help me find a particular website that previously appeared on metafilter...

September 14, 2009 10:49 AM

help me find a particular website that previously appeared on metafilter...

Hi, I feel like a total n00b asking this...

recently (within maybe the last 12 months I guess) there was a post on metafilter. The post was about a website that had a collection of fictional writeups on nonexistent games (i.e. reviews of games that don't exist). I think *most* of these fictional reviews were about computer/video/electronic games, but some might not have been.

One review in question sticks out: it discussed a fictional disk-based computer game that you could only play once, there were no published rules or instructions for the game, and at the end of the game it would erase the disk, and (according to the fictional article) remaining copies of this game were now extremely rare.

Can you direct me to the metafilter post and/or the website in question?

My feeble google-fu, and metafilter-search-fu, come up short.

Yes I'm a n00b. I'm sorry.

posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey to media & arts (8 comments total)

Where's the Egg? and other wonderful fake flash games.
posted by ocherdraco at 10:54 AM on September 14

And if that is indeed the thread you're looking for, I did a Mefi search restricted to the blue for "fake game" (no quotes).
posted by ocherdraco at 10:55 AM on September 14

Hi,
Unfortunately that wasn't the site (thanks anyway). At the site in question, the fictional reviews weren't in a comic style (and it had a black background).
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 11:02 AM on September 14

One review in question sticks out: it discussed a fictional disk-based computer game that you could only play once, there were no published rules or instructions for the game, and at the end of the game it would erase the disk, and (according to the fictional article) remaining copies of this game were now extremely rare.

Yeah, I remember that one too. I think the plot was something about wandering through an abandoned coal mine in a former USSR country. There were several characters in the game, one of which was a ghost that was completely useless because the controls didn't work, but the other characters would all eventually die due to lack of oxygen. It turned out that there was some secret trick to using the ghost character, which was how the real game could be unlocked, but eventually the whole game would erase itself after some sort of gameplay timer ran out. I tried some Google searches on the blue but so far I haven't been able to find it.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:09 AM on September 14

Yeah, I remember that one too. I think the plot was something about wandering through an abandoned coal mine in a former USSR country. There were several characters in the game, one of which was a ghost that was completely useless because the controls didn't work, but the other characters would all eventually die due to lack of oxygen. It turned out that there was some secret trick to using the ghost character, which was how the real game could be unlocked, but eventually the whole game would erase itself after some sort of gameplay timer ran out. I tried some Google searches on the blue but so far I haven't been able to find it.

Yes!
that's it... now if we can just find the website...
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 11:13 AM on September 14

Invisible Games, maybe?
posted by rokusan at 12:00 PM on September 14

Yeah, that's the one. Here's the FPP and the game description that thermonuclear.jive.turkey and I remembered.
posted by burnmp3s at 12:06 PM on September 14

Brilliant! Thank you.
[website bookmarked]
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 12:43 PM on September 14