Games within games (let's make a list)

[noiseredux]

Beetle Mania - Super Mario RPG (SNES)
Eggman's Sonic Sim - Sonic Colors (DS, Wii)
Paddle War! - Commander Keen (PC)
Pure White Giant Glastonbury - No More Heroes (PS3, Wii)
Rapunzel - Catherine (PS3, 360)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Inspired by a derailment in the slightly disturbing shower thread, let's make a list of games within games. BUT here's the thing. I'm not talking about like unlockable games on discs, I'm talking full-fledged original games that you can only play within another game. Get it?



I'll start with Rapunzel, which is basically an 16(ish)bit version of the actual gameplay in Catherine. In the game, you can play Rapunzel on an arcade cab in a bar. What's great is that Repunzel is actually really fun, and you can get sucked into playing that for an hour. And what's more interesting is that playing Repunzel not only stretches your brain out to get better at Catherine itself, but it even feeds into the whole thing about dreams being amalgamations of things you experience throughout the day. Here, Vincent's nightmare projects itself in the format of his favorite video game. Genius.

[emwearz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlockable_game

Animal Crossing features nineteen unlockable Nintendo Entertainment System games.

The Personal Computer game Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle by LucasArts included its predecessor Maniac Mansion.

In several Grand Theft Auto games, various arcade games can be unlocked by finding their arcade machines.

In Project Gotham Racing 2, Geometry Wars is unlocked by entering the garage, entering walk mode, walking to an arcade machine, and pressing A.

Shenmue on the Dreamcast contained the arcade games Hang-On and Space Harrier, which could be unlocked by walking into the arcade and using in-game money to play.

In Call of Duty: Black Ops, Zork I can be unlocked by typing "Zork" into an old computer at the menu.

[noiseredux]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlockable_game

Animal Crossing features nineteen unlockable Nintendo Entertainment System games.

The Personal Computer game Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle by LucasArts included its predecessor Maniac Mansion.

In several Grand Theft Auto games, various arcade games can be unlocked by finding their arcade machines.

In Project Gotham Racing 2, Geometry Wars is unlocked by entering the garage, entering walk mode, walking to an arcade machine, and pressing A.

Shenmue on the Dreamcast contained the arcade games Hang-On and Space Harrier, which could be unlocked by walking into the arcade and using in-game money to play.

In Call of Duty: Black Ops, Zork I can be unlocked by typing "Zork" into an old computer at the menu.

I'm not talking about like unlockable games on discs, I'm talking full-fledged original games that you can only play within another game.

[flamepanther]

Commander Keen can play a Pong clone against the CPU on his wrist computer in most of the later games.

In Super Scribblenauts, you can call forth an arcade cabinet and play a little game on it.

Super Mario RPG had the Beetle Mania game you could play.

Sonic Colors on the Wii has the "Sonic Simulator" levels that are supposed to be an arcade game within Eggman's theme park.

[AppleQueso]

Ocarina of Time's Fishing minigame come to mind instantly.

[noiseredux]

Ocarina of Time's Fishing minigame come to mind instantly.

I'm not really thinking of mini-games, though. More like what I posted above -- a video game that you play within the video game.

Flamepanter's examples were pretty good, but I'm familiar with none. Can you flesh them out a bit -- give titles/screenshots or anything?

[noiseredux]

.hack (PS2):
The series features a "game within a game", a fictional massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called The World, without requiring the player to connect to the Internet. Players may transfer their characters and save data from one game in the series to the next.

[alienjesus]

The games Retro Game Challenge and Game Center CX 2 are completely about this concept, as is the Neo Geo Pocket Color game Ganbare Neo Poke-Kun which features 30 unlockable games within a kind of tamagotchi-ish main game. TBH, the main game is only there to unlock the mini games, because its kinda sucky :p

EDIT: Oh, and theres that PDA game in Alien Hominid.


EDIT 2: And Tatsunoko vs Capcom has an unlockable shmup thing iirc.

[noiseredux]

The games Retro Game Challenge and Game Center CX 2 are completely about this concept, as is the Neo Geo Pocket Color game Ganbare Neo Poke-Kun which features 30 unlockable games within a kind of tamagotchi-ish main game. TBH, the main game is only there to unlock the mini games, because its kinda sucky :p

see, to me something like Retro Game Challenge isn't really the same thing, as the whole game is basically just a collection of fake games. I don't know...

EDIT: Oh, and theres that PDA game in Alien Hominid.

Hmmm... yeah maybe.

EDIT 2: And Tatsunoko vs Capcom has an unlockable shmup thing iirc.

there's a shmup in it? Never heard about that.

[AppleQueso]

That one Mog game in the Golden Saucer in Final Fantasy VII