are even without mentioning their fake video games drawing Us in with images that ask questions turning those questions into narratives through different mediums and formats and using secondary pieces to build those narratives into Worlds in other words the entire process we've been talking about this entire video and it's when you look at this through plasto's fake video games that things get really special video games are a huge influence on a lot of plasto's work something you can see in a lot of their creepy video game fan art not even just horror series like Resident Evil Silent Hill or bloodborne but Eerie Renditions of games you wouldn't expect like Doom like Earthbound like Pokemon as well as deeper Cuts Like darkstalkers Aiko rival schools and you Nikki one of their worlds even focusing on a haunted Animal Crossing Village images showing bizarre doppelgangers appearing at night or candid photographs where strange creatures wash up on shore or bizarre specters loom ominously in the distance suggesting an animal crossing village where something is very wrong as well as the influence of a lot of old video game creepy pastas the earliest work I could find from plasto was even this layout which looks like some kind of rough design concept for a video game but from here plastu would push and evolve that Concept in so many weird and fascinating ways and some of it's a kind of loosely implied video game like this image of a girl collaps next to a broken sword with the text magical girl after battle the distressed Line work and rough pixelated font making it feel like a page scan of some old beat up game guide or their code name Series where they pair children with these gigantic bizarre creatures and man the style of drawing the typ face used the compositions it all gives me the feeling of CD inserts for some lost Dreamcast fighting game complete with what looks like an end of run boss other bloo's fake video games are more direct and it's here where you can see their love of the aesthetic of video games from fake box art and CD illustrations to fullon mockup screenshots that cover a massive span of bizarre games like yummy yummy pumy a strange PlayStation 1 survival horror about eating dinner I think that exists only across a few images a mockup screenshot that uses the limited low polygon aesthetic of the PS one as well as a fullon fake promotional poster and even a game over screen with the text no one can hear pumy other fake video games including Lilo is lost a low five firstperson experience about exploring a bizarre NeverEnding shopping mall or dream trading archives which honestly I I don't know what the [ __ ] is going on here but but it looks awesome or home which is just a bizarre game which also has a scanned troubleshooting section from its manual with hints about what to do if you start getting messages from Aliens or if Grandma and Grandpa die if 3 days pass once you arrive at the cottage and Grandma and Grandpa are not in the house or nearby they might be deceased this does not affect the game except for the attic that would not be accessible for the rest of the game an occupied message will pop up every time you try to enter this happens very rarely creating a new game file should make them appear loading a previous file will not bring them back by now I hope it's clear how natural plasto is at creating fake video games which leaves only the final fake video game I want to talk about this one being the entire reason this video exists one that incorporates not only everything we've talked about but on a scale unlike anything else we've seen the stone bricks sink into the Pearly Waters of the swamp as the path extends in front of you you can distinguish a flat landscape covered in Cloudy Waters and weeping willows all enveloped in a thick veil of mist this is the silver swamp it is eerily silent there is not the sound of insect bird or beast the Cal is almost haunting once you cross the the Mist the atmosphere is filled with a violent silence that only ceases with the splash of your foot hitting the water the shapes of The Mists swirl and spiral around you and sometimes you swear you could see people in them a faceless woman holding a child a girl whose face is frozen in Terror a naked man staring out at you from behind a tree emanating a threatening Aura but the Phantoms are not what's scares you the more time you spend in the Mist the more a weariness creeps into your bones you find yourself in a constant battle just to stay conscious if you happen to have a night watch mushroom it will help you stay awake longer finally a solid shape emerges from the mist and you are confronted by the Lost Paladin be gone Shadow return to the fog you will not fool me twice the Lost Paladin rushes you raising his sword only to crash to the ground exhausted collapsing into a deep Slumber now that they are unconscious you may choose to steal their sword you do you obtain the unbreakable path soon you begin to worry that the Paladin's fate will soon be yours you try to stay awake try to push through the Deep mist and thick mud but soon you can barely distinguish between reality and a dream the swamp water covers your body like Silk and sheets you stand on the surface of a vast and infinite Lake beneath a pitch black Sky the only light coming from a hanging Moon below you at your feet beneath the water surface is a sea of corpses and that is when it appears have awakened from the dream resist not and your flesh shall be banished so Soul can rest under the Peaceful Waters among many others the aspect of the dream draws its blade gracefully and lunges with inhuman speed if the aspect dream crosses your heart the dream will end and your body consumed by the Mist will never be found but the aspect is Nimble as it is fragile one single hit can end the illusion once the dream is shattered you wake up in a different place the Mist is gone and the buzz of insects and nature surrounds you completely you feel the cold breeze against your soaked clothes you acquire a new weapon memory of the Stinger what I just read is a slightly adapted passage from the book vermis and vermis is simple it is an official guide for a game that doesn't exist its pages are filled with walkthroughs for its different areas bestiaries of the monsters you'll face in them item pickups in their locations even an in-depth list of character classes but despite all this what ferus actually is or how you interact with it is curiously opaque while its text is full of information about its World it never goes so far to outright describe what kind of game vermis is there are no control layouts screenshots or even descriptions of its gameplay mechanics in fact the only definitive clue I could find that vermis is even intended as a video game is a fake torn sticker on the cover of its second volume reading game disk not include and I'm going to assume that those missing letters are Ed what this world is and how you experience it is a mystery but that mystery is a huge part of the Joy of experiencing vermis rather than directly telling you anything vermis is constantly asking you to infer its meaning and that begins as soon as you hit the character select although vermis doesn't even tell you this is a character select that's something you have to infer both from the title vermis which this Medical website tells me is the part of the brain that coordinates movements as well as many cryptic passages about which flesh do you choose which flesh is yours leading me to believe that we the reader are meant to be some kind of disembodied Spirit sliding into the brains of these characters and vermissing them and this idea comes up a lot the idea that this body is not yours hm what an unusual amount of emphasis to place on such a specific point I wonder will that become relevant later through these character sheets we can infirm more about verm Miss's World each page includes a text description of the character's past their starting items four Doats broken into into strength intelligence faith and will however the most curious part about these character sheets is the morality gge with each character having an alignment between good and evil but what's interesting is good and evil don't seem to mean quite what they do in our world rather the actual page explaining good and evil isn't described as morality but the kinds of Flesh where good is defined by a light cannot be faded by Darkness it will shine even in the dark darkest corners of the world and evil darkness is eternal infinite unrelenting no one can escape it we are born in the light and we rot in the dark what's kind of interesting here is that these descriptions don't really reference moral or virtue rather they seem to be pointing out some vague capacity to endure Despair and what's interesting is the alignment of the characters supports this the ones who are considered good are people with purpose people who even through the darkness of this world have managed to cling on to some vital piece of themselves their memories their identities and use those to move forward whereas the evil characters are the opposite people who have become overcome with Despair and in doing so losing some core part of themselves giving into madness or nihilism or one of the more Insidious belief systems of vermis world and again that's an oddly specific point to make and why why is this image back on screen it what is that music it's like we're building to some kind of conclusion possibly suggesting some kind of alignment system immediately following the character select is a page called the known Gods but apart from this lovely little piece of flavor text there's no actual information about who these gods are or how they relate to each other meaning like everything in vermis if you want to understand them and thus their wider effect on the world you're going to want to keep a pen and notebook to collect the little breadcrumbs of lore vermis will occasionally drop you the first of those breadcrumbs coming when you turn the page and begin your journey in the shadow of a gigantic skeleton this is vermis is opening area and the massive monolith of bones that looms above you is the corpse of gervi the great one of the six gods and the message is clear even Gods suffer and die here and you are no God like a lot of plasto's work vermis conveys its World by combining different mediums and formats each time you enter a new location those areas are brought to life through everything from Serene pangy landscape illustrations disheveled worn out Maps even intricately detailed level blueprints each location conveyed in carefully written Pros the images and text merged into these meticulously bespoke page layouts where every tiny Det taale adds to the atmosphere right down to the faded text and cracked Line work it all combines into such a beautifully distinctive vibe that if I was to reductively try and describe it I'd say that it's dark souls shot through with silent hill but in truth nothing really feels like this there's a silence to the world of vermis an everpresent crushing dread and Beauty conveyed through the books gaping halls and empty valleys there's times where it feels downright peaceful rare moments of quiet where the horrors fade away and you're allowed to just be welcome reprieves considering the object nightmare that is everything else in this reality a Darkness you can feel in particular in your occasional encounters with other people other humans are rare in this world and when you do encounter them it's often in their final moment you'll turn a corner and see a knight strike an exhausted killing blow on some great ogre only for her to crumple to the ground blood seeping out between the cracks in her armor and she notices you desperate and pointless final words tumble out of her mouth and then cease when you do encounter the living it's often people drowning in their own despair like the lonely night an imposing looking figure but someone just wandering this world looking for companionship so lonely and broken after losing the person he loves that he will not even defend himself if attacked and it's depressing it's a land full of these broken people some so exhausted and torn apart by the Terrors of this place that they now just cower shaking with Madness and fear their minds bent and warped the Warriors they were now gone leaving only quivering shells old gods please help me the horror I can't look at them rotten dismembered taunter shreds and yet standing up looking at me please go away I can't help you stop this madness despair through horror is a huge part of vermis this is a world that is constantly trying to break you and every character in it and that horror comes in many forms you'll enter Lonely Forest cabins in search of some rest only to awaken to the echo of strange chanting as you notice there are no Shadows under your feet that this bizarre sentient place is trying to digest you worse than the Places You'll Find though are the things you find there vermis monsters are creative as they are frightening plasto's Eerie uncanny artwork accompanied by some truly unsettling descriptions like the pale swordsman marionette hidden in the shadows a wooden Abomination lurks endlessly throughout the insides of the labyrinth endlessly wandering The Long Dark hallways crawling its walls like a spider it's through these monsters you'll feel vermis World constantly attempt to pull out and manipulate the player like the cellar daughters insects like creatures that mimic the cries of children in hopes of drawing victims within range of its nashing teeth or the dubious friend a funloving little fellow who prances and dances trying to convince you to follow him with Whimsical cries of it is here I am me I have found it all while a long tendril protrudes from his back and trails into the Shadows behind him as if some unseen creature lies just out of sight luring you into the darkness some monsters even serving as these gruesome cautionary tales as to the kinds of things that can happen people here like the Abyssal devotees of the moonlet tower where the six different monsters you'll find there are all just these deranged cultists at different stages of some dark Enlightenment as they continue down the path towards some Awful Truth their forms begin to crack and distort their human shells crumbling away as they become grotesque floating nervous systems connected to a gleaming light a creature that causes Madness to anyone who approaches it before ascending to their final impossible form one that cannot be comprehended or destroyed any trace of identity or Humanity now gone when vermis is at its strongest is when it combines its atmospheric locations and unsettle monster design and uses them to tell these simple but extremely memorable little stories when you first encounter the green sun ruins of the goblin princess you expect what you would from any dungeon ruled by a goblin princess but once you enter something feels wrong initially the only enemies you encounter are not goblins but the undead brought to life by a necromancer and later a strange Beast that lies trapped down a massive pit whose Nest is filled with bones any goblins you do find are decrepit and old they peer out at you from behind pillars anxious to avoid combat you make your way through the area and you eventually encounter this dungeon's boss monster the goblin Knight this formed foe fights with slower yet aggressive movements a direct Blow from one of his axes could be fatal if you carefully avoid or block his attacks for some time you will eventually exhaust him and that would be the optimal chance to thrust your weapon into one of the Armor's apertures once you hurt him enough he will fall to his knees exhausted the goblin Knight turns his head staring into a dark hallway at the bottom of the room he contemplates it for a few seconds then screams at the top of his lungs and Rises once again the blood pours from his wounds like a fountain due to the pressure he's going berserk the Knight won't last long but he will battle fiercely until the very ends once you defeat the Goblin Knight you're given the option to remove his helmet and if you do you discover he's not a goblin at all but a human and if you check the room he glanced that during your battle you will discover a large sarcophagus containing the corpse of of a long dead human princess and when you return to the hallway you see the ghostly Visage of this princess over the goblin Knight's corpse in book two you learn the full meaning of this place the tale of a malicious Queen who built her kingdom on the bones of these scrawny creatures the Goblins fearfully following her every command the queen soon grew Beyond cruel becoming torturous and depraved to the point that when she gave birth to two daughters one was a beautiful young girl who had become known as the goblin Princess and the other an Abomination a punishment for the Queen's sins the queen had her monstrous daughter hurled down a well where it grew into a terrible Beast to which she enjoyed feeding her servants while her other daughter and opposite in many ways grew more empathetic and loving to the terrified goblins who once lived so freely eventually mounting a rebellion and overthrowing her evil mother and casting her down into the pit to be devoured by the daughter she had imprisoned there the princess protected by her loyal Goblin Knight turned this land into a sanctuary where no Goblin blood would ever be spilled again until you the Goblins feebly attempting to guard the corpse of the princess who had showed them so much empathy and kindness the princess now cold and withered her good deeds forgotten by the world except by her servant who still stare at you from the Shadows vermis is a extremely Grim world to the point that if it actually existed as a video game I don't know how fun it would be there's moments where vermis relies on putting the player through unreasonable levels of Cruelty exhaustion and loneliness are a huge part of this world something you can see in the infinite hallways of the shade sanctum that tra the player for hours or days where mind-numbing repetition and Insanity begins to eat at the character and while moments like that are really effective in concept the idea of actually playing them sounds kind of unbearable I think it's interesting that the format of a fake video game allows vermis to go to these extremes trapping the player in Concept in the unbearable levels of Cruelty of these hellish places and in this regard there is one area of vermis that stands above all others you know that feeling of waking up from a nightmare where everything seems normal until you notice something is wrong and you realize you're still in that nightmare well the glass Purgatory is an entire dungeon built around that idea not long into verm miss' second book the player happens upon a gargantuan mirror surrounded by skeletons all of whom seem to have just been people who sat down and wasted to nothing a strange Melody draws you towards the mirror's unusually pristine reflection and you realize that you can walk into this mirror and when you do you enter a strange new reality even by verisa standards the glass patory is bizarre and cruel crawling with impossible monsters some of which like the conjoined Echo the people who have lost themselves to this place their corpses and identities now twisting together into these nameless Abominations while verac's dungeons usually last about a dozen Pages the glass Purgatory just keeps going as you endure an endless parade of ordeals spectral figures grasp at you from beneath the surfaces of lakes before transforming into terrifying aquatic leviathans Colts worshipping and old evil forgotten God and perhaps most strange creatures that seem able to stare out past the pages of the book and into you the reader aware that this body is not yours asking to whom thy flesh belongs thy flesh does not belong to thee these encounters are often violent and frightening but the true hell is what happens after the players's hardfought victory iies met with nothing but the appearance of strange mirrors mirrors that drag you deeper into the glass purgatory's Bells over and over this happens there's times when you think you've escaped when you feel the gentle breeze and the sunlight hit your skin and you're free only for another mirror to materialize and you awaken trapped further in this nightmare soon the very sight of mirrors become is frightening your own reflection an abyss that plummets you deeper into this void and time and space begin to distort days weeks months pass as you walk infinite endless hallways a cursed numbing rot eating your limbs and terrible faces grin out at you from every reflective surface sleep becomes impossible your dreams stalked by ghoulish figures and exhaustion and despair consumes everything you are all while over and over you pray for Relief over and over a mirror shatters that Hope finally the player finds themselves on some impossibly deep level of the glass Purgatory a massive Bell Tower at the top of which you encounter it the Godless servant a depraved creature searching among a pile of headless corpses and placing those heads where its own should be only for them to Tumble off it is frightening but it's also pathetic something about this creature feels so sad so familiar and upon noticing you it attacks but its movements are slow and feeble it's been through an intense amount of punishment and is easily defended against its only attacks being its weak grasping hands which repeatedly attempt to pull at your skull till eventually the pathetic creature is defeated and crumples to the ground its hands still weakly grasping towards you and that's when you realize in horror you know what this creature is it's you your body your real body the weight of the depravity drops you to your knees and you do the only thing that makes sense anymore you remove your own head and reattach it to this piece of yourself that you lost so long ago and for a moment the Mist seeps gently around you a cool breeze on your skin and you feel relief before collapsing to the ground as blood pools beneath you and you stare into your reflection one final time not with horror but with acceptance this is just me a bell to hes and you awaken in front of the mirror that started everything but now you're truly free and you leave the identity of your character behind for now you are simply you I'm not going to pretend I fully understand this ending like everything in vermis it's weird and opaque but my personal read is that vermis is full of all these awful things obsessed with separating your spirit from your flesh fesh and its world is littered with people who have lost that battle who've become so numb and Hollow and crushed that their identity their existence has corroded to nothing under this endless torrent of Cruelty but then there's you the player and you can feel that weight constantly but particularly in the glass Purgatory this nightmare that exists to grind you down and leave you desolate and lost and broken just another story of vermis is world that will never end but you persevere you survive and in doing so you find this lost Part of Yourself reuniting your body and spirit making your identity whole cuz ultimately all you ever really have is your body is your mind you are the connection between those two things and what vermis ultimately says to me is no matter how Bleak the world that surrounds you you will be okay as long as you can cling to you that's a that's a lot more than I was expecting to get from a fake video game walkth through okay back to that original question have I wasted a significant portion of my life making this video well that's kind of for you to decide the truth is I've been working on this for so long and I don't know how I feel about it anymore I worry that the topic is too Niche and that not many people besides me will care about it but I think that's kind of why I needed to make this when I talked about iatch wolves at the start of this video Yeah part of that is cuz I like selling T-shirts but the truth is building that world has been some of the most fulfilling [ __ ] of my entire life and I want that for other people I want people to build their own worlds and I think fake video games are an amazing way to do it it is still such a new art form and people are still pushing the limits and figuring out what's possible people like plasto and it's so [ __ ] awesome and I wanted to shine a light on that that will introduce hopefully a lot of new people to the concept so if you've been watching this video and thinking oh man I'd love to to make my own fake video game [ __ ] do there is nothing stopping you that wasn't stopping every single Creator we've talked about go build those worlds so that I can walk around in them there that's it that's my video friends thank you for joining me sorry this video took so long I I really hope you enjoyed it uh don't forget to check out 20% off on ipat ws.com and also my new podcast versus wolves linked to both in the description below as ever I want to thank my beautiful patrons for making this video possible loopy fluff Vivan Michael Hyrule Jose Megan B Amanda merth Zack snow and superfish has ever find me on the Jeff Jeff's Bizarre Adventure anime podcast or on Twitter @ iatch wolf friends take care of yourselves and I'll see you next time

Channel: Super Eyepatch Wolf

Views: 1,435,407

Keywords: fake video games, petscop, crow 64, this does not exist, sonic.exe, Laceys Diner, valle verde, video games, fake

Id: Q8GnM5xD1k4

Length: 114min 58sec (6898 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2024