Video games featuring food?

October 28, 2011 9:02 AM

Video games featuring food?

I want to put together a small online quiz (10-12 questions). Each question would be a cropped screenshot of a food item in a video game.

Obviously, the food should have some significance in the game and not just be a random item.

So far, I'm thinking of Burger Time (food as characters), Pac-Man (food as a scoring mechanism), Gauntlet (food as a health powerup). I'm trying to think of a game where food features in the level design itself and am drawing a complete blank... Drink items work, too, and I'm considering Nuka-Cola from Fallout.

I'd like the games to span from around 8bit era to now and encompass various devices. Must have been published in North America. The difficulty level will be mixed.

posted by Wossname to sports, hobbies, & recreation (54 answers total)

Cake, in Portal.
posted by gnomeloaf at 9:04 AM on October 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Cooking Mama?
posted by hoboynow at 9:05 AM on October 28, 2011

Harvest Moon series
posted by EatTheWeak at 9:06 AM on October 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Lon Lon Milk from Ocarina of Time.

I'm looking forward to seeing this on Sporcle.
posted by theodolite at 9:08 AM on October 28, 2011

Lots of mall food in Dead Rising and its sequel.
posted by dismas at 9:08 AM on October 28, 2011

Diner Dash (and all the spinoffs), Cake Mania.
posted by davar at 9:08 AM on October 28, 2011

Just about every Final Fight-derivative side scrolling beat-em-up in the 90s had Food on the ground as health powerups. Off the top of my head, Streets of Rage 2 had apples and entire roasted turkeys. Every Ninja Turtles game ever had pizza in it serving the same function. Turtles In Time, for instance, had both slices and entire (boxed) pies.

Tapper was a game revolving around serving beer. Root Beer Tapper was the same game, but more family-friendly. I'm almost entirely sure there was a Budweiser-branded version of Tapper made.

There's a level in Earthworm Jim called "Intenstinal Distress" that takes place in, well, intestines. Also, I could've sworn there was a level made of Spaghetti and Meatballs or Italian food or something in either EJ or EJ2.

Most of Little Nemo for the NES involved feeding animals candy so you could ride them and use their abilities. As nemo himself, you didn't get any other power until way later in the game. Snoopy's Olympics for the NES (talk about obscure) had a minigame where you had to balance a giant stack of pizza boxes.
posted by griphus at 9:10 AM on October 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

Oh! Super Mario Bros. 2 had turnips all over the damn place.
posted by griphus at 9:12 AM on October 28, 2011

A Boy and His Blob on the NES - feed the blob different jelly beans, unleash different blob powers.
posted by EatTheWeak at 9:12 AM on October 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

The seafood cake from Parappa the Rapper, of course!
posted by yellowcandy at 9:12 AM on October 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Wizard needs food, badly.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:14 AM on October 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

Katamari Damacy features levels loaded with food items, but they're just part of the larger goal: to get all of the things in the universe, ever.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 9:15 AM on October 28, 2011

You feed stars to the Lumas in Super Mario Galaxy.
posted by dpx.mfx at 9:15 AM on October 28, 2011

Bonk got power-ups from meat.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:16 AM on October 28, 2011

Most RPGs have food items at some point, either as a health powerup, or as a quest item. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and TES IV: Oblivion both feature a number of in-game food items (including S'Jirra's Potato Bread; some items are naturally in the game, some are buyable from vendors, and some may be crafted through alchemy.

Many MMORPGS like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI and XIV, etc feature complex crafting systems where players can create not only weapons and armor, but food items as well. In some games, certain food items are sort of an in-joke, or are well known, and would be recognizable to fans of that particular game.
posted by xedrik at 9:16 AM on October 28, 2011

Also, there's Soda Popinski/Vodka Drunkinski from Punch-Out!!
posted by griphus at 9:16 AM on October 28, 2011

How about Gourmet Gaming?
posted by ringu0 at 9:16 AM on October 28, 2011

Mr. Wimpy on ZX Spectrum and Comodore 64. You had to create hamburgers and avoid the cultery. Aaah, memories.
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 9:18 AM on October 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Toejam & Earl
posted by episodic at 9:20 AM on October 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I see now that Mr. Wimpy was related to, and is almost the same game as Burger Time you mentioned.
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 9:21 AM on October 28, 2011

nethack [spoiler alert]
posted by yaymukund at 9:22 AM on October 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

There are also some cherries in A Boy and his Blob.
posted by peep at 9:22 AM on October 28, 2011

Grog, from the Monkey Island series. It's part of a number of puzzles in different games in the series, and is an integral part of the games' milieu. Related images.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 9:29 AM on October 28, 2011

Root Beer Tapper
posted by gnutron at 9:31 AM on October 28, 2011

Yoshi eats berries in Super Mario World
posted by wongcorgi at 9:31 AM on October 28, 2011

Super Meat Boy's main character is... well, meat.
posted by backseatpilot at 9:32 AM on October 28, 2011

Ladybug (vegetables).
posted by mazola at 9:39 AM on October 28, 2011

The Castlevania games often have food that the characters use to recover HP.
posted by Anima Mundi at 9:41 AM on October 28, 2011

Food Fight
posted by mazola at 9:42 AM on October 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

The deliciously weird Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom.
posted by CutaneousRabbit at 9:42 AM on October 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

There were a couple of levels in World of Illusion
posted by episodic at 9:43 AM on October 28, 2011

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and GTA4 (and maybe some of the others, I can't remember) have in-game fast-food restaurants. Or, if you want a somewhat harder one, so does Crazy Taxi.

Level design's a little tougher. Maybe something like an Arkanoid or Bubble Bobble kind of game--I bet one of those has a level shaped like something edible.
posted by box at 9:48 AM on October 28, 2011

Fast Food
posted by mazola at 9:55 AM on October 28, 2011

Damn. The “Must have been published in North America” stipulation totally kills the brilliantly insane Apple Jam for the Sinclair Spectrum. The original instructions explain the gameplay:

Eat as much jam as you can and as many apples as you can without getting too fat, otherwise you'll have a fit and lose one of your pills; but you haven't got many so jump into the sauna to slim off, but while you're in there the tiny rat will eat the jam and the apples you miss and get big and bold and come up to bite you dead, but you can jump into the lift to go up and down. So if your timing is right you can squash the rat and get on with eating to increase your score to release rat bait to keep the rat tiny, but beware the hornet zooming past (to be avoided at all costs) by jumping into the sauna, otherwise it will sting you dead and the ambulance will come to take you away.

It's still one of the most compelling twitch games I've ever played. And that hunchbacked rat!
posted by scruss at 9:55 AM on October 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

If (ridiculously popular) Flash games count, Sushi Cat loves him some Sushi. There's a sequel as well.
posted by Rallon at 9:57 AM on October 28, 2011

The main plot of Parappa the Rapper 2 was about every food being transformed into noodles.

In Skullmonkeys, Klayman gains the "fart" ability by eating beans. (cutscene) There's a few other weird instances of food in other cutscenes: a sandwich as bait, a message potato.

Wipeout XL prominently featured advertisements for Red Bull.
posted by aubilenon at 9:58 AM on October 28, 2011

Oh, also, bananas! gorilla.bas or Mario Kart.
posted by aubilenon at 10:01 AM on October 28, 2011

The backstory of Megamania for the Atari 2600 was that you were on a spaceship, and you fell asleep after eating a space pizza and a pint of space ice-cream, and it gave you nightmares that your ship was under attack by flying space hamburgers and assorted other crudely rendered space objects.
posted by dirtdirt at 10:12 AM on October 28, 2011

On the more recent, iPhone game front, Fruit Ninja is about nothing but chopping fruit with a sword.
posted by drjimmy11 at 10:18 AM on October 28, 2011

Minecraft: there is hunting, farming and cooking.
posted by Akke at 10:29 AM on October 28, 2011

For your ultra-hard, ultra-obscure one, go with Snacks' n Jackson, the game about a clown that has to bounce his nose off his face while eating food that shoots out of the walls. Extrememly trippy.
posted by cosmicbandito at 10:29 AM on October 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

There are hunting and fishing games (besides Duck Hunt, Cabela's sponsors some more modern ones). Or, for a hard fishing game, how about the wildly underrated Game Boy title Legend of the River King?

Plenty of food in the various Wario Ware titles too.
posted by box at 10:35 AM on October 28, 2011

Did somebody say bananas? Super Monkey Ball!
posted by box at 10:36 AM on October 28, 2011

Donkey Kong Country. Donkey Kong having his bananas stolen starts the entire game off.

I remember a lot of food related stuff going on in Earthbound, but I don't remember if any of it was really integral to the game except as items.

Also, I thought given the huge amount of enemies in the Mega Man universe one of them might be food based. The closest I found was "Gryo Man" which isn't the right kind of gyro, but maybe you can work that in as a pun answer?
posted by Green With You at 10:36 AM on October 28, 2011

One of my all-time favorite Atari 2600 games was the unjustly-forgotten, never-sequelized Pressure Cooker. As far as burger-making games go, Pressure Cooker was a much better simulation of working in a fast-food restaurant than Burger Time, which was just Donkey Kong-with-a-chef.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:42 AM on October 28, 2011

Super Mario Bros. 2's turnips are interesting that they are really "food as weapon".
posted by mmascolino at 10:52 AM on October 28, 2011

In Deus Ex: Human Revolution there are Cyberboost Proenergy Bars you can purchase and also find lying around in various places. These bars refill one of your "batteries" that your augments use to perform many tasks and in some cases whether or not you use these boosting bars your options for handling certain tasks in a level change - e.g. without multiple full battery cells cloaking isn't all that useful, nor can you do multiple takedowns in a row. It's possible to play the game all the way through without eating a single bar, but you have to rely on stealth a lot more if you do and some tasks that would be quick and straightforward become more complex and convoluted.
posted by barc0001 at 11:06 AM on October 28, 2011

The Meat Circus is a charcuterie-themed level in Psychonauts.

I think the health power-ups in Wolfenstein 3D are pretty iconic, as are the food-related items in Commander Keen.

One of the more memorable levels in Kirby's Epic Yarn, from a visual standpoint, was Treat Land.
posted by aparrish at 12:28 PM on October 28, 2011

The Sierra game Battle Bugs featured various food items as part of the terrain.
posted by eruonna at 12:37 PM on October 28, 2011

In Glitch, there are foods that give a buff such as Butterfly Milk which you can sniff, shake and drink. Some of the drinks are also very colorful and give various buffs, such as the Flaming Humbaba.
posted by Wuggie Norple at 3:32 PM on October 28, 2011

There's a lot of food in the Sims games, since your Sims have to eat, just like people.

In Sims 3, the birthday cake is probably the most high-profile/most recognizable food. Pancakes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and Ambrosia would be other obvious choices.
posted by ErikaB at 3:56 PM on October 28, 2011

Little Big Planet 2 has a character named Eve that has an apple (with a bite taken out!) for a head.
posted by Zarya at 7:00 PM on October 28, 2011

Team Fortress 2 has half a dozen food items, the most iconic being the mighty sandvich.
posted by kprincehouse at 12:34 AM on October 29, 2011

I am embarrassed at how many iconic food items I completely forgot about (Cake? Sandvich? I am the worst Valve fanboy ever). So many good answers, I'll maybe expand my quiz a bit...
posted by Wossname at 9:49 AM on October 29, 2011