The Game Come to Life: Difference between revisions

* ''Ender's Game'' by Orson Scott Card might also count.

* '''Only You Can Save Mankind''' ''(if not you, who else?)'', the first in the Johnny Maxwell trilogy by [[Terry Pratchett]] features the young hero discovering that the aliens in a game are real, and are being killed by everyone who plays. Also features the now-extinct race of [[Space Invaders]],

* Most definitely ''not'' played for laughs in another short story, ''Is This Real Enough'' by Lisanne Norman. It's set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]], and the ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' stand-in presented uses virtual reality technology, so the main characters don't even know they're inside the game until {{spoiler|they discover they don't respawn when killed.}}

* ''Albion's Dream'', essentially ''Jumanji'' before ''Jumanji'', had a variant of this. The game, a highly surreal and metaphorical board game, didn't pull anyone in. Instead, each of the character cards looked suspiciously like someone the main characters knew, and what happened to the characters happened to those people. There was some degree of in-universe argument over whether the possibility of changing lives for the better was worth risking the wrath of the [[Random Number God]], not to mention what would happen if anyone fulfilled the alternate win condition by reaching the never-explored center of the board. {{spoiler|In regard to the former: bad idea, especially when they encounter the fellow who's on the Death card. In regard to the latter: [[Aladdin (Disney film)|PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER]]! However, getting to the center was a [[Luck-Based Mission]], and was only managed by cheating, which turned out not to "count."}}

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* The [[UPN]] series ''[[Deadly Games]]'' had an explosion bring the villains from a programmer's homemade video game to life, and he is forced to play his own game for real.

* ''[[Stargate SG-1|Stargate SG 1]]'' had an episode in which Teal'c and Daniel are trapped in a VR combat simulator. Each simulated "death" brings them closer to having real heart attacks.

* ''[[SeaQuest DSV|Sea Quest DSV]]'' had an episode in which mecha fighting in a post-apocalyptic future were controlled by kids playing video games.

* In an episode of ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]'', Meatwad plays a video game that, like [[The Last Starfighter]], is a test to find the person who can defeat the Gorgotron and save all of the moon's <s> craps</s> crops. Of course in reality it's just a ploy by Ignignokt and Err to find suckers for their MLM scam.

* The cast of ''[[Futurama]]'' become characters in a [[Dungeons and Dragons]] game world in the direct-to-DVD movie ''Bender's Game.'' (Since it was a world imagined by Bender, it was ''sort of'' a video game too.)

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==