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List of fictional games

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Index of imaginary games created in fictional works
A 14th-century illustration of Sir Gawain playing the first round of the beheading game with the Green Knight

Fictional games are games which were specifically created for works of fiction, or which otherwise originated in fiction.

In his foundational academic work on this topic, Stefano Gualeni defines fictional games as "playful activities and ludic artefacts conceptualized as part of fictional worlds", and emphasizes that - as elements of a work of fiction - their purpose is to trigger the imagination of the audience and cannot actually be (or at least were not originally meant to be) played.

Many fictional games have, however, been adapted into real games by fans or ludophiles by creating pieces and rules to fit the descriptions given in the source work. For example, unofficial versions of Fizzbin can be found in reality, and Mornington Crescent is widely played in online forums.

Fictional games tend not to be presented in a detailed and formally complete manner by their authors. Within the respective works of fiction, they are typically defined just clearly enough to achieve their intended narrative functions.

Billiards games

Board games

Card games

  • Caravan - A two player card game used for both gambling and passing time in Fallout: New Vegas.
  • Cripple Mr. Onion - Discworld; Fan rules have been created, but are not official, and use ordinary playing cards rather than a Discworld "Caroc" deck.
  • Double Fanucci - a fictional card game mentioned throughout the Zork series of computer adventure games.
  • Dragon Poker - the MythAdventures books by Robert Asprin
  • Fizzbin - Star Trek
  • Go Johnny Go Go Go Go - is a comedy fictional card game from the television series, The League of Gentlemen from the Series 2 episode, "A Plague on Royston Vasey".
  • Gwent - A card game in the novel series The Witcher. Later available as a video game.
  • Lucky Horseshoes - A variant of Blackjack found in Fallout: New Vegas, played with an animatronic cowboy in exchange for in-game rewards.
  • Sabacc - a card game used for gambling in Star Wars, and the game in which Han Solo won the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian. Real versions of the game have been produced and can be bought at Disneyland.
  • Pazaak - a two player card game in a 2003 Star Wars game, similar to Blackjack, where players have to be the closest to 20 without going over, in a best of three rounds competition. Players have their own assembled side deck of 10 cards, with both positive and negative values present, from which they pull four random cards at the start of a round. The main table deck has cards with values from 1-10, of which one card gets drawn for each player each turn.
  • Tongo - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV series
  • Triad - Battlestar Galactica (2004 series)
  • Triple Triad - first appearing in the video game Final Fantasy VIII, it can also be played as a minigame in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and Final Fantasy Portal App. In 1999, after the release of Final Fantasy VIII, toy company, Bandai, produced a real Triple Triad card deck. Since the game was only produced in Japan and not readily available in America and Europe, the cards have become rare collector's items.

MMORPGS/Role-playing games

Sports

Athletic sports

  • Assassin's Guild Wall Game - "a cross between squash, urban rock climbing and actual bodily harm", Discworld (named after the Eton Wall Game)
  • Indoor hang gliding - Geoff Maltby in the television series Benidorm claims to be North West champion of it
  • Lifting - popular extreme sport, similar to surfing, but in the air; practitioners ride "reflection boards" on waves of "Transparence Light Particles"; from anime/manga series Eureka Seven
  • Taking the Stone - in Farscape, a game played by the youth of an unnamed royal cemetery planet. The game consists of jumping into a deep well, and chanting while falling. To protect a participant from smashing into the bottom of the well and dying, there is a sonic net which is sustained by the participants' voices, and is intended to provide a soft landing.

Combat sports

  • Anbo-Jitsu - Star Trek: The Next Generation, a one-on-one martial arts combat sport wherein the players are blindfolded and use proximity-detector staves to locate the opponent
  • Ape Fighting - from Futurama, a fighting sport involving two apes (typically gorillas) engaging in pugilistic combat while adorned with comically-undersized costumes and props
  • The Hunger Games - from the books and movies of the same name. Each year, adolescents from oppressed districts are forced to fight to the last survivor in an elaborate outdoor arena, itself designed to pose many threats to tributes' lives, for the entertainment of citizens in the wealthy Capitol district.
  • Kosho - from The Prisoner, Kosho appeared prominently in the episode “It’s Your Funeral”. According to Kosho rules, one opponent must knock the other into a four-by-eight foot tank of water. Trampolines are placed on two sides of the pool and ledges above on three. Upon any successful dunking, the Kosho match is over.
  • The Running Man - from The Running Man, the titular television show features convicted criminals fighting for their lives (and pardons) in an arena while being hunted down by professional celebrity mercenaries called "stalkers", presented in the same vein as theme-based pro-wrestlers

Team ball sports

  • 43-Man Squamish - fictional college sport from Mad Magazine
  • Arena Stickball - Fictional sport from Alternia, in both Homestuck and Hiveswap wherein two teams of 5 players compete to score points using 16 different balls. The game is played over two 11-hour halves.
  • BASEketball - from the movie of the same name
  • Blernsball - 30th-century version of baseball from Futurama, wherein it is called the "Earthican Pastime."
  • Blitzball - Final Fantasy X, a soccer-like game played in a massive sphere of water
  • Calvinball - a game where there are only two rules: players must wear masks, and you can never play the same way twice; Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
  • Grav-Ball - a future sport played in a zero-G court by two six-man teams, who try to score goals with a five-kilogram steel ball, as depicted in the board game by FASA.
  • Grifball - A violent rugby-style game where two teams try to bring bombs to their own goal, as seen in Halo 3 (2007).
  • HyperBlade - an ultraviolent variant of ice hockey played on an ellipsoidal rink with either a puck or a severed head, from the PC game of the same name
  • Mittens - A game played in Foon featuring nonsensical rules from the improvisational comedy podcast Hello From the Magic Tavern
  • Moopsball - team sport created by Gary Cohn in Rules for Moopsball (1976), referenced in Legion of Superheroes and in Gene Wolfe's There Are Doors
  • P.A.S.S. Time - A game revolving around bringing weaponry on the field, with holding the ball making weapons unusable until passed. Features in Team Fortress 2.
  • Pyramid - a basketball-like game featured in Battlestar Galactica
  • Quidditch - Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, a team sport with four balls and seven players on each team who ride around on broomsticks
  • Speedball - futuristic and violent mix of handball and hockey featured in the cyberpunk inspired games of the same name
  • Zero-Grav Hyperball - A sport played with rackets and balls played on Gallifrey, as shown in Doctor Who.

Non-team ball sports

  • Gonnis - a combination of golf and tennis featured in the BBC comedy series Look Around You, a parody of science and technology programming.
  • Igo Soccer - the participants have to do figures with some pebbles and a ball, sport from the Japanese shõnen Nichijō

Other sports

See also: List of fictional sports teams

Video games

Other games

See also

References

  1. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, British Library
  2. Tracy, Larissa (2012), "The Real Price of the Beheading Game in SGGK and Malory", Heads Will Roll: Decapitation in the Medieval and Early Modern Imagination, BRILL, pp. 207–232, ISBN 9789004211551
  3. ^ Gualeni, Stefano (June 2021). "Fictional games and utopia: The case of Azad". Science Fiction Film & Television. 14 (2): 187–207. doi:10.3828/sfftv.2021.13. ISSN 1754-3770.
  4. ^ Gualeni, Stefano; Fassone, Riccardo (2023). Fictional games: a philosophy of worldbuilding and imaginary play. London: Bloomsbury Academic. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-350-27709-0.
  5. ^ Whitbrook, James (27 October 2014). "12 Games from Science Fiction and Fantasy we'd love Real versions of". Gizmodo. Retrieved 2019-05-26.
  6. Evans, Larry (2005-10-28). "Zathura: A Cosmic Adventure Worth Taking". Space.com. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  7. Hall, Charlie (5 June 2019). "The Easter eggs hidden in Star Wars Land's Millennium Falcon ride". Polygon. Retrieved 18 June 2019.
  8. Schmidt, JK (31 May 2019). "You Can Start Gambling for Starships With Authentic Sabacc Deck From Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge".
  9. McAllister, Erin (17 July 2023). "Pazaak is Better Than Sabacc". GameGrin. Retrieved 7 October 2024.
  10. Fink, Charlie. "The OASIS In 'Ready Player One' Runs On Speed And Storage". Forbes. Retrieved 2019-05-29.
  11. ^ Russell, Calum (9 June 2022). "The 10 best fictional movie sports". Far Out. Retrieved 15 September 2022.
  12. "Meet the Real World Designers Behind the Fictional Video Games of 'Her'". 13 February 2014.
  13. Anders, Charlie Jane (8 September 2008). "10 Suckiest Video Games People Play In Science Fiction". io9. Retrieved 2019-05-26.
  14. "'Wargames' tale of computer evil mushrooms into top entertainment - Newspapers.com". Chicago Tribune. 3 June 1983. p. 67. Retrieved 2019-05-29.
  15. Bricken, Rob (26 April 2013). "Star Trek: DS9 played the most dangerously idiotic game in the galaxy". io9. Retrieved 2019-05-26.
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