Good Old Editorial - The Most Ridiculous Post Apocalypses In Gaming

[Fanghawk]

Good Old Editorial - The Most Ridiculous Post Apocalypses In Gaming

Fallout isn't the only video game post apocalypse out there - even Super Mario and Mega Man have their own versions. We look back at the strangest post apocalypses in gaming history.

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[Blood Brain Barrier]

I'm well past 10 years old and Primal Rage still looks like the best thing ever.

 

[hentropy]

Wait, THAT was what Megaman Legends was about? It was the only Megaman game I played to completion, and I didn't play the sequel, but it never suggested in the first game that literally everyone in the game was an android. That's pretty cool but it does bring up some other interesting questions...

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Considering they did bring back Killer Instinct, maybe another Primal Rage isn't completely out of the question? One can only hope...

Anyway, I'd also nominate Krush, Kill, n' Destroy (KKND) as a ridiculous post-apocalyptic game. The setting wasn't too nuts (standard post-nuclear war apocalypse) but the game's combination of Mad Max elements and the the awesome 'Evolved' mutant faction (who utilized enormous mutated animals, including Scorpions, Beetles, and even Fiddler crabs), as well as the game's sense of humor, made it stand out for me. Then the sequel chucked robots into the mix, just to throw a cherry on top of the sheer shenanigans.

 

[Trunkage]

Well, I always thought the Dark Age ending of Dues Ex was more of a satire on Thomas Jefferson. He waned something similar but just couldn't do it without technology or buying large swathes of land. The Dark Age never would have happened as to control people you need technology.

 

[FPLOON]

I feel like Kingdom Hearts, lore-wise, could count in this situation...

Other than that, I find the Pikman and Maga Man ones funny to me...

 

[mtarzaim02]

Strange post-apocalyptic games, and no mention of Splatoon?
The game where it's clearly stated all humankind is fossilized at best since Wii Age?

I don't count pikmin in post-apo, because:
1- there's no way a cellphone could last millions of years, let alone still functionning
2- there's no way current fruits and vegetables would remain the same after hundreds of millions years of evolution
I prefer to consider Pikmin as the exploration of a terraformed human colony which have been recently abandonned.

And no love for ShadowRun or Shin Megami Tensei 4?
Sad.

EDIT: I forgot Carmageddon too.

 

[Fanghawk]

Wait, THAT was what Megaman Legends was about? It was the only Megaman game I played to completion, and I didn't play the sequel, but it never suggested in the first game that literally everyone in the game was an android. That's pretty cool but it does bring up some other interesting questions...

Yeah, the stuff about Carbons, Elysium, and human DNA is all addressed in Mega Man Legends 2. I don't know how many references are in the original, but even the flooded planet alone has apocalyptic implications.

Strange post-apocalyptic games, and no mention of Splatoon?
The game where it's clearly stated all humankind is fossilized at best since Wii Age?

I don't count pikmin in post-apo, because:
1- there's no way a cellphone could last millions of years, let alone still functionning
2- there's no way current fruits and vegetables would remain the same after hundreds of millions years of evolution
I prefer to consider Pikmin as the exploration of a terraformed human colony which have been recently abandonned.

And no love for ShadowRun or Shin Megami Tensei 4?
Sad.

EDIT: I forgot Carmageddon too.

Splatoon could work, but given it only came out six months ago, it didn't really apply to the "Good Old" portion of this column. Maybe in a few years.

And yes, there are TONS of post apoclaypse games out there, but these were the ones that seemed the most interesting to me. (Plus I don't know anything about Shin Megami Tensei.) Althought who knows, if there's enough maybe I could do another of these sometime.

 

[John Markley]

I actually had no idea Primal Rage was set in the future, though I suppose that actually namkes slightly more sense than itbeing in the past.

ShadowRun had an apocalypse?

Sort of. The return of magic to the world in 2012 had cataclysmic effects in some parts of the world, and it it was immediately preceded by the VITAS (Virally Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome) plague, which killed about 2 billion people worldwide. That's part of the reason megacorps have gained so much power relative to nation-states- they filled the void left when conventional governments were inadequate or just collpased entirely in the face of VITAS.

So sort of sempostapocalyptic, a world that was pushed to the brink of civilization collapsing but managed to catch itself before falling over the edge.

 

[John Markley]

I actually had no idea Primal Rage was set in the future, though I suppose that actually namkes slightly more sense than itbeing in the past.

ShadowRun had an apocalypse?

Sort of. The return of magic to the world in 2012 had cataclysmic effects in some parts of the world, and it it was immediately preceded by the VITAS (Virally Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome) plague, which killed about 2 billion people worldwide. That's part of the reason megacorps have gained so much power relative to nation-states- they filled the void left when conventional governments were inadequate or just collpased entirely in the face of VITAS.

So sort of sempostapocalyptic, a world that was pushed to the brink of civilization collapsing but managed to catch itself before falling over the edge.

I dunno. Having a mini Black Death incident(ie half to two thirds death toll) doesn't really strike me as much of an apocalypse given that by those standards we're already post-apocalyptic. At least I can understand how the world got messed up by it though given I live in a country that ended up being screwed over by the Black Death so badly it took us until the 1900s to recover due to the consequenses that came along with it. Not sure I'd say the effects of magic returning fits either since well... the effects really were not anywhere near apocalyptic considering the world trucked on with only the political landscape having really changed.

Though it was definitely all dire. I just wouldn't call it something like that because I feel it falls short of it, but thats just me.

Sidenote: Where the heck did all the kingdoms go? My one pet peeve with shadowrun is that politically its a world that looks insanely boring because all I could find in the lore were republics.

Fair enough. Like I said, "semipostapocalyptic" might be a better term.

There are monarchies in Shadowrun. The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, the Japanese Imperial State, the Kingdom of Shaanxi, among others. But the setting material is mostly focused on North America, which is mostly democracies and oligarchies, so monarchies don't appear that often. (Tir Tairngire's ruling body is called the "Council of Princes," but they're actually not hereditary.)

 

[Jute88]

Very interesting, especially Pikmin and Mega Man. I only played the first Pikmin, so I just thought that the game happened at someone's backyard or a natural reserve (though it had a lot trash around for some reason).