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Affectionate Parody / Video Games

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  • The What-Iffers in: Final Fancy is an action-puzzle game which pokes fun at roleplaying tropes in general and Final Fantasy in particular.
  • Kingdom O' Magic is a point-n-click fantasy adventure game almost entirely dedicated to sending up Middle-Earth, with just about every named character and location a punned-up version of something from the pages of Tolkien's novels.
  • BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm spoofs the hell out of every aspect of “internet culture” it can think of, and then some. It also has a great time playing with JRPG tropes, usually ones that don’t often get targeted by these types of games.
  • The EarthBound games are an astonishingly good parody of the entire Eastern RPG genre, particularly Dragon Quest, as well as something of a parody of American culture.
  • Bayonetta shoves as many Rated M for Money and Oh, Crap! moments into a Devil May Cry-esque Beat 'em Up as it can.
  • While Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion is genuinely horrifying, the actions of the titular Spooky and some of the notes lead to Black Comedy. That, and the game playfully jabs at many common tropes found in horror games.
  • Yandere Simulator is an affectionate parody of Dating Sim tropes like Adrenaline Makeover or absurdly sexualized love interests. Yandere-chan is portrayed as antagonistic and unsympathetic in comparison to the more genre-typical characters, yet the dissonance between her perspective and the saccharine setting forms most of the game's humour.
  • The survival horror game, Camp Sunshine, is this to 80's Horror, with emphasis on the "Affectionate" part. The game is genuine horror, rather than an out-and-out parody, but in the vein of some of the later horror films of the 80's, the game is willing to get a bit campy at times.
  • Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is a fully playable 16-bit JRPG-like game that parodies the genre. The game is quite a bit less affectionate with its parody of the RPG Maker community and certain Internet subcultures in general—two of the "truck pump" rants that you read before saving are taken verbatim from real internet discussion forums, although one was a reaction to one of the made-up rants that the author confused with the real thing.
  • The RTS Majesty puts the player in charge of a fantasy kingdom that works the way they do in RPGs with a setting that puts every Swords and Sorcery trope in a blender and makes a smoothie of it. As such the city guards are helpless against anything bigger than the giant rats infesting the sewers, and the sovereign has to summon heroes (who are not directly controllable units) and post rewards for things like the ancient evil castles littering the landscape in order to get anything done. The heroes on offer include stalwart warriors with names like Sir Baramer Broadedge, kooky nature cultists, conniving rogues, Workaholic dwarves, and white-bearded wizards who are as fearsome as they are clueless.
  • The Capcom brawler God Hand glaringly mixes together nearly every classic Beat 'em Up Cliché in the book, including Pac-Man-esque food pickups, outrageously silly enemies in far-fetched environments and a puddle-deep storyline that's only there to string together all the game's fighting. The game has also been speculated to be an affectionate parody of Shōnen Fighting Series such as Fist of the North Star.
  • Viewtiful Joe affectionately parodies the plots, characters, and settings of Tokusatsu and Comic Book heroes in general, with the gameplay being a highly enjoyable twist on 2D beat-em-ups. So does The Wonderful 101 from the same dev team, only it's a 3D beat-em-up.
  • The Wii game MadWorld, a spiritual successor to God Hand, continues its ancestor's stint of parody by turning the focus from Japanese entertainment (video games and anime) to western entertainment (gory, violent video games, reality television and graphic novels), sending up their violent tendencies in a comedic, Tom and Jerry Itchy and Scratchy kind of way.
  • Anarchy Reigns: Though seemingly very strait-laced in terms of story, but characters are definitely parodies. You have 3 assassin chicks and the only serious one is RinRin, the other two are very... odd, one being a gambling and self-absorbed chick obsessed with her beauty, the other is a hyperactive girl who makes Funny Bruce Lee Noises and breaks her gaming system for losing. The main characters of the story are much more serious, but side characters are clear parodies, sometimes of the expected type of character to be in a fighting game.
  • Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney takes the opportunity of a new main character to occasionally parody the very series that it belongs to. Apollo gets reprimanded for shouting the series catchphrase in court and often laments the fact that he never gets any normal clients, Trucy advises him that "Daddy had days where everything would go wrong too" and Phoenix reminisces on his days of using the Present command and flashing his Attorney's Badge to everyone.
  • The Tex Murphy games: Every plot element from old-school, black and white, noir private eye films are lovingly re-created and mocked.
  • The Leisure Suit Larry games started out as classic parodies of the text-adventure games their own company was famous for, most particularly their less-than-family-friendly Softporn Adventure. Lowe pretty much took the whole thing and did a Tone Shift, playing it all for raunchy laughs.
    • Likewise, many of the Sierra "Quest" games (King's Quest, Space Quest) spoofed fairy tale or sci-fi tropes. It was a bit more tongue in cheek in King's Quest, but Space Quest was nothing but rapid-fire sci-fi jokes.
  • Konami's aptly-named Parodius series is a parody of one of their own series. What series, you ask? You have ten seconds to guess.
  • In a similar vein, Metal Wolf Chaos is FromSoftware cheerily mocking the everything-to-eleven spirit of mecha anime, flag-waving American patriotism and their own Armored Core series. They clearly love all of these things.
  • The Disgaea series frequently parodies anime and its cliches. Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth! is a parody himself.
  • In The World Ends with You, the bonus chapter Another Day plays with some of the tropes common to Super Sentai-style shows (dubbing the cast "Crayon Warriors") and RPGs ("Black joined the party!" is an actual line of dialogue). It also pokes fun at Aerith.
    • And anime series featuring toys as their main selling point, like Beyblade.
    • As well as a few jokes at Square Enix's (the game's producer) expense, such as the character designer's obsession with zippers ("Then I wish I had more zippers, so I could tell you to zip it!") to your common emo RPG protagonist ("Must...resist...emo...urges..."), and even a joke about yaoi fangirls (which create a significant fraction of Square Enix fanfiction).
  • Serious Sam is not-at-all serious, but a self-conscious send-up of FPS games that spread itself across other action game and film sources, and parodied Duke Nukem with particular affection.
  • Billy vs. SNAKEMAN is a parody of anime in general, and Naruto in particular.
  • Jay's Journey is an affectionate parody of the generic Eastern RPG.
  • The in-game TV Show "Dick Justice" from Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne is an affectionate parody of the previous game.
  • Many announcers in the Backyard Sports series are Affectionate Parodies of real-life announcers.
  • The LEGO games of well-known franchises such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman, and Harry Potter take the franchise and go silly with it. There is a lack of drama in almost every cutscene.
  • Larry Lotter is an affectionate parody of Harry Potter by Crystal Shard, wherein Larry attends Warthogs magic school and uses a "Groundhog Day" Loop to pass his exams.
  • The Merry Gear Solid games, particularly Merry Gear Solid 2. They're really scathing and attack with pinpoint precision all of the silliest things about an admittedly pretty silly series, like the ridiculously convoluted plots and turgid infodumps, but the sheer dedication to getting everyone in-character and replicating the Original Flavor of the Metal Gear series is what's most noticeable. The games even take stabs at morals and postmodernist fourth-wall wankery. As well as Christmas-themed Hurricanes of Puns.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, in typical Metal Gear fashion, is both a parody and a homage to James Bond movies. The game even starts with a typical Bond opening scene which ends in a climactic explosion that turns into the extremely bond-like intro movie. Then the actual mission of the game begins back in America where Bond Snake receives his briefing. Back behind enemy lines he makes contact with a Soviet double agent who turns out to be the game's Bond Girl.
    • It also takes a lot of jabs at its near-future rival Splinter Cell, particularly the obsession with futuristic gadgets.
  • One Night at Flumpty's is clearly a parody of the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise, replacing the creepy animatronic images the player sees on camera with humorous or casual images of the enemies. The Jump Scare deaths still play a big role in the game though.
  • The Grox from Spore are a spoof pastiche of the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation (with their cyborg limbs) and the Daleks from Doctor Who (with their war cry being "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"). However, some of their threats are less then effective. ("You will not get a holiday card this year.")
  • Fur Fighters last hub is just one big homage to James Bond, with secret volcanoes bases, stock-piles of gold, a duo female fighter force consisting of a deer and a rabbit and a small little bald man... being petted by a large white cat.
  • Indie game Indistruc2Tank's story mode is a massive parody of Metal Gear Solid, but there's a little too much genuine heart in there ("Give me...a soldier's death!") for it to be a proper skewering.
  • Violent Storm is an affectionate parody of both the whole Beat 'em Up genre and post-apocalyptic Anime like Fist of the North Star.
  • 3D Dot Game Heroes is a full-on parody of The Legend of Zelda series, among other things. Even the music sounds Zelda-ish!
  • Sonic Colors is an affectionate self-parody of the Sonic series, making fun of Eggman's robotic skills, Sonic and Tails' approaches to being a hero, and 3D Sonic in general. In doing this, is it is a fairly pointed, but affectionate, Deconstruction.
  • Duke Nukem 3D is an affectionate parody of Doom, combining the latter's over-the-top violence with Black Humour such as turning the LAPD (or LARD as they are in the game) into literal pigs.
  • Enough Plumbers was made by someone who loves Super Mario Bros., and it shows.
  • Brütal Legend both celebrates and parodies stereotypes associated with Heavy Metal music. It was made by veteran video game designer Tim Schafer, who has been a fan of heavy metal since he was a teenager.

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