An Interview with Fictional Bad Games

You might be too young to remember but there was a time when the software store shelves were a virtual minefield to unsuspecting children and their clueless parents. For every delightful discovery of highly polished joy like a Super Mario or a Castlevania one could find countless rushed to market, licensed tie-ins attempting to cash in on the public’s fascination with whatever the current trend was. Everything was fair game from TV shows like The Simpsons to movies like E.T. Whether or not the properties translated well to the world of video games was inconsequential. All companies had to do was plaster Bill & Ted on the cover of their isometric adventure game and ca-ching. While there were rare gems among them (anything Dave Perry did with Disney for instance), most of these titles were Frankenstein’s monsters; quickly cobbled together from the loose parts of other, better games and sometimes wedged so forcefully into an ill fitting genre that they stuck out like… an elephant at a giraffe party? Yeah, let’s go with that one.

That’s where Fictional Bad Games steps in. Started only one year ago by a one man band named Robert, the YouTube channel has quickly distinguished itself with pitch perfect parody videos of the awkward licensed games of yore but with a modern twist. FBG takes the game design concepts of classic Nintendo, Super Nintendo and PC games and applies it to current pop culture phenomenons. The blockbuster Jurassic World is reimagined as a sadistic, death-soaked Sierra graphic adventure, the Oscar winning white knuckle space thriller, Gravity, gets the bad, action platformer treatment including cheap-hitting snakes and bats (oh my!) and the Abba musical sensation Mamma Mia! becomes a nightmare induing riff on a cart racer.

As I learned via e-mail correspondence with Robert, the video tributes, which looks nearly indistinguishable from the games whose aesthetic they borrow, aren’t simply video captures of coded fake games, they’re animated features painstakingly constructed of scratch made art assets, moved frame by frame. The amount of work that goes into each one is staggering and as someone who lived through the minefields, I have to say, the attention to detail is spot on.

Handsome Phantom (HP): Before we get into the meat and potatoes of the thing, I just want to say, and anyone that’s seen one of your videos would have to agree, you’re hilarious!  

Fictional Bad Games (FBG): Thank you!

HP: Tell me a little about your background, where does your sense of humor come from?

FBG: I’ve always been a big fan of dry and subtle humour. I tried to insert that into the videos as well as a few surreal fourth wall breaks. I hope that much of the humour comes from knowing nods of recognition from the viewers over what I’m parodying. There’s actually a few hidden messages in many of the videos that nobody seems to have noticed yet.

HP: What inspired you to start this channel? Why create a humorous homage to old school licensed games?

FBG: About ten years ago, I made what could be called a precursor to Fictional Bad Games, only without the cynical humour. I designed mock-up game boxes for modern film and TV show tie-ins. I’m not overly proud of them now though. Like many people I was interested in the ‘so bad it’s good’ genre. There are some great film critics on YouTube adding commentary and reviewing unbelievably bad movies and it can be really entertaining to watch. Especially if you don’t want to subject yourself to the entire film. So, watching these people talk about them is a bit like watching from a safe distance without losing 90 minutes of your life.

This is also true for video games. People like The Angry Video Game Nerd etc. were a big inspiration because I liked the joke about getting riled up about software from 30 years ago. It’s something I remember from my childhood so there’s a bit of nostalgia there too. I also just like ‘old stuff’. Even when I’m designing things in my day job I tend to lean towards the past in terms of design. So blocky pixel art is charmingly quaint to me. I recently collaborated with programmer Carleton Handley and made a pixel art app Very Iconic Pixels: ‘80s Edition. It’s a quiz to guess celebrities from the 1980s from animated pixel art sprites.

HP: In your own words what is your channel about?

FBG: It’s a playful alternate universe where the movies and TV of today were actually released in the ‘80s or early ‘90s and were all victims to terrible licensed video games. It seemed back then they knew the title alone would shift units and the actual quality of the game wasn’t a big deal. The videos aren’t really making fun of the modern media but are instead about me trying to translate it into a video game in the worst way possible. But of course, in a way that still makes you want to watch the video! 

HP: In many ways the fake licensed games you show off in the videos are nearly indistinguishable from the real types they are parodying.

FBG: That’s kind of you to say!

HP: Did you ever want to be a games designer?

FBG: I never wanted to be a game designer myself as I was only ever interested in the art side of things.

HP: Tell us about the process of making these. What, if any, tools are you using?

FBG: These are actually all frame-by-frame animation made in Photoshop and exported to video for Premiere. It may sound painstaking but it’s also quite enjoyable and I have 100% control over what is happening in each frame. It can take some time, each takes a month roughly, but that’s only because it’s a side project I do after work or on weekends in small chunks. Having said that, even if I had all the free time in the world, I’d probably still make them in small chunks as I tend to make them up as I go along and need time away from them to work out where I’m going with it!

I design the sprites and background art myself, usually after searching through many reference images to make sure I’m not designing something unusual for the time period. I’ll usually make a pattern to tile across a background for example, then look at my references and realise that whatever system I’m emulating actually wouldn’t have done it quite that way. So I tweak it enough that it’s still somewhat original, but authentic to the time. I play with colours for a long time also, especially for games that had a limited palette like the NES. I never owned one myself so I had to look into it. I want the videos to look ‘real’ but often face similar problems that real developers had back then.

For example, if the movie I picked has a character who famously wears a black t-shirt and the movie is mostly set at night, something will have to change in my game mock-up otherwise they’ll look like a disembodied head! It would certainly fit into the ‘terrible’ category but I still want people to know what’s going on! The music and sound effects are done last using Logic Pro to make Chiptunes and then I have to line the sound effects up with each action in Premiere. The music side of things can be difficult, because I want it to sound like what you’d expect from the time, but also a bit crap too. But not so crap that it’s too annoying and unlistenable. I may have crossed that line a few times! I try not to label the videos with what console or computer I’m attempting to emulate as I’ll never get the sound chip 100% right or even the graphics. That way I can have a bit of artistic license if I need it or make a change for the sake of joke. 

HP: What were the licensed games that you recall most fondly (or with most consternation) from your youth? Are there any in particular that became touchstones for this project?

FBG: I had Back To The Future III on Sega Master System when I was a kid. It was only three levels long and from memory only the first level was ridiculously hard and the two after were fairly doable. I think they were just trying to stop you finishing the game in just fifteen minutes so they made it nearly impossible to play. Clara is on a runaway horse heading towards a ravine, and Doc has to chase her on his horse. In the movie he simply catches up with her and that’s it, the scene wasn’t particularly memorable and didn’t even last that long. The game, however, decided to throw everything at you including falling boulders, aggressive birds and some cowboys with guns who seemed to want to get involved. There are even a few things that can kill you that I don’t even know what they’re supposed to be! But these bizarre and cheap ways to pad out the game were all touchstones for my videos. 

HP: What made licensed games of yore so memorable and so ripe for parody?

FBG: I do remember some licensed games actually being pretty good. As for the bad ones, poor understanding of the source material was the main downfall. For example in the Stranger Things 2 video, which is an NES-style platformer, I wanted to show how these games were a bad time because everything on the screen wanted to kill you. There’s a part in the video where Will has a car back into him, gets hurt from electricity from powerlines above and has cans of Coca-Cola fire out from vending machines. All of which of course never happens in the TV show, but it’s the kind of lazy enemy design you’d actually find back then. 

HP: In the video, Jurassic Quest, you tear into the old parser text Sierra games like King’s/Space/Hero’s Quest. Any particular moments from those old adventure games that informed this video?

FBG: I don’t think I’ve ever played a Sierra game to be honest, but I’ve seen people like PushingUpRoses and her videos brought me up to speed years prior. I was vaguely aware of some of them before that though. Some of those games were genuinely funny, so I tried to frame it like the videos were games made by some knock off company; a cheap version of Sierra, who didn’t quite get the concept and made a shoddy job of it. I know some people find the frequent and often unexpected deaths in those games annoying, but in a charming way, so I wanted to amplify that to an extreme degree.

HP: On the other side of that coin are your videos for, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Stranger Things 1 which are poking fun of LucasArts’ titles. What’s most remarkable is that you manage to nail the difference in tone so perfectly. Apparently, despite not having played any Sierra games.

FBG: I had only ever played LucasArts really, aside from the Hugo series. I just really enjoyed the humour in those, especially Sam & Max Hit The Road. As I mentioned before, it’s interesting that you could die in Sierra games, as opposed to just being stuck in a LucasArts game. It would mean saving a lot more!  I think both have a great sense of humour. 

HP: One of my favorite videos is the Gravity one which is a fairly serious and grounded film that you manage to stock with bats and frogs and snakes! How do you choose which properties to go with which style of games? Mamma Mia! got a cart racer for instance!

FBG: It’s impossible to guess what would have been made into a game back in the day. Gravity was one that would not lend itself to a game if the movie came out in the ‘80s but I wouldn’t have put it past them to do so. Especially when money is involved. It’s far too serious and grounded, as you said, so the joke was making it a fun space adventure and making the main character overpowered.

Also, the enemy in the movie was the unforgiving cruelty and coldness of space. So I ignored all that and added incredibly incongruous bats and snakes to contend with. They’re the height of typical and lazy enemies.

I had the kart racer idea first when it came to Mamma Mia! I wanted people to wonder why these two things have been put together. There’s also an element of truth to it though, as there was a period when kart racing was so popular, many properties attached themselves to the genre as an easy way to make a game. I went to the extreme and branded it as Mamma Mia! There was room for a rhythm game section with that also, since Mamma Mia! was a musical – the game stops for you to ‘finish the song’, and other players speed past you in the race while you try to complete the minigame. Often there’s an aspect of the film or TV show that translates to a particular joke to mix with a video game, but there’s no real formula to what I pick – I just go with my gut and sense of humour.

HP: That video ends with an old school review of the game which even breaks the score down into graphics and sound! Did you have any favorite gaming magazines growing up? What do you remember most fondly of them?

FBG: I didn’t really buy any to be honest. I do remember flicking through some in newsagents though and it was usually how you found out a sequel to something you liked was coming out. The days before the internet!

HP: Do you ever miss the simplicity of judging a game based on its disparate parts? What do you think of modern review practices which are much more literary in their aspirations.

FBG: Video games are a fairly new medium, so games criticism might have a lot of catching up to do relative to other mediums. It’s nice that the capability of a game to make you feel a certain way is being recognised more now. That said, let’s not fall into the trap of thinking every game needs to be emotionally involving and hyper-polished, there’s still a lot of value in games as a quick distraction or played just for the fun of it.

HP: Do we take games too seriously these days?

FBG: Not at all! Video games have struggled to get recognised as a legitimate art form for a long time, and I’m chuffed that they’ve earned their space as such among other mediums. Like I said though, not every game needs to be an hours-long triple-A title which takes you on an emotional journey. So long as we still make space for the more casual, simple games (and even ones that are a bit rough around the edges) I’m more than happy to see video games being treated like the piece of art they are!

HP: Are games art? Moreover, Are these games (and the ones that inspired them) art?

FBG: There are a lot of things that people aren’t sure is art or not, even modern art that’s earned its space in museums and galleries can be contentious. Dadaist art has elicited responses like that since 1920s! I suppose some aspects of games could be considered design instead, but when music, writing, acting and visuals come together to make one product then surely it must be art. Especially if it’s trying to say something, or make you feel a certain way. That’s what movies do, and those can safely be considered art (and yes, games definitely have their equivalents of cookie-cutter, corporate schlock.) I don’t think it’s for me to say if my videos are art though!

HP: Retro gaming has had something of a resurgence these last 10 years, especially pixel art. Why do you think that is? What do we love about pixels?

FBG: I think a part of it is nostalgia for some people but pixel art on a video game just feels right. It’s forever linked with the concept to this day. Even highly detailed pixel art has a feel of minimalism to it and it’s astatically pleasing. You could add just one pixel to represent a nose and it’s enough to get that idea across. I feel it doesn’t age as badly as 3D models do either because pixel art is what it is. The graphics that seemed hyper realistic two years ago will pale in comparison to what ever is current whereas pixel art will always retain its charm. 

HP: What’s next for you? Might we one day see 32 or 64 bit games parodied?

FBG: Oh, I don’t think I’d venture into anything 3D, it’s not really my skillset, and I’ve seen channels that have done PS1 demakes that are already very interesting. I kind of did 16-bit with the Rogue One game, as it was a SNES-inspired ‘sim’ game but wasn’t typically 16-bit. The videos take a long time already and 16-bit would require more labour, but I did have an idea floating around about doing a ‘90s attitude mascot. Like one of the many characters that tried to copy Sonic The Hedgehog like Bubsy or Radical Rex. Some surfing and skateboarding animal in sunglasses with plenty of attitude! I’m not sure it would get many views if it wasn’t tied to an intellectual property people have heard of though, so I’ve put that one on the backburner for now.

HP: You totally should!

FBG: There’s plenty more still to come – I’m working hard at not repeating the same concept over and over again, and having fresh jokes in each video as I always want them to be worth the wait.