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The 9 Greatest Fictional Video Games

• By Patrick Shaw and Dave Rudden
• April 22, 2009 15:23 PM PST
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GamePro celebrates the nine most memorable fake video games featured in movies and TV shows!

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Video games are such a huge part of pop culture these days, they're constantly referenced and shown in films, TV shows, books, and just about every other form of entertainment you can imagine. The following games, however, exist only through those media forms as they are entirely fictional. Read on to discover the nine coolest video games never created!

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#9: Insult Master

From: Aqua Teen Hunger Force

It's no secret that Aqua Teen Hunger Force's adorable ball of ground beef, Meatwad, loves video games as much as he does floating in the above ground pool of his flip-flop, sweats, and wifebeater-donning New Jersey neighbor Carl. In one episode, Meatwad becomes terrorized by a pixilated ghost in a video game called Video Ouija on his Atari 2600-like console. But the most memorable game featured in an episode of ATHF is undoubtedly Insult Master. In the game, two players face off in a verbal war of humiliating attacks and 'yo momma' jokes devoid of punch-lines in order to ultimately set their opponent ablaze. The game's incredibly stupid, but that's kind of the point, and it's terribly amusing to watch Meatwad having the time of his life with Insult Master.

#8: BoneStorm

From: The Simpsons

Numerous fictional video games have appeared on The Simpsons over the many years it has aired, such as Billy Graham's Bible Blaster, where you blast heathens with a bible-launching gun. Several others have also shown up in episodes like Lee Caravallo's Putting Challenge, but one game from the show stands out from the rest and it's the over-the-top Mortal Kombat spoof BoneStorm. The biggest reason we picked this faux game over others that have emerged out of The Simpsons is because an entire episode, "Marge Be Not Proud," was dedicated to BoneStorm. Bart first learns about BoneStorm in a hilarious commercial that shows two three-armed Goro lookalikes beating the life out of each other as severed limbs rain down from the sky. Bart's so impressed by the game, which Marge refuses to buy, that he eventually steals the game. We think the lesson from the episode is that allowing your children to play God of War and Resident Evil is preferable to having them to grow up to be criminal.

#7: Presidential Assassin

From: Strangers With Candy

Arcades may be almost dead. While that's a shame in general, it sucks even worse because specialized cabinet games like Silent Scope aren't even close to the same on consoles. Perhaps, if arcades were still at their height in popularity, we'd actually get a chance to see a game like Presidental Assassin. Sure, it's about a dicey topic like murdering the leader of our country, but since the game's featured presidents are long dead (and more importantly, not by a snipers bullet) it wouldn't be too offensive. Heck, there's a game out there that lets you recreate the Kennedy shooting, so this is pretty tame in comparison.

#6: eXistenZ

From: eXistenZ

From movies about people who get sexually aroused by witnessing horrible car wrecks and another about a mother who births demonic homicidal midgets, film director David Cronenberg has been responsible for some real bizarre things during his career. In his 1999 flick eXistenZ, a big shot game designer -- the Cliffy B of this film's world -- is showing off a revolutionary new video game to a group of QA testers. The game, called eXistenZ, combines virtual reality with the most disturbing video game controller ever conceived, which looks like a warped mound of flesh covered in giant nipples. Another strange thing about the game itself is the weapon Jude Law's character uses, a gun fashioned entirely out of chicken bones.

#5: Global Thermonuclear War

From: WarGames

The "game" featured in the irresistibly cheesy 80s film WarGames is a diabolical hackers wet dream come true. In the movie, a character played by a young Matthew Broderick stumbles upon what he thinks is a top secret new video game, but is in fact a high-tech government tool used to simulate what would happen in a real nuclear holocaust. Once Broderick's character begins to play the game, all hell breaks loose as the government thinks a real attack on Las Vegas is happening, which raises the Defcon level and makes everyone in Washington crap their pants. WarGames' Global Thermonuclear War brings up an interesting question, one that asks what would happen if playing games, whether it's Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty, had an actual impact on the real world.

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