We’ve seen virtually every other imaginable story where some fantastic menace of one kind or another wreaks havok on an unsuspecting populace. How about having a monster from a well-known video game turn up- where people recognize that it is indeed from a video game, and are freaked to see it somehow impossibly be real?
Actually, a large number of video game monsters aren’t much more formidable than an armed homicidal maniac. They’re dangerous in video games because you’re usually on your own, retreat isn’t an option, there are hundreds, if not limitless numbers of them, and weapons and ammo are often limited. Most of the ones in games I’ve played could be hunted down and killed by reasonably alert and prepared defense forces, provided the monsters didn’t have limitless reenforcements either from teleporting, respawning or parasitizing victims. One major exception that comes to mind is:
It’s a fairly typical day in Anytown USA. In the heart of downtown car and pedestrian traffic are going about their business. Suddenly in the middle of a busy street there’s a flare of greenish light. And standing there fifteen feet tall is The Cyberdemon, from the original Doom. For many unlucky bystanders, it’s loud low-pitched “RRUUUUUHRRRH!” as it spots humans to slay is the last thing they’ll ever hear. Chaos breaks out and hundreds die as it’s rocket launcher slaughters everyone in sight.
The police get called and the first units on the scene perish under the monster’s overwhelming firepower. Eventually a surviving officer contacts his superiors and manages to get across that “there’s a freakin’ MONSTER KILLING EVERYONE! Call the GODDAMN ARMY!! We need ARTILLARY!” S.W.A.T. teams are mobilized but they fare no better: automatic rifles do little but annoy the creature, and scores more officer bravely but futilely die.
Eventually the local National Guard units arrive on the scene. They discover to their horror that the monster is even deadlier than they thought. It somehow can produce limitless rocket rounds from within itself, maintaining an incredibly rapid rate of fire. The rockets it fires travel in perfectly straight lines unaffected by gravity, with limitless range; helicopters hovering a thousand feet up and a mile away are shot out of the sky. The monster seems to instantly know the position of any human within line of sight with it, and it has perfect aim. People a mile away from it suddenly find themselve under a barrage of missiles. The handful of soldiers who live long enough to get within grenade launcher or shoulder launched rocket range of the creature are appalled to see it take explosions that would rip an armored car open with seemingly no damage. (The defenders can’t know that in fact they are inflicting harm on it- it’s just that until it’s last drop of life energy is expended it can instantly regenerate from any wounds. By this time it’s lost 2/3 to 3/4 of it’s original HP but this doesn’t slow it at all.)
Finally heavy artillery arrives in the form of tanks and APCs mounting heavy machine guns. They take losses from the Cyberdemon’s rockets but are at last able to inflict enough damage upon the creature to kill it. Whatever internal magazine serves as the source of it’s ammunition explodes, leaving behind little except gore and the large metal hoof of it’s mechanical leg. Hundreds, if not thousands have died, footage of the rampage floods the world media, and a small army of federal agents descend upon Id Software, to be met by another small army of lawyers.
Actually, if the rockets travel in straight lines, helicopters a reasonable distance away wouldn’t have too much trouble avoiding them if they saw them coming. To paraphrase Christopher Titus… when the shit hits the fan… step to the side of the fan.
Other than that, yeah, Cyberdemon in the middle of Downtown Anytown, USA would be bad.
How about the Xen aliens from Half Life? Many of them are individually rather weak or slow (Headcrabs would lurk in dark places and air vents, leaping at unsuspecting victims ala facehuggers to turn them into Zombies, most of whom are lumbering and slow, although faster varieties do exist. None show effective use of weapons, although at least one variety of Zombie does use Headcrabs as a ranged weapon, throwing them at its enemies. In a conventional confrontation, a prepared military force would be able to handle most of what Xen has to throw at them, but the problem is that the Xen do not attack in a conventional way. They teleport in, seemingly at random, turning any particular place into the front line, whether it be out in an open field of battle, in a supply depot or command center, or possibly even a shelter for evacuating civilians. A Xen invasion would cause mass chaos amongst the defenders and would be difficult to deal with. Pretty much the only chance of success would be if some MIT postgrad happened across a crowbar and a highly advanced powered protective exosuit, AND was aided by a lovable minimum-wage smartass security guard who considered beer to be acceptable currency for paying off life debts.
I went in to the Doom movie praying that this was pretty much what was going to happen. You should be hired as writer, cause i would see that shit repeatedly. You could throw a swarm of lesser enemies in there just for the hell of it. Some of the Half-Life monsters would be pretty kick-ass.
How about the storyline from Oblivion happening in real life. Gates to a hellish dimension spewing Daedra and assorted demons out, who burn cities to the ground. Video game nerds would be racing to find the glass daedric armor
I had a discussion with my girlfriend about what would it be like if you suddenly had all of the abilities, in real life, of your character from Obvlion. Anyone who was rude to either of us would have to deal with a Storm Atronach. That brings it in line with the OP. I can picture an argument between strangers breaking out at the mall and then, poof, a Storm Atronach appears. Deal with that!
Lavos was supposed to erupt from the Earth’s crust in A.D. 1999 and usher in the apocalypse, turning the world into a gray, wind swept wasteland where the few remaining survivors of humanity are slowly picked off by mutants. Maybe she’s sleeping in?
It’d be bad news if the Zerg showed up. We’d run out of nukes trying to halt their descent into our atmosphere. That, or we’d end up nuking entire continents to save ourselves. But it wouldn’t matter, since the Zerg’s swarms never end. We would become one with Kerrigan.
One of my personal favorites- “Raiders of the Lost Arcade,” written by David X. Cohen for Anthology of Interest II (*Futurama’s attempt at a Treehouse of Horror-style trilogy of stories). I’ll be on Adult Swim as part of their final marathon at 2:30 AM (it’s the second story). A brief description follows:
Fry wonders what his life was like if it was like a video game. His vision begins with a scene from Asteroids, the ship being revealed to be the equivalent in this world to the Planet Express ship. After their “mission,” the crew watches as Earth President Nixon signs a peace treaty with Ambassador Kong of Nintendu LXIV.
Fry: “Wait a second, I know that monkey. His name is Donkey!”
Professor: “Monkeys aren’t donkeys. Quit messing with my head!”
Rather than sign the treaty, Kong escapes and climbs to the top of the Earth UN building. Italian ambassador Mario realizes that “the cruel meatball of war has rolled onto our laps.” At Milatari headquarters, Fry is sent to defeat the space invaders due to his video game prowess. The crew follows General Colin Pacman to the site where the invaders (possibly from space) are destroying New New York.
Lrrr: “Tremble in fear at our three different kinds of ships!”
Fry: “All right. It’s Saturday night. I have no date, a two-liter bottle of Shasta, and my all-Rush mix tape. Let’s rock!”
Fry does well (even going so far as firing through his own shield- he’s a madman!) until one ship is left only- he could never get that one and had his brother do it for him. War Over. The Nintendians land. “Instead of shooting where I was, you should have shot at where I was going to be!” The aliens give their demands- quarters! A million allowances worth of quarters! The humans refuse, so the aliens give their final demand- just throw their laundry in with the humans.
Cohen recently wrote about the episode for Wired. (According to Cohen, he was also inspired by an idea he had for Space Invaders: The Movie.) You’ve read it, you can’t un-read it!
But for me, the ultimate worst-case scenario for a video game creature invading our world would be Sinistar. Who wouldn’t be frightened to see a giant ship with a skull head decend upon the earth with his voice echoing “BEWARE! I LIVE!”?
The gag for the Futurama ep. was that life was just like a video game, and the gang had to deal with Invaders…from Space! Fry, since he had played the original game, was the obvious choice to kill all the invading ships (piloted by the Omicron Perseii 8 aliens), but he couldn’t get the last, fastest ship. Also had Donkey Kong and Q-Bert in cameos.
That whole segment was filled with 1980s video game refs. The robot from Berzerk, the fired egg from Burger Time, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, Centipede, the tank from Battlezone, etc.
Nah, I disagree that Cyberdemon (or any other oversized demon/alien/robot boss from FPS) would be real trouble. I mean, sure, they have a lot of firepower. But apart from that, they are just big, slow moving targets. And they have to see enemy to unleash they arsenal. Couple of howitzers ten miles downtown or low flying F-15 with couple of 500 pound bombs and they are dead meat before they can say “Whats going on, why am I exploding?!”
Now Zerg… I, for one, welcome our new Zerg overlords.
Heck, one circle-strafing marine with a 9mm pistol and a shitload of bullets could take him down. Aside from the first round of civilian casualties, there wouldn’t even be that much damage from the fight. The Cyberdemon’s missiles don’t have any effect on buildings. They don’t even leave any burn marks.
reminds me of an episode of Buffy where a nigh-invincible demon was attacking, and could not be destroyed by any weapon forged by man… at least during the middle ages. Buffy takes aim with an anti tank rocket, and the demons last words are “Whats that thing do?”
Any of the enemies from the classic wave games, the ones that never end but just get faster and harder as time goes by. “Space Invaders” is a prime example: We could convert anything and everything into a weapon and still lose simply due to sheer force of numbers and the fact one craft touching down anywhere on Earth means defeat. The only hope is for the universe to glitch after level 255, but that isn’t an improvement given that it would likely end everything anyway.
How about Tetris: The world is suddenly menaced by indestructible gravity-defying tetrominoes falling from space. Again, the game has no end.
