The History of the Universe As Described By Video Games: An Overly Ambitious LiveBlog

TheConductor

For fun, I’ve decided to take a look at various video games (and their movie, cartoon and comic spinoffs) many of the games here are added because of a connection to the Mario Series, as this started as a timeline of the Nintendo Universe. Others were added because I felt they had a similar theme or setting to another game on the list, and others still were added because I plain well felt like it. This whole thing came as a result of me wanting to expand my video game collection and needing a ‘reason’ for doing it. 

Most of the stuff takes place on Earth, as it would, so I've divided the planet's history into three eras. The first, is Terra, this is "Ancient but far more advanced society" that pops up in everything. Think, the Forerunners from Halo or the Gods from Assassins Creed. This era starts 1 million years ago and lasts for around a 80,000 years, ending around about the time where that the oldest modern humans fossils are dated.

The second era is Earth, this the history of modern humans and our future, it started 200,000 years ago and will officially end in around 12,000 years.

The final era is Mobius, this is the place far in the future this is the time where series filled with anorchronisms like Mario and Sonic take place. This is a world mostly populated, not by humans, but by anthropomorphic creatures. It doesn't really have an end date yet. And depending on how the stories for games go over the next while, it's not likely to.

This blog will be updated a couple of times a day with me talking about and placing a different game in the time line and at the end of each month, I'll provide a link to a download so you can download the whole file and either read it or play the games too. I'll annotate each thing I add to the list just so you know where the info I add has come from, unless it's theory but I'll be sure to state that if it's the case.

TheConductor

The first game I want to look at,  is Pac-Man. Pac-Man annoyingly has no story, so I made one up "A magical being known as The Pac-Man is chased
into a labyrinth by four ghost like creatures named Blinky, Pinky, Inky and
Clyde. Pac-Man is able to eat each of the ghosts and escape the maze." 

I refer to Pac-Man as a magical being because I had a Ms. Pac-Man game that said she was created by a wizard. And what's good for one Pac is good for both Pacs.

I'm setting this game on Mobius, because Pac-Man appears alongside Mario in an arcade game, so it'd have to happen around the same time. So we'll say that Pac-Man takes place in "May" of the Mobius Year 3209 since May is when the game was released.

TheConductor

The next game I want to look at is Akalabeth. It's one of the oldest RPGs and it doesn't have a plot. Or...it didn't, the plot of retroactively said to be this, A man from Earth named Richard Garriott ended on another world. Here he killed a man named Mondain and became king. Calling the land Britannia and renaming himself Lord British."

I'm making this the starting point for Terra because it works very well as that and it makes the plots of Ultima 2 and later games a bit more plausible. 

MadassAlex

Calling the land Britannia and renaming himself Lord British.

---

This is brilliant.

TheConductor

^ You can't make it up man. You just can't.

TheConductor

Any way. Next I'd like to talk about Castle Wolfenstien. Castle Wolfenstien is probably the first ever stealth game and may well be the first WWII game. At least, it's certainly the oldest one I own. 

Any way, I decided to place this game in January '42, to make room for BJ's return to the Castle towards the end of the war. Not a lot to say about this one, it's fairly clear cut.

IanExMachina

Ultima Online was fun though.

Raichard Garriott is crazy though.

TheConductor

I know this had been boring so far, there's not been a lot to talk about since we've mostly been dealing with really simplistic game with little to no story. But anyway, Frogger. A frog. Crosses roads. That's it. 

I'm sticking this in the year 3210 on Mobius, because while Frogger appears to be a normal frog in THIS game, in future games he is anthropomorphism. 

TheConductor

Okay. Ms. Pac-Man. Another Golden Age game, again, I'm not a fan of single screen arcade games, they hold my attention for about 30 seconds. Fun wee trivia, this game is actually unauthorized, it was made by Midway rather than Namco.

Nyarly

"Next I'd like to talk about Castle Wolfenstien"

I never heard of such a game. "Castle Wolfenstein" on the other hand...

TheConductor

Good for you.

TheConductor

The Ultima series is one of my all time favourite series of games. we've already spoken a little bit about Richard Garriott's first game, Akalabeth, which often gets referred to as Ultima 0. 

Ultima is where we really see Lord British (That's really what Garriott calls himself) go batshit insane.

In this game you go on four fairly unremarkable quests all over the land of Sosaria, and then you go into space and shoot down lots of rockets, then you find a TARDIS and go back to the beginning of time to fight the evil wizard from the first game. It's pretty good. It was also the first commercially available game to use tiled graphics. Also, it's really, really fucking hard. Like, ball burstingly hard. You need to keep a constant supply of food or you die. Jesus, I've never seen anyone eat so much. 

Ghilz

You should have prehistory covered by EVO: The search for Eden, which covers the evolution of life from fishes to humans.

TheConductor

Good idea, thanks for the suggestion. It's on the list now. 

Yeah, guys, feel free to throw recommendations, for this at me, I'll probably add them.

Icalasari

Pokemon. I wonder where it would fit on the time line (it does have humans, but some Pokemon are fairly intelligent anthropomorphizations)

TheConductor

^ I haven't decided yet, I'd guess it'd take place on Mobius. Since the various Pokemon regions are based on areas of Japan and other games/comics feature regions based on areas on Earth so...yeah, Mobius.

Shichibukai

Does this history include Metal Gear Solid? With that, you have post-WWII up to early 21st century political history covered.

TheConductor

It does indeed include Metal Gear. 

Icalasari

Legend of Zelda (the WHOLE series)?

TheConductor

Yes. I have a couple ideas on how to make that work.

TheConductor

Donkey Kong! Is there anything better than Donkey Kong? Yes. Loads of bloody things, but for the time it was pretty fantastic and is the very first platform game. That I know of.

The story, is fairly simple, Donkey Kong is Mario's pet ape, and Mario is very cruel to the creature. One day, he escapes and kidnaps Mario's girlfriend, Pauline. (I shit you not, that's what it says in the manual). So, Donkey Kong takes Pauline and climbs up a massive skyscraper, with Mario in pursuit.

As Mario climbs, Donkey Kong throws barrels at him.

Eventually at the top of the building, Mario knocks out the support on some scaffolding and sends Donkey Kong tumbling down, knocking him out.

Now, I'm placing this game in Brooklyn, on Earth as I subscribe to the theory that the Mario from Donkey Kong is the father of Mario and Luigi from Super Mario Bros.

TheConductor

So, another arcade game. Dig Dug. It's pretty good (even though I can't get passed the first screen). Setting it in the Mobius era due to the existence of the various monsters in the game. 

TheConductor

Let's talk about three games that all came out at near enough the same time, Baby Pac-Man, Pac-Man + and Super Pac-Man. 

The first two are basic clones of Pac-Man, except in Baby Pac-Man you have to switch between the game and pinball and in there are extra items in Pac-Man +.

Now Super Pac-Man is a true sequel, with some genuine innovations to the series.

In this game, you had to eat keys to open doors to get at the fruit and if you eat TWO super pellets, you become Super Pac-Man, who is bigger and faster and can eat doors. It's actually my favorite Pac-Man game. 

TheConductor

Ultima 2 is more of the same from the Ultima series. There isn't a lot that can be said. It's your basic RPG, if you want an idea of what it's like, play Final Fantasy I. 

TheConductor

Donkey Kong Jr! This game takes place immediatly after Donkey Kong, Mario has caged Donkey Kong and is taking him back to the jungle and Donkey Kong's son, DK Jr, is trying to save him.

Yeah. Mario's the villain. Who'd a thunk?

This is actually a really fun game and it's a major departure from the last game in the series, but that's okay. 

TheConductor

Did you know that there was a Pac-Man cartoon? No? Well did you also know that it was CHEAP AS FUCK? It was made by Hanna-Barbera so what do you expect? 

Now so far, I've only seen the first episode and it does a bit to expand a little on the Pac-Verse. It gives Ms. Pac-Man a name (Pepper) and it introduces a villain to the franchise, Mezmoran, a Darth Vader wannabe who created the ghosts and is determined to find the "Power Forrest", a mystical place that gives Pac-Land it's power.

So, in this episode the Ghosts kidnap the president of Pac-Land and it's up to Pac-Man to save him.

There's nothing special about this show, it's just a quickie tie-in nothing to write home about, I could easily see a kid sitting absentmindedly watching this on a Saturday morning, eating cocopops. 

TheConductor

The second episode of Pac-Man we're introduced to Pac-Man's dog, Chompers and his utter bastard of a cat...Kitty Kat. The Pac-Family has went for a peaceful family picnic (or should that be, Pacnic?) but the Ghosts are having their own picnic!

The ghosts, being the utter cunts that they are, decide to harass Pac-Man and his family and try to eat them (This is really morbid when you think about it too much). So they get into all kinds of cartoon shenanigans, like trying to kill each other.

Also, I find it hilarious how Pepper called Pac-Man, Pacy. Pakki being a racist term for people from the middle east. 

TheConductor

Okay, episode 3 of Pac-Man, Mezmoran causes an earth quake, that allows the Ghosts to find a map to the power forest and then Pac-Man gets it back. NEXT!

TheConductor

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.

Why haven't I posted in over a week? Well because I've been watching Pac-Man, and it's awful and it drains me. And there's nothing really notable to say about the series, except for one episode that had the Ghosts going 100 years into the past to find PacLand being a medieval style society, which gels well with other games (such as Mario) that show Mobius being somewhat medieval.

Tomorrow, we'll be looking at a game called Antarctic Adventure and then we have another block of bloody Pac-Man cartoons.

I'm really not a fan of this style of show.

TheConductor

Here's the first version of the timeline.

Icalasari

Sounds like Pacman had a REALLY good or bad agent