Line #14 Main/PopUpVideoGames


1	This is a trope in {{Video Game}}s for young children, especially CD-ROM based games from [[TheNineties the 1990s]]. Pop Up Video Games will probably also be {{Edutainment Game}}s, though they don't necessarily have to be.
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3	Basically, this is where clicking on items in the background causes cute animations to happen. Whenever you arrive at a scene with a lot of clickable items, expect one of the characters to instruct you to "click around and see what happens". The animations you'll find will probably be very random and off-the-wall, likely applying several AnimationTropes. For example, clicking on a radio would not just make it play music, but more likely make it come to life and start dancing or something like that.
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5	This trope is named based on the idea that this is the video game equivalent of pop-up books, as well as a pun on the [=VH1=] TV show ''Series/PopUpVideo''.
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7	Related: IdleAnimation.
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9	!! Examples:
10	* The indie game ''VideoGame/{{Windosill}}'' includes examples of this as the creator's experiments with Flash. Some interaction with these objects is required to go from stage to stage.
11	* The ''VideoGame/LivingBooks'' series, based off of children's books, like ''Literature/{{Arthur}}'', ''Literature/LittleCritter'' or ''Literature/TheBerenstainBears''.
12	* ''VideoGame/LogicalJourneyOfTheZoombinis''. Most of the backgrounds were static, except for the camps where you would have to ensure you had a full party of sixteen Zoombinis. There, you could click on everything and things would happen.
13	* Before he worked on [[VideoGame/ParappaTheRapper Parappa]], Rodney Greenblat made several of these, including ''VideoGame/{{Dazzeloids}}'' and ''Rodney's Wonder Window''.
14	* Packard Bell Navigator interface did this in Kidspace.
15	* The early ''VideoGame/JumpStart'' games from the mid-'90s, before they started to be about working with a goal in mind. Even ''3rd grade'' and ''4th grade'' had stuff to click on.
16	* The games based on ''Literature/TheMagicSchoolBus'' series, especially the human body and solar system.
17	** Some of the popups in those games crossed the line into horror. The worst of which was a series of events in which you could take the classroom fish out of the bowl, place it on the ground, [[FamilyUnfriendlyDeath leave it until it stopped flopping, sputtered and died]]. Then you could ''cook it in a model volcano''.
18	* ''[[VideoGame/{{Ozzie}} Ozzie's World and Ozzie's Travels]]'' by Digital Impact were examples of this genre. In the former, the mini-games and experiments were accessible via holding down the shift key and clicking on items again whenever the little purple chest icon opened up.
19	* Pick a Creator/HumongousEntertainment game. Any game. Except maybe the ''VideoGame/BackyardSports'' games. They referred to these as "click points".
20	** The ''VideoGame/PuttPutt'' series
21	** The ''VideoGame/FreddiFish'' series
22	** The ''VideoGame/SpyFox'' series
23	** The ''VideoGame/PajamaSam'' series
24	** The ''VideoGame/JuniorFieldTrips'' series
25	** The ''VideoGame/BigThinkers'' series
26	** Sometimes, clicking certain things in sequence would cause a different scene to play.
27	* The ''VideoGame/DisneysAnimatedStorybook'' series from Creator/{{Disney Interactive\|Studios}} were this--they took story versions of various Disney properties and combined them with these various animations, plus a few simple mini-games. A few had larger "secondary" games, such as a ''WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989'' game that also included a coloring book/storybook maker.
28	* ''Tuneland'', the first game of the ''VideoGame/LilHowiesFunHouse'' series, consists of just clicking on things to see animations and/or hear some public domain songs.
29	* In the mid-90s to early 2000s, Infogrames and Big Tune New Media made and released a series of such games featuring Mercer Mayer's Literature/LittleCritter, and a couple with Mayer's lesser-known franchise Little Monster. The first titles were adapted straight from the books "Just Me and My Dad" and "Just Me and My Mom," along with "VideoGame/TheSmellyMystery" (featuring Little Monster [[PrivateDetective Private Eye]]), an original Little Critter story "Just Me and My Grandpa") and two non-storybook click-and-point games: "VideoGame/LittleCritterAndTheGreatRace" and "Little Monster Private Eye and VideoGame/TheMummyMystery."
30	* Cyan's early games ''VideoGame/CosmicOsmo'' and ''VideoGame/TheManhole''. The only goal is to explore as much of each game's quirky universe as you can find.
31	* Music/TheyMightBeGiants' children's album ''No!'' was also a CD-ROM with several mini-games based around the songs, most of which featured this. Some are quite strange; "Violin" features the line "one-quarter of George Washington's head" and that's exactly what you get (and more if you click, obviously...)
32	* ''Creator/MontyPython'':
33	** ''Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time'' is a deliberately absurd example, wherein you mostly clicked on random stuff, and weird things happened in the spirit of the franchise. Some special animation, playing an old Flying Circus sketch, making a pinball game in a cathedral, what have you not. There ''was'' an actual game buried deep in there, and there were even prizes awarded to the first few people to discover and complete it.
34	** ''Quest for the Holy Grail'' also had a bit of this.
35	* ''VideoGame/{{Panic}}'' is mostly about pressing random buttons that cause silly animations to happen.
36	* ''VideoGame/StayTooned'' also has this, but isn't very well done in some spots. [[spoiler: It's mainly there because you're looking for keys and the remote.]]
37	* The ''VideoGame/{{Explorapedia}}'' games allowed you to visit various settings in either nature or America, where you could click on certain elements for a fun animation before getting the in-game equivalent of a web page appear that talks about what you just clicked on. In the Options menu you could disable the pop-up, turning the game into one of these.
38	* The obscure SNES game ''Motoko-chan's Wonder Kitchen'': It's a game that uses the SNES mouse and was released only in Japan, but not sold—it was a free AdvertisementGame published by condiment maker Ajinomoto that focuses on its mayonnaise. Most remarkable about this game is that it was developed by Pax Softnica, a ''Nintendo second-party'' better known for its games based on ''Anime/{{Hamtaro}}''. As a result, it has far more polish than you would expect from an Advergame.
39	* ''VideoGame/NickelodeonClickamajigs'' are 1990s and early 2000s Flash games where you mainly just click on things.
40	* The 1998 ''TabletopGame/CandyLand'' PC game was this nearly as much as it was a digital board game. Each of the areas shown on the board, such as the Candycane Forest and Gumdrop Mountains, can be visited by clicking on them. This brings the player to a corresponding screen with a host character and many clickable things, possibly including a minigame of some sort. Even clicking the character [[StopPokingMe causes them to say something]].
41	* Although ''VideoGame/MyLittlePonyFriendshipGardens'' is primarily a RaisingSim, it also contains elements of this.
42	* Many Dorling Kindersley games take the trope name literally, by animations being followed by a pop-up screen with educational information on the topic.

Context Main / PopUpVideoGames