Never Trust A Title / Video Games

"SIX nights?! This wasn't in the job description!"

Video Games without the most trustworthy of titles.

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• 007 Racing sounds like a racing game, especially considering it came out in 2000 — amidst the late-90s trend where every franchise needs to have a racing game spinoff. But it's not, it's a game where players control James Bond across a series of driving-based missions.
• Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy for the Nintendo 3DS is not a port of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, but a remake of Ace Combat 2.
• The Mega Drive version of Action 52 falls into this, as it really only has 51 games (the so-called 52nd game is actually just a randomized playlist of the final levels of each of the 52 games). Several games across both versions also fall into this problem:
  • Dam Busters, which doesn't feature a dam at any point in the game.
  • Haunted Hill in both versions, although the NES version sometimes goes under the more apt Haunted Halls.
  • Slashers sounds like the name of a horror movie, but it's really a poor man's Double Dragon.
  • Bits n Pieces, which sounds like a puzzle game (even the manual suggests this) but it's actually a horror-themed game where you jump over monsters.
  • Mind's Eye, which is a Minesweeper clone.
  • Slalom, which is a regular skiing game as opposed to having an actual slalom event.
    • Incidentally, Rare did a NES game of the same name which also has no slaloming involved.
  • Paratrooper, which consists of collecting giant computer chips or something.
• The Game Boy Advance version of Airforce Delta Storm is actually an adaptation of the first Airforce Delta.
• Aqua Rhapsody doesn't feature any rhapsody at all, let alone an AQUA rhapsody.
• Bears vs. Art only features one bear in the entire game. ^note Unless one counts friends system, which allows to see the progress of other people. By default, The Cameo characters appear playing through levels, the recurring one being a dark-skinned recolor of the game's protagonist, averting this by a stretch.
• Battle Axe is a fantasy-themed game where nobody - not even mooks - uses a battleax. Your playable heroes (a marauder, wizard and elf) uses fists, a magic staff, and dual swords, in that order.
• Beyond Oasis was released in Europe and Japan under the name The Story of Thor, even though there are no references to Thor in it at all.
• Charlie Ninja have the players assuming the role of two ninjas named Roy and Lon. At no point is there a ninja named "Charlie" in the game. (Instead, the game is named after its character designer, Charlie Arai)
• While Chocobo Racing is a racing game, nobody does so on a chocobo. There are two playable chocobos, though that's a minority of the ten characters you can choose.
• Chrono Trigger. The actual Chrono Trigger impacts the plot only briefly - and even then, optionally, as it's possible to go ahead and fight the final boss without completing the part of the story that involves it. (Adding insult to injury, it's even referred to more often as the "Time Egg.")
  • This is less the case in Chrono Cross; while the eponymous item arguably spends less time relevant to the story than the Chrono Trigger, it is of much greater overall significance what with being the piece of Phlebotinum that's supposed to reintegrate the timelines and kill the Time Devourer off once and for all.
  • Although the Chrono Trigger item is relatively insignificant, the description that's given to it ("It is pure potential. By unleashing a specific course of events, it can have a powerful effect on time... It represents a possibility, it may or may not hatch.") applies equally well to the party, meaning that the time travelers themselves are a kind of Chrono Trigger. It gets a little meta.
  • Speaking of misleading titles in Chrono Cross, one would not expect a song called Scars of Time to be so damn funky!
• Continental Circus is a race game. ("Circus" was actually a bad translation and should have been "circuits"; this was later corrected.)
• Most of the Browser Games on Coolmath Games mainly don't teach math. They just involve thinking and problem solving skills, which is a core concept in math.
• CrazyBus has very dull and straightforward gameplay, not very crazy at all. The music, on the other hand...
• Crusader Kings II: While it is possible to play as a Catholic the game also featured other Christians, Muslims, Jews, a LOT of different pagans, Zarathustrians, Buddhists, Hindus and Jainists. Additionally, besides kings, there are also counts, dukes, emperors, doges, khans and Gengis Khans playable.
• The official English translation of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc titles the fifth chapter "100 Mile Dash! Problems of a Junk Food Junkie". This title has nothing to do with the events of the case, and was likely a translation error.
• You do not get to Destroy All Humans!, though you get to Destroy All Martians in the second one.
• Falcom's RPG Dinosaur has no dinosaurs in it.
• Between recurring cases of both Antagonist Title and Artifact Title, there are surprisingly fewer Donkey Kong games than you'd think that actually have you play as Donkey Kong. His first playable appearance was in the original Donkey Kong Country, over a decade after his debut, and he was out of luck in both the SNES sequels. After Donkey Kong 64, he started to occupy the main character role more consistently. Donkey Kong Circus also does not take place in a circus. That part of the name is leftover from when the game was a Mickey Mouse game called "Mickey Mouse Circus".
• Don't Escape is a good title for the first (where you're a reluctant lycanthrope and have to trap yourself in a room to prevent your rampage when you turn) and third (where you're infected by parasitic crystals which will spread to others if you escape) games in the series. In the second game, however, you're trying to fortify your base against a zombie horde, rather than avoiding an escape, and in the fourth game, you do end up escaping from the apocalypse.
• The Doom mod "Rootpain 2: Buttpain: The Wrekctum Analhilation." The title sounds like an incredibly immature comedy, and the trailer and the blurb promise over-the-top nonstop action and gore. It's a deliberate choice (the mod was published on April 1) to increase the surprise when you run the mod and find that it's a creepy Survival Horror.
• Double Dragon
  • Super Double Dragon was a Continuity Reboot, but the Japanese version (Return of Double Dragon) was titled in a way that seems to imply that it was continuation of the previous arcade/NES trilogy. Certain plot details, such as the Lee brothers's home being moved from New York to Los Angeles and Marian working as a policewoman when the original version of the character had no such occupation, makes it impossible to fit Super Double Dragon with previous games.
  • Likewise, the Tradewest-developed Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls, was a fighting game based on the Double Dragon (1993) animated series and not a sequel to any of the previous games. At the time, there was no game actually called Double Dragon IV (which wouldn't be released until 2018), which seems to suggests that Tradewest was counting Super Double Dragon as the fourth installment
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Throughout the series, the eponymous Elder Scrolls themselves do not make an appearance in the first three games, and only appear in a faction side quest in the fourth. (They are mentioned plenty in the background lore.) It isn't until Skyrim that this is finally averted, with an Elder Scroll playing a major part in the game's main quest.
  • After Arena and Daggerfall, the number in the title of the games gets a little screwy. After those games came Battlespire and Redguard, which are Dungeon Crawling and Action-Adventure spinoff games, respectively. That makes Morrowind the fifth game with Elder Scrolls in the title, but it is still titled as The Elder Scrolls III. (This makes Oblivion technically the sixth game and Skyrim technically the seventh. The Elder Scrolls VI will then technically be the tenth, following Online, Legends, and Blades.)
  • The "place" subtitle in each main series game also carries with it some oddness in each case. To note:
    • Arena has no arenas whatsoever. Originally, the game was planned to involve teams of gladiators from a fictional world, but that idea was scrapped in favor of creating a game based on the developers' home-brew D&D setting. In a combination of a Retcon and Hand Wave, "Arena" would later be used as an alternate name for Nirn, the planet on which the series takes place.
    • Daggerfall takes place in the massive Iliac Bay region, which includes large portions of the provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell. Daggerfall is just one city within High Rock (though the death of its king is the impetus for your mission in the game).
    • In Morrowind, the game's setting is restricted to Vvardenfell, an island district within the eponymous province. Mainland Morrowind is only visited in the Tribunal expansion, and even then, it is only one city (Morrowind's capital of Mournhold). (What Could Have Been - the original plan was for it to be the entire province, but that idea was dropped early in the development process.)
    • Oblivion, if following the convention of the other games in the series, would have been titled Cyrodiil instead. Oblivion is a place within the ES universe (the infinite void which surrounds Mundus, the mortal plane), and it is visited within the game (several times required, and many more optionally) so it is a Downplayed example at worst.
    • Skyrim finally averts any issue with the subtitle, taking place entirely within the eponymous province and allowing the entire province to be explored.
• The computer game Elvira: The Arcade Game and the canceled Sega Genesis game Jim Power: The Arcade Game were never in arcades.
• In Ensemble Stars!, the gacha story titles mainly relate to the theme of the associated cards, which may not bear more than a slim relevance to the actual story. For example, 'Greek Legends' is about Souma trying to make character bento for Adonis, then getting sick and being taken care of by the Track Club. The only reference to the title comes at the very end when Mitsuru is compared to Achilles and Arashi compares themselves to Narcissus, which takes place over only a couple of lines. And just to clarify, despite the name, Adonis isn't Greek — he's actually from an Arabian country.
• One of the sequels to Falling Fred is called Skiing Fred. There's no skiing involved, unless you consider it to be interchangeable with snowboarding, which is what Fred actually does. This is lampshaded on the official FAQ page, where the first question calls out Dedalord on this trope, which is answered with "… so?"
• Feed the Cat is actually about feeding several.
• Final Fantasy has many sequels^note the franchise is named as such because creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, having created several other games that flopped before then, had decided to resign from Square and go back to university if the game wasn't successful; there's also the much more famous but likely-apocryphal story that it was meant to be Square's last game in general, owing to apparent financial issues, as does Ultima.
• Similarly for Final Fight there were five more fights after, not to mention cast members going over to Street Fighter to keep on fighting.
• The many Flappy Bird knockoffs tend to keep the word "Flappy" in their titles, despite that the protagonist may not actually be flapping in order to move.
• Generic Fishing Game is a fishing game, but quickly reveals that it's a horror game and not the generic fishing experience it promised.
• Girly Block is a Mecha Game by Compile for the MSX2. No, there are no anime girls to be seen.
• The eponymous wars of Guild Wars ended before the earliest events in the game.
• The Half-Life games themselves have nothing to do with radioactive decay besides nuclear waste being a common hazard; the player character, though a PhD-holding scientist, works in theoretical physics and ballistics, not radiology. Though if you go by Freeman's Mind logic, the half-life refers to you living only half a life because, you know, you got killed by aliens.
  • The original game's expansions go for similar scientific terms that have nothing to do with the contents of the expansion, but have a double meaning that does. Blue Shift has nothing to do with blueshift, but does have you playing as one of the blue-clad security officers from the main game; Opposing Force likewise has nothing to do specifically with Newton's third law of motion, instead going for the military definition (i.e. OPFOR) given that the player character is on the same side as the guys that were shooting at Freeman in the original game.
• Hero & Daughter is not about a hero and his daughter, but rather a hero and his harem of 30+ summon-able girls that can fight alongside him. The title is probably based on a mistranslation of the Japanese word musume, meaning "daughter", but also more generally "girl." Though one of them is actually his daughter from the future.
• Jarrett and Labonte Stock Car Racing for the PS1 features neither stock cars nor who most American race fans would think of with the names Jarrett and Labonte. The title is actually a North American re-name of Europe's TOCA World Touring Cars in an attempt to latch onto surging NASCAR popularity at the time, and is a sim of that league rather than NASCAR or stock car racing. Most NASCAR fans would also look at the title and immediately think of popular NASCAR drivers Dale Jarrett, Terry Labonte, or Bobby Labonte, but the title refers to their young 20-something upstart sons, Jason Jarrett and Justin Labonte (son of Terry, nephew of Bobby).
• Kang Fu, despite the title being a Portmanteau of "kung fu" and "kangaroo", doesn't have any kung fu in it; it's actually a Run-and-Gun.
• Layton Brothers: Mystery Room only stars one Layton brother, Alfendi Layton, though he does mention the existence of the other one. This is subverted once you realise that the name of the game itself is symbolic and foreshadows the existence of Alfendi's second personality.
• The Legend of Zelda isn't always about Zelda. One game only mentions her once at the very beginning (she never appears), one only included her in a flashback, two others only contain her if both are played in tandem, and one game neither depicts her nor mentions her beyond an optional costume for Link and a very easy-to-miss snow sculpture resembling her. What's more, aside from portions of Spirit Tracks and two of the non-canon CD-i games, you never play as her. All this leads to a massive case of I Am Not Shazam for poor non-eponymous hero Link.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past does not involve time travel; the title refers to the fact that, in its original English release, it was marketed as a prequel to the first two games. The original Japanese subtitle is Triforce of the Gods, which was changed in English due to Nintendo of America's policies on religious content.
• LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, the third game in the series, was accurately titled upon release, being an adaptation of the Original and Prequel Trilogies. Then the Sequel Trilogy happened.
• The Lion King names several levels after songs from the movie it was based on. However, the level "Be Prepared" has nothing to do with the song "Be Prepared", which is instead used as background music to the "Elephant Graveyard" level.
• Lure of the Temptress contains no noticeable luring or tempting. The villainess is indeed described as young and beautiful, but this doesn't seem to have any impact on anything. Her power is founded on magic and mooks, not any attempt to make people enamored of her.
• Mega Man:
  • X is not the main character of Mega Man X7 (at first).
  • The Mega Man Star Force series focuses more on electromagnetic waves than stars or space. Star Force 2 doesn't have anything to do with stars! As for the "Star Force," it's just a power that MegaMan gets in the first game but has nothing to do with the other two games; there's only a vague mention of it in Star Force 3.
• Metal Gear:
  • The NES version of Metal Gear does not have the eponymous Metal Gear in it at all unlike the original MSX2 version, where it was the penultimate boss. Instead, it's replaced with a giant computer that is said to be controlling Metal Gear.
  • Its non-canon sequel, Snake's Revenge, does not, in fact, have Solid Snake exacting revenge on anyone. It is in fact, Big Boss who is seeking revenge against Solid Snake for foiling his plans in the first game and mortally wounding him. Mind you, Big Boss is the original Snake, but of course that hadn't been decided yet.
  • There are models and diagrams of Metal Gear in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, but they don't have any real bearing on the story other than as Easter Eggs. Nor is the character Solid Snake present. Hideo Kojima stated the "solid" in the title refers to the series' transition to "solid" polygonal graphics.
  • In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance all the Metal Gears present in the game aren’t “rising” rather falling to pieces after the Hack and Slash Lightning Bruiser Cyborg protagonist Raiden dices them into chunks with his sword. The “Revengeance” part is at least technically accurate as Raiden gets revenge on the villains who killed the African president he was supposed to protect and wrecked him in a fight.
• Metroid Prime: Hunters does not involve Metroids or any incarnation of Metroid Prime at all. It includes creatures that attack in a similar manner to Metroids, but not Metroids themselves. (Though the demo version, First Hunt, that was included with DS systems at launch, did include Metroids.)
• Michigan: Report From Hell is not set in the US state of Michigan, much less the town named Hell. It instead takes place in Chicago, in the state of Illinois; the title unintuitively refers to Lake Michigan.
• Minecraft initially contained neither mining nor crafting, instead containing only what would later be known as Creative Mode. This was repeated when the mobile port, then known as Pocket Edition (despite also being available on tablets), first launched.
• Mortal Kombat only features a few kombatants (Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Sonya, Jax etc) that are actually mortal, the vast majority of the rest are supernatural beings from another dimension or in the case of Raiden and Fujin literal gods. So really as far from “mortal” as you could possibly get.
• In Myth: The Fallen Lords you ultimately fight the Big Bad in mission 24, "The Last Battle", in a bloody all-or-nothing style fight where you throw at him all that remains of your forces. Then there is mission 25...
• Nexus: The Jupiter Incident only features Jupiter at the very beginning, spending most of the time in other systems. The only reason for the name is an obvious Title Drop in a Captain's Log.
• Night in the Woods takes place over the course of about two weeks, and on most nights, you don't go anywhere near the woods.
• no-one has to die. keeps forcing you to make Sadistic Choices of who lives and dies between four people. It's only in the Golden Ending where you get to save everyone.
• Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It does not have any characters named Nord or Bert.
• Normal Super Mario Bros., a series of Super Mario Bros. fan games that are anything but normal. The misnaming is indeed part of the joke.
• Pony Island outright states in its trailer that "This is not a game about ponies". Ponies are a part of the plot, yes, but the game is largely about a soul trapped in a crappy arcade machine.
• In the first Prince of Persia game, you're not the prince of Persia — you gain that title only after saving and marrying the princess. This one is especially deceptive for two reasons: the hero has no other name (making "Prince" the only obvious thing to call him) and all the other games in the franchise do star actual Persian princes.
• The Quantum of Solace video game adaptation is actually more of an adaptation of Casino Royale (2006); there are three Casino levels for every Quantum one. Technically four, if you count the first level as one for both films.
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army: The "Soulless Army" is merely the first indicator that something is amiss, and really does not have a whole lot of impact on the plot, itself.
• For Resident Evil the series’s western name is perfectly accurate for first and seventh games, both of which take place in a residence that is evil. The rest of the games, however, take place all over the place like in cities, villages, rural countrysides, Arctic bases, islands, and cruise ships. The franchise’s Japanese title of Biohazard is a better catch-all name.
• Rise of the Triad has nothing to do with Chinese organized crime.
• Most of the episode titles in the Sam & Max games from Telltale Games, are non-indicative (or else they are indicative, but not in the way you might think).
  • You don't actually kill Abe Lincoln in "Abe Lincoln Must Die!" In fact, he doesn't die at all.
  • "Chariots of the Dogs" features no actual chariots, and only one dog (Sam).
  • "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls." There are no visitable alleys, and there is only one doll, which is in Max's inventory. Also, you don't go beyond anything, alley or otherwise.
• Santa Claus Saves the Earth is about Santa saving Christmas, not the world.
• Sniper Elite 5 does contain sniping, but you may find yourself doing a lot more stealth takedowns, depending on the nature of the mission and your personally preferred play style. The game also rewards you for knocking your enemies out instead of killing them. Non-lethal Stealth Takedown Elite 5 might be a more accurate title, but it would also be less cool.
• The obscure ZX Spectrum game Soft & Cuddly isn't soft or cuddly. At all.
• Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island is actually an isometric 2D game using Digitized Sprites made from 3D models. The only actual 3D parts are the Special Stages in the Sega Saturn port.
• There exists a PS1 game called Sorcerer's Maze. The primary presence of sorcerers is on the title screen, but you spend the game playing as a cat. Also, it's not a maze game, but rather a clone of Breakout, and the stages don't seem to have been influenced by any sorcerers.
• StarCraft's backstory certainly involve aircrafts and spaceships (craft), and planetary travel (star). But actual gameplay does not involve too many space-ships; in fact, a lot of the battles take place entirely between ground units. The title's more of a play on Warcraft, the original Real-Time Strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment; it is Warcraft ... but in space!
• Street Fighter is about global tournaments with proper martial artists rather than undisciplined scrapes on the street and usually only a handful characters have stages that actually take place on a street. Ironically the series’ name would be perfectly suited for its sister franchise Final Fight the genre defining Beat 'em Up that takes place in the streets and was initially going to be the sequel to Street Fighter. Royally averted for Street Fighter 6 though whose World Tour mode is set on the streets where you get into fights.
• Subway Surfers not only features far more running than surfing (unless you're using a hoverboard) but also takes place largely above ground rather than in a subway.
• Super Puzzle Fighter II: Turbo is a game with a title that indicates that it is the turbo edition of a sequel to a super version of a game called "Puzzle Fighter". The thing is, there isn't a game series called "Puzzle Fighter". This is a standalone game with no predecessors whatsoever. The title is most likely joking over the many updates that Street Fighter II got and that hardly anyone has heard of that game's original predecessor.
• Super Robot Wars 30 is a Milestone Celebration of the franchise's 30th anniversary. It's not the 30th Super Robot Wars game. There's actually a lot more than 30 SRW games.
• Sweet Home is definitely not "sweet" at all, as this game (based on the Japanese horror film of the same name) is actually a Survival Horror RPG where a film crew explores a Haunted House.
• The Swindle is not a game about swindling, which typically refers to parting people from their money through trickery and deception — you don't get people to invest in fake businesses, sell products that don't work or send out mass emails pretending to be the Prince of Nigeria. Instead, it's a game about heisting, with the mechanics focused on breaking into a place, dealing with the guards and running away with the money in a sack.
• Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon never features the actual Procyon. In fact, the player never even leaves the borders of The Empire. You do fight the Procyons, but this still doesn't explain the "at" preposition. Lampshaded by an end credit that says, "No battle actually takes place at Procyon".
• Enforced in There Is No Game. The narrator denies that it's a game for the sake of comedy when it actually is one. Even if it weren't a game, the scene where you hit the bricks is definitely a game and is accessed by writing "There is a game".
• The main character in Twin Blades uses a single blade. There's not a player two to be the twin, either. Maybe the scythe is double-sided?
• In Vampire Survivors, you survive against just about everything you'd find in your average Monster Mash except vampires. Their exclusion is actually an intentional joke by the developers.
• Vectorman doesn't feature any vector graphics at all.
• Ufouria — The Saga is not a saga at all, since the other games in the Hebereke series have nothing to do with that one and no sequels were ever made.
• U.N. Squadron, the localized title of the arcade game based on Area 88, is only half of this trope, as the game has nothing to do with the United Nations, but plenty to do with military flight formations.
• In Wario: Master of Disguise, Wario is not a Master of Disguise, nor is any other character in the game. Instead, Wario is a master of superpowered costumes. That doesn't stop the game from calling them "disguises," even though they are never used for the purpose of disguising.
• The World Ends with You is not nearly as depressing and apocalyptic as the title makes it sound. This is largely due to trademark issues — the game's Japanese name is It's A Wonderful World, which goes in the other direction and makes the game sound rather more upbeat than it is. Both titles are pointing at the same thing, explained in a scene partway through the game: they're meant as a philosophical statement and a reason why you should "expand your horizons."
• The freeware Windows game Yet Another Tetris Clone is actually a clone of Dr. Mario.
• B.J. Best's 2020 Interactive Fiction game You Will Thank Me as Fast as You Thank a Werewolf doesn't really have anything to do with werewolves or thanking. Rather, it's a surreal Word-Salad Humor game made using GPT-2 outputs trained on the author's previous works.