Video Games about Video Games
Call it recursion, call it meta, but these are games with video games as major themes.
List items
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The US localization of the otaku phenomenon Game Center CX, Retro Game Challenge is a game about video games. What is even better is, the video games inside this game have all the ear marks of early localization efforts: Oddly worded titles, clunky manual translations and gratuitous Engrish have RSVPed to the party. RGC even has video game magazines, inside of the video game, which are written about the games... that are also in the video game.
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The humble virtual pet elevated to the sublime, keep Poke-kun happy and he'll make video games for you to play. The more he makes, the more advanced the games get. Start at mini-games and work your way towards full featured titles. Be warned, though, of the bat-shit insane characters who'll stop in to visit Poke-kun. The speedo wearing man jump roping his own body hair damn near forced my id to assassinate my super ego.
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The oddly prophetic Segagaga, which predicted Sega would only hold 3% of the market share in 2025. You have been brought in to turn that around! A non-traditional RPG and business sim where you fight and then recruit team members to design video games. Utilizing 2D sprites, 3D polygons and digitized photo graphics, Segagaga posses an art style and characters worthy of the "Fever Dream"-cast.
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Taking an additional step down the allusion rabbit hole, Duck Amuck is a video game about video games that is based on the seminal cartoon about cartoons... with the same name. Still with me? A mini game buffet which is constantly breaking the 4th wall only to erect it again. When it's clever, it's damned clever. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.
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A main component of the Grasshopper Manufacture opus is the fact that you, the player, are separate from the main character of the game. The game goes on to take further liberties with video game conventions to surprising effect.
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The whole Dezaemon series are more game creation software than games. An attribute you'll also find in the RPG Maker and Fighter Maker clades on the Video Game Tree of Life. While lacking the 'game about games' charm of others on this list... it'd be hard to argue they don't belong.
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Continuing in the vein of game creation software, the WarioWare series itself has a broad theme tied to the culture of video games. What might be overlooked is, the plot of the first WarioWare game was Wario wanted to make his own games for the phat stacks.
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If there's a more 'gamer' genre of games than shoot-em-ups, I don't know what it is. What happens when you base one entirely on the arcade culture of Japan? Like a nerd hand grenade into a swimming pool of awesome.
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Similar to Segagaga but with less schizophrenia. Game Dev Story is the iOS entry in a series of games from Kairosoft. Other titles allow you to run your own game book store and create your own manga. Kairosoft: STANDARD NERDS.
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