Help Me Invent a Fake, Extremely Boring Video Game

The Game Room
1

My kids have been agitating for a 3DS, and this Xmas my wife is giving in. But I also want to prank them with a fake boring 3DS game. I’m going to buy them a real game but put it in a fake package.

This thread got my juices flowing, but I want something that would so offend a 9-year-old’s sense of fun that tears could ensue.

Some ideas:

Extreme Lawnmowing
Social Studies: The Video Game (narration by Professor Henry Dullson)
After Dinner (be the first to get your plate to the sink!!)
Sit Quietly
Busride 3D
Grocery Shopping
Pet Care (who can get that litter box gleaming?)
Ideas for cover art will also be gratefully accepted.

2

OK. You have two paddles, a net line, and a ball…

…oh wait.

3

Walk it Out! 3DS. Yeah! You’re walking!

Maybe that doesn’t count, since it’s a real Wii game. But maybe that would make it easier to gen up the label.

ETA: If you can casually get them to see the Wii game in the store, it would help sell it when they open it up.

4

The Sims 3*:** Sleeping.*

5

Why not just mock up a cover for Desert Bus.

It’s a real game, so if they google it, they’ll find a real website for it:

6

Thinking back to being nine and the things that made me almost die of boredom:

Math in Church
Have fun with multiplication, division, subtraction and addition - as you listen to the sermon, score points adding the verse number to the hymn number and dividing by the chapter.

What else…

Room Tidy 3D
TransPacific Rower
SuperMax Endurance - Realtime

7

How about a game called Let’s Make Coffee, and the cover would show some banker types standing beside a coffee pot.

I’ve noticed that kids always find adults’ obsession with coffee to be boring and incomprehensible.

8

Math homework helper, 3.0!

Housepainter Pro (eggshell white edition)

9

Square Dancing Hero

10

Mario Karts Text Adventure!

You are on a cart facing east. The track goes east and west.

11

Sitar Hero

12

Time-Teller! (Always know the exact time, wherever you are. Two fomats to choose from - Digital OR Analog!)

13

I think something educational (like the OP’s Social Studies: The Video Game) would be most likely to fool the kid, since parents really do buy their kids educational games.

14

Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of game they would expect from me, and one they would really react to. Once I took them to a 45-minute Civil War lecture at a public library, and my older son literally cried when recalling the lecture months later.

I like what I am hearing so far, except that my younger boy really would enjoy a video game where you make coffee (he loves coffee and has an offbeat sense of humor) and my older son would probably go for anything economics or money-related. But anything historical would drive them nuts.

15

Let’s Learn Russian! Здравствулте! камрад!

16

Optometrist 2

17

Well, as far as real boring games go, there’s always The Cow Clicker, but your kids might actually be excited to get that as a present…

18

Lets Break Grandma’s Hip
Go Fish! The Video Game

19

“Desert Bus 3D” was my first thought. :smiley:

How about “The Domesday Book”? You play a tax assessor in a simulation of 11th Century England. There could even be a sequel, “The Domesday Book: Death and Taxes”, which deals exclusively with inheritance taxes. (I actually poked around a bit and found that William the Conqueror effectively brought inheritance taxes with him to England.)

20

NPR story.