Opposite Day: games that are the opposite of real life

[+jgkspsx]

Okay, admittedly, video games are silly. They are full of ridiculous things. But I want to talk specifically about games where the core mechanic is totally the opposite of reality.

 

Example 1: Frogger. Frogs must live in water to survive. Even toads are born in water and can swim just fine. Why does the water kill Frogger. Why doesn’t it kill the gators?

 

Example 2: River Raid. Flying fast (windspeed, altitude, weather being equal) uses more fuel than flying slow. In River Raid you use more fuel if you go slow, and the core mechanic of the game depends on that opposite. (Also you collect fuel by blowing up fuel tanks, but we’ll let that go as just normal video game silliness.)

 

Are there other examples of “opposite day” core mechanics in video games? I can’t imagine these are alone.

[+jeremiahjt]

8 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

Okay, admittedly, video games are silly. They are full of ridiculous things. But I want to talk specifically about games where the core mechanic is totally the opposite of reality.

 

Example 1: Frogger. Frogs must live in water to survive. Even toads are born in water and can swim just fine. Why does the water kill Frogger. Why doesn’t it kill the gators?

 

Example 2: River Raid. Flying fast (windspeed, altitude, weather being equal) uses more fuel than flying slow. In River Raid you use more fuel if you go slow, and the core mechanic of the game depends on that opposite. (Also you collect fuel by blowing up fuel tanks, but we’ll let that go as just normal video game silliness.)

 

Are there other examples of “opposite day” core mechanics in video games? I can’t imagine these are alone.

You do not collect fuel by blowing up fuel tanks in River Raid. You collect fuel by flying over them.

 

As far as opposites.... uh I got nothing.

[+jgkspsx]

Oh, that’s true. Sorry, my brain is a little Scrambled.

[roots.genoa]

Damn, that completely ruins your topic idea since planes fly over fuel tanks to get a refill in real life... ?

(Yeah, I know, it's not the "opposite")

[Mikebloke]

Dungeon Keeper, instead of playing the hero going into the dungeon you make the dungeon and try to kill the heroes instead. I'd argue that morality suggests we shouldn't be doing this in real life, so therefore its opposite XD There is a few more extreme examples of this, but they usually get banned from most sites.

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

this is really hard to think of..   There's a couple of racing games (that im totally blanking on the names right now) where the control scheme is the opposite.. like moving left makes you steer right and vice versa.  i think these are older games though, maybe atari? it's always jarring to play those kinds of games.

 

 

[zzip]

Joust - Humans hatch from eggs, not the birds

[Steven Pendleton]

Konami's Scramble is the one where you blow up fuel to get it.

[DragonGrafx-16]

Any game that is not a sports or board game that has a score. You don't get points for blowing stuff up in real life.

[+jgkspsx]

3 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Konami's Scramble is the one where you blow up fuel to get it.

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15 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

Oh, that’s true. Sorry, my brain is a little Scrambled.

 

[+jgkspsx]

1 hour ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

Any game that is not a sports or board game that has a score. You don't get points for blowing stuff up in real life.

That’s true, you get hard time ?

[fiddlepaddle]

I think there are quite a few flying games where the joystick is opposite of a real airplane joystick.

And I can't imagine weaving in and out of real traffic with an 8-way joystick, but I guess that's not really "opposite" either.

[+jgkspsx]

19 minutes ago, fiddlepaddle said:

And I can't imagine weaving in and out of real traffic with an 8-way joystick, but I guess that's not really "opposite" either.

GM experimented with productionalizing joystick steering in the early 80s and it is available to a limited capacity as an assistive device now:

 

 

[roots.genoa]

Also every game in which the player controls a policeman and kills enem- oh no, wait, that's perfectly legal in the US. ?

[IntelliMission]

In real life, animals live in the open, in places where there is sunlight, and in places where there are ecosystems so they can find something to eat. And (most) people don't exterminate them.

 

In Tomb Raider (1996), however, things are the opposite: animals like lions, bears or crocodiles live in isolated caves and their only purpose in life is to wait for you to kill them with one pistol in each hand as you circle around them, jumping laterally while doing somersaults in the air.

[toiletunes]

Hangman- there is no death penalty for misspelled words.

[roots.genoa]

The card game called War or Battle. There is no strategy (neither battling actually) involved at all, it's pure luck. Well, luck might be involved in real life wars, but they tend to be a lot less sleep-inducing. ? Also, the card game caters mostly to small children, while they're usually not involved in real life wars, fortunately.

[Lord Mushroom]

Super Monaco GP (Sega Master System)

 

If you want to make a right turn at the highest possible speed without going off track, you must position the car to the right of the road before the turn.

 

Also, if you are hit in the rear by an AI car, you lose speed.

Edited October 20, 2021 by Lord Mushroom