Traveling through video games
There are many games set in real places, allowing us to travel and get to know in detail monuments built several years ago, even some that no longer exist today.
The history of video games is relatively young since although it is difficult to locate the exact date of creation of the first video game, depending on the definition of the video game, they can be dated to the 1950s.
We can consider the birth of video games when the Ferranti company created “Nimrod”, a computer created exclusively to play NIM, the first game with a visual element. Or maybe we’ll consider creating the first video game a little later when Alexander S. Douglas created OXO, the first tic-tac-toe and the first game to use a digital screen.
How many of these digital sites have you actually visited?
Video games were created as an element of leisure and personal rest, however throughout their short history they have gained other functions: group entertainment or even educational tools.
Within this last category we are going to elaborate more on the historical point of view since many video games take advantage of places or monuments of real life to set their stories and within this concept we have many examples.
Tetris
Game created by the Soviet engineer Alexey Pajitnov and the monument that appears both within the game and in the design of the cover is Saint Basil’s Cathedral located next to Red Square in Moscow. Fun fact this monument is similar to another located in Saint Petersburg: the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood in Saint Petersburg.
Pang
The game Pang, created in 1989, is in itself a travel map since through its screens you can visit 2D monuments around the world:
Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya, the Emerald Temple in Thailand, Mount Fuji in Japan, the Temple of Angkor in Cambodia, Big Ben in England, the Holy Family in Spain, the Elysian fields in France or the Taj Mahal itself in India.
Saga Assasin’s Creed
The Assassin’s Creed saga is a game, as announced in the introduction: “Inspired by historical events and characters. This fictional game has been designed, developed and produced by a multicultural group of diverse religions, creeds and ideologies”. The various installments are set in different places and times so it is a brilliant source of examples of places that exist in real life as it travels through territories from Renaissance Italy to the London of the industrial revolution through Greece, Rome and Egypt. in the most critical moments of their empires:
Assasin’s Creed La hermandad:
The Pantheon of Agrippa, also known as the Pantheon of Rome is an architectural marvel of antiquity. Built in 27 BC. It has the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.
Assasin’s Creed Odyssey:
The Parthenon in Athens: Built in the 5th century BC. It is the best known Greek temple in the world. However throughout its history it has suffered several setbacks and demolitions in such a way that although its structure is preserved, part of the original design has been lost, which we can instead appreciate in the video game.
Assasin’s Creed Unity:
Set in the time of the French Revolution, we will not find the Eiffel Tower in this game (since it began to be built in 1887), however we can admire another of the most famous buildings in Paris: Notre Dame Cathedral. Currently closed for renovations caused by the 2019 fire, you can always visit it in video games. The developers of this adventure title spent 5,000 hours rebuilding the cathedral in virtually every detail.
Watch Dogs 2
The San Francisco Bridge is a recurring element in many video games set directly in this city or in fictional versions of it (for example, The Grand Theft Auto San Andreas), but they usually retain the characteristic “Golden Gate”.
Spiderman de Marvel
Within this game you will be able to travel all the nooks and crannies of New York City, from the Empire State Building to the Brooklyn Bridge itself. Boaters warning: some things differ from reality, if you go to the city, do not expect to find the Daily Bugle.
