About 20% of my dreams are about videogames. Some of them classic, many on the arcade, some of them new, but the majority are about games that have never existed. Two nights ago I had one of the most vivid game dreams I've had in a while.
Now you have to use your imagination because I can only draw in 2D. The game in my dream was all in 3D and high definition I might add!
It all started out with these soldiers running up a hill in a quiet suburban neighborhood. There were few houses, a great mountain range and nothing but wide open spaces.
I don't play RTS games and especially not war games. My older brother loves RTS games and his favorites have been Advance Wars and he's looking at getting Batallion Wars now.
The character designs of the soldiers were stylized. Somewhere in between the Advance Wars and Metal Slug designs. Are you starting to visualize my game a little better? Great. Now back to my dream.
As I pan the camera back I notice that the soldiers are advancing to something way in the background. The draw distance in my dreams is always exceptional! The ground was shaking and about 3 miles away Godzilla was fighting with Rodan!
In my dreams I have about 4 seconds to figure out the control scheme before the game ends. I pushed some buttons and noticed that I could zoom into the troops, select them and move them around with a few button presses. I guessed that my job was to slow down the advance of Godzilla and keep him from wandering into residential neighborhoods. It seemed easy enough since Rodan was keeping him busy and we were fighting way out in the boonies.
I clicked on the soldiers and noticed that there were specialists mixed in with the infantry. These are the characters I remembered. A demolitions specialist, a medic, machine gunner, flame thrower and general.
As the game progressed (there was no loading time). Godzilla and a different monster would begin a new fight and they'd drop the troops in the middle of the action. Way off in the distance I could see the lights from the city. I figured that sooner or later the harder levels would be taking me closer and closer into the city.
I would get to call in air strikes and artillery against the rampaging monsters. As the levels progressed I was able to get more special weapons to use such as the electric cannons on the beds of diesel trucks and even the flying Super-X.
The units under my command became more and more advanced the closer Godzilla got to the city. Eventually I got to use G-Force members, the elite task force called in when everything seems hopeless. They had access to special weapons that regular army folks didn't have, such as phaser rifles, the Super-X and even Godzilla's son Minya.
There was even a way to control the alien invaders that had brought some of the monsters to Earth. If you've ever seen the old Godzilla movies you'll remember the aliens were the people with curly toe shoes and razor thin sunglasses. With access to their UFO's, lightning rifles and ability to move some monsters around they added a whole new dynamic to the game.
Right before I woke up one of the last levels was starting up. King Ghidora flew into Tokyo to challenge Godzilla. Right away buildings were being toppled as monsters were being tossed through them. Too bad I woke up because the camera angles and particle effects of the buildings collapsing were great.
I can trace where most of the concepts in my dream came from. Aside from Godzilla movies, Metal Slug and Advance Wars I was a big fan of the King of the Monsters games from SNK - Neo Geo. I liked the first one more because it was a wrestling game, the second was more of a side scrolling brawler like Final Fight.
The second game that influenced my dream must have been War of the Monsters by Incognito. I've played that game backwards and forward and have unlocked everything and figured out all of the combos by myself. So there's no way I could give you and exact amount of hours spent playing that title. Needless to say the scale and scope of my dream was much bigger than what ended up in any other game. Ah, too bad I couldn't have recorded it!
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