Are 80s & 90s Style Video Games Becoming Playable Memes?

Why watch cultural happenings when you can play them?

We are living in a time where 80s & 90s style video games are being utilised as social commentary tools in the same way as memes and deepfakes. As programming softwares have become more advanced and democratised, building an 8-bit (80s 2D style) or 64-bit (90s 3D style) game is no longer reserved exclusively to the AAA gaming studios it once was. While it certainly isn’t as simple as laying text over words like one might do with a basic meme, the barriers to entry in video game design are (relatively speaking) much lower than they once were, with detailed guides at one’s disposal on YouTube.

On the 8-bit front, we’ve had recent pixel fodder over the Kendrick Lamar and Drake beef. Both fan communities of the artists have released their own 8-bit style video games to stoke the inferno. Lamar’s fan-made Not Like Us: The Game focused on whacking OVO owls with a club while Drake’s Family Matters: The Game hurled Grammys inside the mouth of Kdot, criticising his alleged use of bots on Spotify to win awards (sledging them as Kbots in the game’s description). Something hits a little different with these games than just reposting tweets or making memes around the Lamar vs. Drake beef. Both games were simple in their playability, allowing easy participation in this feisty face off. In fact, according to Richie Branson, designer of Not Like Us: The Game, the game had “1.2 million players in the first 36 hours of the game being developed.” To put that in context, the biggest games being played right now on Steam (i.e. Counter Strike, DOTA)  are usually peaking underneath a million players per day. So these are massive numbers for a humble 8-bit button masher. 

Image Credit: Richie Branson

Image Credit: Family Matters The Game

@erinasimonDrake’s “Family Matters” song was turned into a video game as a repsonse to the “Not Like Us” video game. I’m loving the creativity that’s coming from all of this. And also who doesnt like video games?!? (Well clearly some people but you know what I mean haha 🤷‍♀️😅)

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Digging deeper, there’s plenty of these kinds of amusing 8-bit artefacts across culture. Going back to 2016, Leonardo DiCaprio’s hotly anticipated Oscar ceremony (where he was in the running for best actor with The Revenant), had been gamified. DiCaprio had not yet won an Oscar and it had been the gap in his otherwise decorated acting career to date, this was of course a hotly contested topic. Animation studio, The Line, decided over drinks at the pub that they’d prod at the situation by turning it into a game. This birthed Leo’s Red Carpet Rampage. The tone covered more than just Leo’s empty Oscar display, it simultaneously nodded to the #OscarsSoWhite movement. It succeeded at mocking the lack of diversity among the Academy Awards nominees while playing up the ridiculousness of award campaigns in general. While DiCaprio ended up walking away with an Oscar (finally), The Line walked away with an industry revelation. “It showed us the potential of current events satire in game making and the possibilities of interactive experiences that have a wide social and global reach. It managed to get people involved and engaged and sympathise with a character in a completely novel and different way that a simple film or video could have done,” said The Line.

Image Credit: The Line

Image Credit: The Line

Image Credit: The Line

On the 64-bit front (a graphic style popularised in the 90s by the PS1, Nintendo64 and Sega Dreamcast), we’ve seen simulation style games that bring a depth of elaboration to jokes that passive entertainment formats simply can’t evoke. MSCHF is renowned for deep cutting parodies across a range of mediums but their Chair Simulator has been one that’s flown under the radar. You could play as Mr. Beast or 24KGoldin, both of whom had likely spent countless hours editing videos or music sitting in chairs. The game featured “100 iconic chairs from the interior design canon” said Lukas Bentel, CCO of MSCHF, ranging from the Eames Lounge Chair all the way to the Toilet - all unlockable if you were willing to spend the hours sitting. And if you really wanted the full experience, MSCHF even offered arcade cabinets that took things a step further. “We also made an arcade cabinet where you could physically sit down in a chair and play the game immersively.” said Bentel. The game was downloaded over 250,000 times and was the most played game on Steam in May 2021. 

Image Credit: Chair Simulator

Image Credit: MSCHF

Speaking of sitting, the recent Raw Dog Flight phenomenon has now got its own simulation. Created by “Raw Dog Flights” the game grants anyone access to the trivial test of endurance that is raw dogging a flight (i.e. staring at the flight map tracker with no entertainment, sleep or other distraction throughout). For those of us without a flight to catch, Raw Dog Simulator allows you to bare the brunt of the long haul anywhere and anytime. With a list of “Frequent Flyers” representing top scorers in the game, the current record (at time of writing) is 18 hours and 40 mins, which is longer than the longest possible non-stop flight currently (Newark to Singapore at 18 hours and 18 mins). While this was probably a bot, I like to think that player Beam Well actually simulated a record breaking long haul flight without moving an inch from their screen. 

Image Credit: Rawdog Flight Simulator

Image Credit: Rawdog Flight Simulator

@rawdogsimulator @rawdogsimulator ♬ original sound - •MÛŠÎX•

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

If shows like South Park are written and animated 6 days apart from each other in an effort to keep them comically current, then why can't 80s & 90s style games do the same? As programming softwares and generative AI tools speed up the process of game development, this reality doesn't seem out of reach. Political movements and cultural moments may indeed become more playable. Who knows, maybe Kamala Harris has an 8-bit whack-a-Trump brewing up ahead of the election.