# OK, what's up with the slanted elevators in video games?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [May 15, 2005, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913 "2005-05-15T06:06:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@user\_v1.05](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_v1.05)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2005, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913/21 "2005-05-16T04:53:07Z")
Several years ago, I worked as a security guard at a large furniture factory. They had actually put in a large “slanted elevator” for transporting couches and stuff from the actual factory floor (the furniture was finished on the third floor of the factory) to the ground floor of an adjacent storage building. This one was actually the size of those seen in video games. Several smaller “slanted elevators” were also scattered throughout the building and used to transport the furniture to the top of the building as they were gradually assembled. These could probably only hold one or two large couches at a time.
They were actually a pretty good diversion at 3:00 in the morning during the hourly rounds.
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### Author:  [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2005, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913/22 "2005-05-16T06:46:25Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> While there are real-life inclined railways (I’ve been up and down the Johnstown one many times), they’re always in places where you already have the slope for some good reason, like the side of a mountain or the shaft of a mine. If they were practical for factories, warehouses and the like (which is where video games almost always put them), then you’d see them in real factories, which you don’t. I’d guess that it’s just easier to build vertical elevators. Even if it’s carrying a lot of weight, you can just use twice as many cables, or twice as thick, for a lot cheaper than eating a lot of floor space and steel girders constructing a slanted one.
Well, in half life, a couple of the slanted elevators are carrying vehicles, Tanks in particular. Can you design traditional elevators capable of doing the same?
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### Author:  [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2005, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913/23 "2005-05-16T06:48:06Z")
> [@Meeko](#):
>
> Didnt The Simpsons (Coin-op/Arcade) have one? TMNT? XMEN? Arcades?
>
> Whats the point of showing an elevator unless something “non-elevatorish” can happen?
I’m pretty sure TMNT had one towards the end, but I can’t remember if the simpsons did.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2005, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913/24 "2005-05-16T21:30:50Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Well, in half life, a couple of the slanted elevators are carrying vehicles, Tanks in particular. Can you design traditional elevators capable of doing the same?
I don’t see why not. You might want to give the elevator doors on both sides, to make it easier to drive off, and they’d have to be able to handle the weight, but these are both challanges which normal vertical elevators seem to deal with just fine.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2005, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913/25 "2005-05-16T21:57:13Z")
> [@Jayn\_Newell](#):
>
> There’s one on the airship in FFX & X-2. I’m also pretty sure that there was one in the movie _Akira_ as well.
There is one in one of those Armitage anime movies.
They are sometimes called ‘inclinators’. Unlike an elevator that gets pulled up by cables or pushed hydraulicaly, an inclinator seems more like a flatbed rail car locked into tracks in the inclined shaft. The car “climbs” up and down the shaft instead of being suspended in it. Theoretically, it can lift a much heavier weight since the shaft slope bears a portion of the load, instead of just the cables.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2005, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913/26 "2005-05-16T22:00:08Z")
> [@HPL](#):
>
> Well, in half life, a couple of the slanted elevators are carrying vehicles, Tanks in particular. Can you design traditional elevators capable of doing the same?
There are vertical hydraulic elevators on aircraft carriers than can lift at least as much as a tank.
The other think I forgot to mention is those “inclinators” in the videogames/anime usually descend great distances. If you are making an elevator that drops a mile into the earth, that’s a lot of cable which can stretch and break.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2005, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913/27 "2005-05-16T22:20:50Z")
> [@Scumpup](#):
>
> We have something in real life very similar here in Pittsburgh. [The Incline.](http://web.presby.edu/~jtbell/transit/Pittsburgh/Inclines/) Other than the cars being enclosed, they aren’t different in concept from what you see in the video games. Johnstown PA [has one too.](http://www.inclinedplane.com/)
If that’s what we’re talking about, they’re called also called funiculars, or incline railways.
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### Author:  [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2005, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913/28 "2005-05-17T01:28:40Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> There are vertical hydraulic elevators on aircraft carriers than can lift at least as much as a tank.
>
> .
DOH! I had forgotten about that.
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2005, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913/29 "2005-05-17T01:31:11Z")
> [@HPL](#):
>
> Escape from Castle Wolfenstien has one at the Dam.
Did you mean **Return** to Castle Wolfenstein?
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### Author:  [@Boarder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boarder)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2005, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913/30 "2005-05-17T02:01:12Z")
I may be misremembering, but I’m fairly certain Xenogears had one of these as well.
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### Author:  [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2005, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-whats-up-with-the-slanted-elevators-in-video-games/303913/31 "2005-05-17T02:48:06Z")
> [@tracer](#):
>
> Did you mean **Return** to Castle Wolfenstein?
I did. I don’t know why I wrote “Escape” from Castle Wolfenstein.
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