Schizo Tech / Video Games

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• Ace Combat intersperses modern weaponry with railguns, lasers, flying fortresses, orbital spaceplanes, and if you so choose, WWII propeller fighters. Lampshaded in Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies; after the Erusian military occupies the Narrator Boy's hometown, they declare martial law and confiscate commodities like computers and gasoline, reducing the inhabitants to using crystal radios and horse-drawn carts in the 21st century. The cutscene during which this plays even shows an image of a line of horse-drawn carriages passing by a convoy of modern tanks and attack helicopters.
• Air Force Delta Strike features WWII fighters, modern jets, gigantic armed tires, space-battleships and Humongous Mecha all in the same game.
• AkaSeka: The land of Hinomoto where the game takes place in is a very unevenly developed place, to say the least. Magical elements abound and there are countries under feudal rule and people still wearing traditional clothes and using outdated equipments, but there are also highly modernized countries like Utsutsu where people wear Westernized clothes and use modern technology like high-speed trains.
• Alien: Isolation: Because the film the game is based on was a 1979 vision of the future, the games's visual design recreates this look, with a possibly greater effect now that 35+ years have passed. Fantastic technology like FTL-drives, artificial gravity, androids, and space ships are paradoxically combined with 1970s-era computer technology. The screens are monochrome CRTs, and have simple interfaces. Amanda's "Access Tuner" is one extreme example, as it a device that seems to have a thin-screen CRT.
• The post-Apocalyptic game Alpha Man has everything from pitchforks and cured hide armor, to swords and toasters, to phasers, durasteel armor, and transmogrifiers.
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura is set in a fantasy world (with orcs, elves, dwarves, and magic) that is undergoing an industrial revolution. Problem: magic and technology are incompatible at an existential level, destructively influencing each other when employed in close proximity. As in "A scientist picks up a sword, and the magic in it just drains away; a wizard wants to look at the controls of the running train engine, causing it malfunction disastrously".
• Arknights features both state-of-the-art composite and mechanical bowguns and Originium-powered guns alongside primitive crossbows in a world where the technology available can vary depending on the region. Countries like Kazimierz can have both ultra-modern mobile city plates and rustic pre-industrial villages just kilometers apart from each other.
• Assassin's Creed has both ancestors doing this; Altaïr uses the retracto-blade which was beyond the technology of 1191 without the technical assistance of the Apple of Eden, and Ezio has even more improbable gadgets up his voluminous sleeves, such as a miniature high-powered pistol. The Codex suggests Altaïr invented said pistol and most of the rest of Ezio's equipment, meaning it was in use during The Crusades, again due to the use of the knowledge contained in the Apple. Altaïr was even able to invent an ultra-light suit of plate armor that was superior to modern body armor but could be worn while swimming, and in Brotherhood, it turns out that Brutus (yes, that Brutus, who stabbed Caesar) invented it first. Again, that nifty Precursor technology at work. The ridiculousness of the pistol is probably why they decided to remove it from Assassin's Creed III, giving Connor a flintlock pistol, appropriate for the era, instead, which takes time to reload. There's not even a mention of the other pistol with something like "the technology to make it was lost".
• BioShock:
  • A mild version of this trope is present in the first game. It takes place in the year 1960, which is evident by most of the setting (old televisions, Tommy guns, even clothes and hairstyles). And yet, there are things like super-advanced geothermal reactors, autonomous flying bots (okay, they do tend to crash all over the place, but still), machines that can create all kinds of ammunition from a few commonly available items, portable guided rockets, and of course a huge city several miles under the Atlantic ocean, which would be an impossible endeavor even with today's technology.
  • "The Thinker", Rapture's Master Computer introduced in BioShock 2 DLC Minerva's Den goes all over the place with this: it's apparently the brain behind the aforementioned security bots and it's capable of perfectly mimicking human personalities given enough input, effectively passing the Turing test and yet despite being the size of a building, according to an advertisement it's capable of performing "one million calculations per second", meaning any computer/console capable of running the game itself can out perform it.
  • Bioshock Infinite (taking place in 1912) is even crazier with this, although it at least justifies most of the crazy technology with the existence of tears in time/space that the architects of Columbia (itself an example, being a gigantic city in the sky that floats via quantum levitation — and was originally built in 1893) used to view the future, before crudely replicating what they saw with the materials of their day. This results in things like run-of-the-mill Colt revolvers and Mauser pistols existing alongside a portable, crank-action RPG, a revolver grenade launcher with a gilded finish, autonomous clockwork robots, hovercraft that are beyond even today's technology, and giant steampunk cyborgs. And the radio airwaves are populated by a bunch of songs from the '60s, '70s, and even '80s that have been rewritten in period-appropriate styles.
• In Bloodborne, among other things, several of the guns appear to to be flintlocks, plate armor is still in use (just not against the Beasts, whose strength means Armor Is Useless), and swords/axes/halberds/etc. are the primary weapons, suggesting an early-modern tech level (1600s-ish). Yet much of the architecture and clothing are clearly from the mid to late 19th century (supported by the existence of explosive cannon shells, invented in the 1870s, Gatling guns, invented in 1862, and most the guns being cartridge-based [note that none of the reload animations have NPCs pouring gunpowder down the barrel]), while some (such as the Hunter's iconic outfit) are basically directly copied from late 18th century outfits. Then there's the advanced steampunk tech...
• Blue Dragon is this up to eleven — the ancient civilization relied on highly advanced technology, until they all died out. And Technology Marches On.
• The world of Borderlands and its sequel. It ostensibly takes place in 5357. There's digistruct technology that functions like Star Trek teleporters being used to build technicals that would be considered old-fashioned by modern standards. Single-action revolvers, break-action shotguns, sniper rifles, and AK-47s with wooden furniture are seen alongside laser weapons, shotguns that shoot walls of explosive shot, and submachine guns that shoot plasma, all of which are going to be used to fight off robots. And while humanity has evidently spread to six galaxies, one quest has you retrieving floppy disks explicitly described as having 1.44 MB of storage. Part of it could be Pandora being a complete backwater, or some technological dieback in the past, but a lot of it is just Rule of Cool and/or Rule of Funny.
• Castlevania:
  • Dracula's castle, being "a creature of Chaos", is always full of wacky anachronisms. This is partly because, while the games jump around in the timeline from the 11th century to the present day, we like to see elements return from game to game. There's no good excuse for the robots, though.
  • Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow are set in 2035 and 2036, allowing us to see this trope inverted — there should be nifty technology and such, but aside from a couple of handguns, Soma Cruz has the same weapons and fights the same monsters as always.
  • In Castlevania 64, right at the beginning. Skeletons on WW2 motorcycles, and Frankenstein monsters with chainsaws for hands despite the game supposedly being long before combustion engines in either of those were invented. Awww yeah.
  • Lords of Shadow is set in The Low Middle Ages, yet we encounter Frankenstein's laboratory with lots of electrical devices and a robot with a human brain as a boss encounter. there are other examples like the War Titans which are leftovers from a precursor civilization.
• Chrono Trigger initially takes place in the year 1000. That doesn't stop the main character's best friend Lucca from building robots, teleporters, and a time portal key.
  • Chrono Trigger's timeline is not the same as Real Life's; Year 1000 in Chrono Trigger is more akin to modern/recent times than it is to the Middle Ages (which are indeed a separate era in the game). Still, Year 1000 is influenced by this trope if only for the fact that swords are prominent weapons in a world with guns and tanks.
  • And has a Prestige-style teleporter.
  • Apparently, the Middle Ages (600 AD) in Chrono Trigger's timeline already had color film invented that could survive 400 years without degrading. It is used to film the wedding between Frog and Queen Leene in one ending.
  • To say nothing of the prehistoric age where the humans are primitive, living in huts and subsisting on a mostly hunter gatherer basis they are still able to provide equipment better than any other that you come across. This includes firearms, katanas, broadswords, crossbows and advanced cybernetic robotic arms. Made of rocks.
• Civilization makes you able to both cause and justify this trope. It's not impossible to have Fission without having Gunpowder or to have computers without your Civ having ever ridden a horse. Or cars before you've invented the wheel.
  "Your wise men have discovered Space Flight! What should we research next?"
  "I think... Mathematics. Adding two numbers together sounds important!"
  • Lampshaded in an ad where two tribesmen are talking about another nearby tribe. One of them mentions that with their pointy sticks (spears), they're at the top of the early tech tree. Then a rival tribesman behind him says: "Not exactly the top", holding a spear with a scope and underslung grenade launcher.
  • Further, your Civ can rush way ahead in tech and field stealth bombers against enemy spearmen, and lose.
  • The In Name Only Civilization game Civilization: Call to Power takes it even further. While your enemies are still brandishing spears, you can literally be bombing them from orbit using space bombers built from your space-based colonies.
  • In the open-source clone FreeCiv, you can sometimes find free technological advances in abandoned villages on the map, and the free tech is always something you haven't researched yet. Wait until you're far along in the tech tree before you explore these villages, and you can get messages like "You discovered Space Flight in an ancient scroll of wisdom!"
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series:
  • The weapons used in Red Alert are a strange mix of WW2 propeller planes and jeeps, 1970s jets (despite the game saying the jets were a recent invention, they look nothing like the actual early jets), 1980s tanks and futuristic teleportation machines and invulnerability projectors. After Einstein killed Hitler the past changed to what the storyline is the first game. In this timeline the Philadelphia Experiment actually succeeded, giving the Allies the Chronosphere's teleportation technology in addition to time travel. Einstein then goes on to invent the other technologies like Prism Towers in Red Alert 2. THEN at the start of Red Alert 3, the Soviets go back in time and prevent the Allies from winning either the first game or the second one! Trying to understand this will give you a headache.
  • The third game is presumably set sometime in 1970s or 80s, but because of all the time-mucking about the Japanese invented fully functional Humongous Mecha Suits and wave motion cannons, while the soviets created a fully functional set of power armor. None of these are even remotely plausible in today's technology, somewhere around 40 years after the presumed timeline. They also have advanced nanotechnology to being able to pack an entire building into a small crate and move it around.
• Dark Chronicle runs on this. Steam Punk robots, rayguns, knights with magic armbands, airships, steam trains, and guys in spacesuits with hyper-advanced computers are all bumping elbows with each other, though this is primarily due to time travel.
• Most of the Devil May Cry series fits this in their perpetual search (and usually success) at finding the optimal way to produce the Rule of Cool: swords and guns are both used against demons (although guns do little damage) and the medieval castle on Mallet Island in the first Devil May Cry has lifts. The Temen-ni-gru tower in Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening displays the "clockpunk" variant of Steampunk very well, having elevators and monorail trams despite having been built two millennia ago and not touched until its unsealing in the present day; then again, it was built by demons.
• According to the devs, Dishonored is set in a time period akin to the 1600s here on Earth. However, thanks to the discovery that whale oil could be used as Applied Phlebotinum, technology has taken some rather bizarre leaps. Walls of electricity, intercom networks, women fashionably wearing pants, giant freight ships, fluorescent lights, and even basic computers exist alongside flintlock pistols, swords, crossbows, harpoon guns and privies.
• Overlaps with Medieval Stasis in Doom³.
  • It's 2145, humanity has an established base on Mars, has mastered plasma technology, and is foraying into the science behind atomic structure (the MFS Compactor comes to mind) and teleportation... and yet:
  • The most commonly found storage medium is a square-foot disk with capacity for only a few minutes of video and/or audio.
  • Security forces lack any kind of enhanced vision, being forced to rely on hand-held flashlights (armor-mounted in BFG Edition) with reflectors made with no quality standards at all^note granted, the static transfer power supply is an advancement, but still.
  • All projectile-based weapons seem to use black gunpowder given just how much smoke they produce per shot. The grenade smokes so much, it looks like it has an old ignition fuse.
  • All UAC workers must use a standard issue PDA that is clunkier and less versatile than most of the cheapest tablets you can find in 2012.
• Dragon Age has elements of this. While the rest of Thedas is stuck in Medieval Stasis, the Qunari on the other hand have invented ironclad warships, cannons, and psychosis-inducing gas. The Qunari hail from a continent which has never suffered a Blight or been devastated by the Darkspawn horde, thus their technological development never suffered this handicap. Coupled with their strong dislike of magic, they have sought technological means to solve problems, while the rest of Thedas is more comfortable with relying on magical or enchanted means. The only time Qunari appear to use magic is when turning Saarebas (collared mages) against their enemies, apparently having learned from the Tevinter Imperium forcing their invasion of Thedas to a stalemate, that despite all their technological prowess, magic levels the playing field against the Qunari's raw firepower...at least, for now. The fact that apparently combining magic with gunpowder produces a hell of an explosion might lead to... interesting developments in this field. Also, less dramatically, printing appears to exist (which undoubtedly speeds up the spread of information, whether on Brother Genitivi's travels or on the earth-shaking events going on).
• Dragon Quest:
  • The series is almost entirely medieval, which only makes it more bizarre when you encounter one of the regularly-occurring robot enemies of the machine family such as the Overkilling Machine, or one of your party members references express elevators.
  • Dragon Quest II: In a medieval world, it might surprise you in the Cave of Rhone to find robots. The Hunter Mech and Killing Machine make their first appearance in this game.
  • Dragon Quest VIII: In the 3DS version, the Nitid Tutu which makes Jessica look like a Magic Idol Singer comes with a headset.
  • Dragon Quest IX also features a steam train, which, to be fair, can fly and was created by God himself.
  • In Dragon Quest XI, while most of the towns are typically medieval, some places like the casino have neon lighting and gambling machinery that wouldn't look out of place in a modern setting. The castle in Sniflheim has an elevator and the sailing ship used to traverse the overworld has a paddle wheel like a 19th century steamship despite not having any smokestacks. There are also people wearing bunny girl costumes throughout the world, which is another modern invention. L'Academie de Notre Maitre les Medailles is a female boarding school with girls wearing uniforms from a Japanese high school, and even the classroom looks like it was from a contemporary Japanese school.
  • The main character of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker uses a jet-ski to reach new islands.
  • A lot of the spin-off games such as Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 feature airships, which were unheard of before Dragon Quest IX or so, unless you count flying castles.
• Drakengard is ostensibly medieval fantasy, yet certain elements stick out as being beyond prevailing technological constraints. For one, the giant Cyclopes that appear during the game's War Sequence. You might say this was the product of some deranged Functional Magic or heretofore unmentioned Magitek, but the game explicitly states that these creatures are the product of The Empire's war factories. And the Bragging Rights Reward for 100% Completion is a jet.
• Dungeon Siege has a whole steampunk / Clockpunk dungeon, full of clockwork goblins, flying sentry drones, Tesla guns, flamethrowers, Gatling guns and topped off with a freaking Humongous Mecha Goblin.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The advanced Magitek/Steampunk technology of the Dwemer creates a serious disparity with the other races of Tamriel, who are closer to a medieval level of technological advancement. The Dwemer bent the laws of physics and nature to create Ragnarok-Proofed underground cities, Mecha-Mooks, Eternal Engines, Humongous Mecha, Weather Control Machines, and even a device capable of safely reading an Elder Scroll. One of Marobar Sul's "Ancient Tales of the Dwemer" claims that the Dwemer invented their famous automatons, and perfected them as weapons of war, before they had the idea to dress their flesh-and-blood soldiers in platemail armor. The Publisher's Note says that this was possibly a misunderstanding by the Chimer, who wouldn't have been used to seeing full platemail armor as it was rare among the races of Mer, and may have mistaken armored Dwemer soldiers for machines all the long.)
  • Dunmeri Tribunal deity Sotha Sil lives in a Clockwork City (which you get to visit in Morrowind's Tribunal expansion) of his own creation where he studies the "hidden world". As revealed in The Elder Scrolls Online, Sotha Sil's creations reach full blown Schizo Tech status, as he created complex computer systems, semi-organic cybernetic servants, turned himself into a Cyborg, and may have even uploaded his own mind into his city (meaning he may not have been killed during the events of Tribunal) all while the rest of the world was stuck in medieval stasis. Given that he is (was) a reclusive Physical God, his creations and advancements have never proliferated outside of his city.
  • In the backstory, it is strongly implied that the legendary Pelinal Whitestrake, the Berserker/crusader who led the Alessian forces against the Ayleid empire, was actually a time-traveling, divinely-constructed cyborg warrior and possibly the human form of the dead creator god, known as a Shezarrine. He wore full plate mail armor at a time when only the Dwemer could construct it and had abilities far beyond those of most mortals. Needless to say, a divine war-cyborg from the future is seriously incongruous for an early medieval-era setting, and the devastation he wrought upon the Ayleids was as extreme as one would expect from a being in such a situation.
  • During the timeframe of the 1st Era, the various magic guilds developed startlingly advanced technologies, with the Mananauts of the Empire and the Sunbirds of Alinor even have magical spacecraft. The Empire even operated the Battlespire, which was effectively a space station floating out in Oblivion. However, most of these technologies were abandoned, simply because they were ludicrously expensive for a society that had otherwise medieval technology and economics, and their secrets were lost in the countless wars and magical cataclysms that ravaged the continent.
  • The Loose Canon KINMUNE, a story by former developer/writer Michael Kirkbride, features an AI construct whose primary purpose was to be remotely piloted by miners for a magical drug getting sent back in time to ancient history, going insane due to being severed from the network she was attached to, having the residual personalities from her last operators in her, and becoming an important oracle in Elder Scrolls history.
• Elemental Gearbolt's fantasy setting makes for a reversal in that familiar technology is what's weird. The dominant tech is Magitek, and it's ubiquitous — but then there's one very specific real life conventional firearm. Because interdimensional arms dealers.
• Roguelike Elona seems to have fun with this. The apparent medieval fantasy with sword, magic, and these stuff also contains gun range from pistol to laser weapon, computers, food like french fries and popcorn, genetic engineering, and aliens. It goes further in Elona+, where one of the elite enemies are hi-tech cyborgs equipped with laser Blades.
• Etrian Odyssey:
  • Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard: The Heavenly Keep in the game and its remake Fafnir Knight is less like a regal ark as implied by the lore, and more like a colorful spaceship with functional conveyor belts and bombs.
  • Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City: The Deep City's technology is noticeably more advanced than that of the surface city of Armoroad. Even the thing that guards their home (Abyssal Shrine) is a powerful automaton and serves as the boss of the preceding stratum (Molten Caves). This is justified because this is the civilization that had developed the ancient technology of Armoroad before an earthquake sank them into the depths of the island.
  • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: The Empire has plenty of powerful, warlike skyships whose engineering far surpasses that of Cilan's (and by extension Tharsis') primitive skyship tech; Wynne (from the Berund Atelier) even expressed surprise at this, since she used to think Cilan was the sole expert in flight vehicles (the irony is that Tharsis' skyship tech is derived from the Empire's, because Logre shared his knowledge on the subject during the ten years he spent under the Whirlwind persona outside the Empire). The Echoing Library (the first major dungeon accessed in the Empire's homeland, Cloudy Stronghold) is patrolled by mechanized statues that, upon detecting intruding explorers, use klaxons to awaken robotic dogs in order to corner the intruders. The Bonus Dungeon, Hall of Darkness, shows that many Imperials have also investigated in the field of biochemistry, as they created the Insatiable Pupa as a failsafe should the Yggdrasil rebel against humanity, though their knowledge is shown to be insufficient as they're unable to properly keep control of this very creature. The rest of the Cloudy Stronghold proper has a very ancient design reminiscent of pre-Columbian civilizations, and the remaining societies (humans from Tharsis, Vessels and Sentinels) rely on rural costumes and lifestyles.
  • Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth: Once your party reaches the Yggdrasil's fifth stratum, the Untamed Garden, what they'll actually explore is a terraformed ecosystem that lies well beyond the planet's atmosphere (the "sky" is outer space, from which pink-colored moons can be seen), and is equipped with devices that turn off gravity; and instead of staircases, teleporters are used to access the floors. The sixth stratum, the Empyreal Bridge, isn't even on the Yggdrasil but in outer space proper, navigated through by color-coded teleporters; and Arken explains that she's part of a race of interstellar aliens who used to protect many worlds in the galaxy (the one serving as the game's setting is Mars, not Earth) before being exterminated by the Star Devourer. All of this contrasts with the primitive tech you've seen in the city of Iorys as well as the first four strata.
• The high-fantasy world of Fairune has a small amount of futuristic/modern-day technology, sometimes misidentified as magic items. Justified, as the world itself appears to be artificial.
• Fallout is full of schizo tech. The world before the war was a super-advanced fifties-style utopia-quickly-turned-dystopia that managed to create fantastical technology like fusion power, energy weapons, stimpaks, Powered Armor, Vaults, Garden of Eden Creation Kits and artificial intelligence. Yet their normal computers were big, bulky mainframes with terminals. After the End, it got even more schizo. The average wastelanders live in miserable agricultural villages lightened by torches and hunt using melee weapons, homemade firearms or an expensive decent gun. Electric power is only possible for the bigger towns and city-states. Most people use guns of varying power and conditions (ranging from brand new firearms sold by organizations like the Brotherhood of Steel or the Gun Runners, to ancient guns pillaged from abandoned sites, stitched together multiple times and being held together by duct-tape and faith), with energy weapons being rare weaponry capable of changing the course of a battle. On the other side, the New California Republic is capable of fielding a considerable army of soldiers (enough to match the Brotherhood), the Brotherhood of Steel has a small army of elite soldiers decked out in Power Armor and armed with energy weapons, and the Enclave had even BETTER technology than both, an army larger than the Brotherhood, genetic engineering capability AND Osprey-like aircraft called Vertibirds until they were mostly wiped out in a joint effort between the Brotherhood and NCR.
  • The Fallout series is based on the 1950s idea of SCIENCE! rather than science.
  • Word of God states this is because Fallout takes place on an alternate Earth where the integrated circuit was never invented and instead humanity focused on the development of fusion technology. So how does the Pip-Boy work? Very small vacuum tubes (this being said, multiple in-game references indicate transistors had been invented and were becoming common by the time of the Great War).
  • In the wasteland it is common to find communities using old portable generators and fission batteries (Miniature fusion and fission nuclear reactors respectively) to illuminate shacks made of salvaged corrugated tin.
  • Fallout: New Vegas:
    • New Vegas's main factions all display this. Compare an NCR infantryman (an enlisted soldier with a newly-manufactured assault rifle, automatic pistol, and flak jacket), a Caesar's Legionnaire (a former tribesman with a bolt-action rifle, revolver, and armor made of scrap and football pads), and a House Securitron (a Killer Robot armed with lasers, missiles, and self-repair systems) to understand just how much variance there is in the Wastelands tech level. This is notable even within individual factions. For example, at the bottom of the NCR hierarchy you have a lot of guys armed to basically a late 19th century standard, with bolt-action rifles, revolvers, and no armor. Meanwhile at the very top you have guys in full power armor carrying plasma cannons, accompanied by laser-shooting military robots.
    • The Fiends are a group of Always Chaotic Evil, drugged-up psychopaths who murdered all the occupants of Vault 3 and raided their armoury. Some will be armed with pool cues. Others with plasma rifles or laser submachine guns.
  • Fallout 4:
    • The USS Constitution, an Age of Sail warship that's been outfitted with fusion-powered rocket thrusters and crewed by robots. The reward for its quest is a naval cannon modified to be used as a heavy infantry weapon.
    • The Laser Musket. It's a Revolutionary War era musket frame, upon which a crank-powered laser emitter and focuser have been bolted. The signature weapon of the Minutemen, it's one of the more powerful weapons in the beginning of the game, but it's quite slow to fire due to needing to crank it between shots. You can also modify it with up to a six-crank capacitor for even more power.
    • 4 also has the Institute, which is the most technologically advanced organization in post-war America (the now-defunct Enclave notwithstanding). Their base of operations is a subterranean facility that resembles what people from the fifties thought the future would look like: clean, sleek architecture in subtle pastel colors abound. Their technological might is nothing to sneeze at, either: in addition to being able to develop energy weapons that put the relics used by the Brotherhood to shame, the Institute also manufactures highly advanced androids called "synths" that outpace any of the robots developed pre-war, with the latest generation of synth being practically indistinguishable from flesh-and-blood humans.
• The Final Fantasy games started out as medieval fantasy with a few robots and propeller-driven airships thrown in (typically the province of one isolationist civilization), but by the time of Final Fantasy VII had instead become much more modern or futuristic, with the fantasy elements contextualised to fit. From that point on the series would waver between traditional medieval fantasy settings and futuristic fantasy settings.
  • Final Fantasy VI has a late 17th century Europe background, with a steam-powered industrial revolution, except instead of the military revolution being caused by gunpowder, it's being caused by the Magitek of a single nation while everyone else in the world still uses coal and wind power. There are also traditional steampunk elements, of course, including Magitek armor and airships. The FMVs included in the PlayStation version add some additional interesting elements: Narshe guards fire on Terra and her Imperial cohorts with rifles, for instance.
  • There's progress towards Final Fantasy VII in a world with broadcast television, helicopters, internal combustion engines (like in cars or motorcycles,) jets, stage-based rockets, automatic weaponry, cellular phones, and even the more blatantly science fiction sub-plot of the mad scientist doing crazy Magitek/genetic experiments For Science!. The Compilation of FF VII then went above and beyond by adding its own version of the Internet, digital simulation rooms, and mental uplinks. And yet, skilled fighters still battle gun-toting soldiers with swords and spears, carts are drawn by beasts of burden even in advanced cities, and most goods and services are still paid for using physical currency.
  • Final Fantasy VIII takes this trope up to an entirely new level. The world of the game is shown to be 21st century, and then there's the city-state of Esthar which is pure Crystal Spires and Togas. All of this advancement and many of the fighters still use various melee weapons. In addition, they apparently have access to long-range missiles, hovering buildings, military robots, energy weapons, and an incredibly advanced space program, but not radios. It turns out that radio technology — and wireless communications technology in general — actually exists, it's just rendered useless by a global jamming field due to interference given off by the orbital prison housing Sorceress Adel, the former ruler of Esthar, and a big part of the early game actually involves an attempt to get a working radio tower functional that can get through the interference.
  • Special mention has to go to Final Fantasy XII. Mostly stock Medieval European Fantasy with legendary dragons and magic stones and High Sorcery and legendary weapons of divine origin... except for the airships that look straight out of Star Wars. And the guns. And electricity, the electronic voice changers, the radios, the airports, electric public lighting, grenades, and robots, all of which use "Mist" as a power source but are otherwise mid-to-late 20th-century technology in use and functionality. Most of the technology is actually "Mooglecraft": Moogles are behind most of Ivalice's advanced technology, but are only a minority among Ivalice sentients: apart for what comes from Cid's laboratory, everything built by non-Moogles is centuries behind Mooglecraft. Interesting to note that Final Fantasy Tactics is set long after the events of FFXII. The civilization seems to have reverted to straight middle-ages tech plus magic, except for the rare gun or robot, which is treated as an ancient artifact. An easily-overlooked note says that moogles are now extinct.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem Fates: On top of the era-typical technology, Clock Punk automata exists in the same world as knights and magic, as does (indicated by both maps, dialogue and supports) the existence of elevators, a comprehensive understanding of Newton's Laws of Gravity, and coffee and yoga.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses: There's a certain faction who's been manipulating events to instigate a continent-wide war. While said faction does field standard fare soldiers, they also possess highly advanced techs such as ballistic missiles and mechs in all but name. And just as cherry on top, even their Leitmotif has a dubstep feel, to make them feel even more out of place.
• In For Honor, armour, weapons and technology varies wildly between the three (four if you have the Marching Fire update which adds Imperial China) factions. The biggest offenders would be the Vikings, who make use of some impressive feats of craftsmanship including a gigantic mountainside elevator, Bear Traps, gunpowder, and handheld grappling hook launchers. Apollyon and Mercy are both left stunned at the ingenuity employed by these "savage invaders". Also used by the Knights and Samurai, with classes using armour styles from a wide time period, 10th Century to 17th Century (in the Samurai's case).
• In From the Depths, square-masted galleons with blackpowder cannons coexist with Airborne Aircraft Carriers slinging laser death in every direction. The various factions employ varying degrees of schizo tech. The Deepwater Guard rely largely on up-armored wooden paddleboats and employ a bizarre mixture of old and new tech such as their Marauder fielding a massive fixed cannon backed up by 18 broadside blackpowder cannons, while also utilizing massive aircraft like the Moray airborne battleship. Their enemy and neighboring faction, the Lightning Hoods, utilize streamlined craft fielding almost nothing but lasers and are protected by Deflector Shields.
• In Genshin Impact, the technology level of the various nations of Teyvat varies, though most of them seem to be pre-industrial (most prominently Mondstadt and Liyue). However there are also various ancient war machines left over from the war with Khaenri'ah 500 years ago. The nations of Snezhnaya and Fontaine are also comparatively much more advanced, with the former having not only access to Fantastic Firearms but also androids with a Hive Mind in the form of Katheryne while the latter has the film industry (complete with the "Kamera"), firearms and automatons (though most of this it is run off of a localized power source).
• The Ganbare Goemon series has strong elements of this. It appears to be set in feudal Japan, and yet there is the presence of robots, Humongous Mecha, and even a machine to resurrect the dead.
• The Shapers in the Geneforge series have genetic engineering and some crystalline "power spirals" but are otherwise medieval. The first game attempts to justify this in that the Shapers are the remnants of a society that destroyed itself through genetic engineering, but one wonders why their technology doesn't seem to have improved since.
• Outright lampshaded in Ghost Trick. The majority of areas seem to have near-contemporary levels of technology (besides the dependency on landlines for communication, which is a good thing since Sissel uses the phone lines to travel). However, the blue-skinned people from the unnamed foreign country have gigantic projector screens and grape-feeding robotic arms in their huge submarine, as well as amazingly human-like robots to run them. More than one person comments that they use technology 'oddly', which is apparently a common complaint leveled at their country.
• Guardian Heroes seems to start in a standard Medieval European Fantasy world... and then the Evil Wizard is building an army of Robots, one of which becomes the last boss of Gunstar Heroes.
• Half-Life:
  • Despite being an ultra-modern research facility, dabbling in spectral analysis of antimatter and quantum entanglement, Black Mesa uses late 50s — early 60s era tape reel and punch card servers. Lampshaded by Gordon in Freeman's Mind.
    "Whoa, whoa, what's this? Are you kidding me? Are we using tape-reel computers? Noooo...Wait, are those slots for punch cards? [...] Jesus Christ, I think that is a punch card slot."
  • More so in the second game:
    • Gordon is supposed to be transported to La Résistance. How? They smuggle him into a lab with equipment resembling an average garage (old monitors, big servers) to teleport him. When this fails, they send him by airboat. Then it gets upgraded with an unlimited-ammo machinegun. Along the way he picks up the Gravity Gun — a device able to attract objects from a distance and then shoot them forward — constructed from scrap metal and featuring a dial gauge. He also travels in a buggy built from scraps with an attached Tau Cannon, a chargeable laser which never runs out of ammo. The entire game gives us very advanced technology — built in a Crapsack World.
    • The Combine exhibit this too, due to their penchant for re-using existing technology in worlds they invade. You have high-tech holographic screens being used alongside small, old-fashioned TV monitors, an advanced alien facility installed into an old, decaying human prison, or building hovering robotic drones that surveil people by photographing them, complete with a lightbulb flash, etc...
• Halo's humans possess a fairly high tech Standard Sci-Fi Fleet, with ships that are several hundred meters long, FTL-capable, and equipped with spinal coilguns that hit with the force of tactical nukes. Their ground forces, however, dip into Schizo Tech territory; some of their technology on the ground is fairly futuristic, like the tank-killing Gauss Cannon mounted on the Warthog (and a portable Gauss rifle, the M99 Stanchion, exists), and the slow-charging Spartan Laser. Others use technology that would have been outdated during the middle of the Cold War. The MA5, the service rifle for the UNSC, uses the 7.62x51mm NATO round, the SRS99 series chambers Russian anti-tank rounds from World War II, certain machine guns fire .50 BMG (still in use a century after it was introduced), the standard UNSC tank uses titanium armor and a 90 mm smoothbore cannon, and a slightly modified variant of the M61 Vulcan is still their main anti-aircraft gun. Even their ships have a lot of elements of Schizo Tech to them; the aforementioned spinal coilguns are powered by deuterium fusion reactors, yet complemented by 50mm autocannons and high-explosive anti-ship missiles that wouldn't be out of place on ships today. Plus a handful of fission warheads.
• Hero & Daughter is largely a classic Medieval European Fantasy setting, but even without factoring in the Fantasy Kitchen Sink aspect of the cast (including Guest Fighters from other worlds), modern elements are strewn about, partially just for Rule of Funny. Classical medieval weapons like swords, bows, axes, and staves coexist alongside modern guns (and, in one case, a squirt gun). Some modern clothing and concepts such as public school until highschool graduation are plainly accepted by the hero, but he's baffled by other concepts such as cars, traffic, and swimsuits (which he thinks are just underwear).
• Horizon Zero Dawn: Most of the tribes are little more than hunter-gatherers, using animal parts and pelts in their weapons and armor. The problem is that half the things they hunt are machines, so everyone is running around with hand-crafted bows that use metal recurve and carbon fiber, primitive grenades that use gasoline and coolant to produce fire and frost effects, or even advanced shock weapons cobbled together onto a spear made from scrap. And that's not even getting into recovered Lost Technology like the Augmented Reality Focus device that Aloy finds as a child, or the rare modern machine guns some of the villains use. The most technologically advanced tribe are the Oseram, who have both their own smithing and the ability to turn machine parts into extremely powerful weapons. Ironically, they look more primitive than everyone else, because their armor is forged by human hands and hammers, while everyone else is wearing things crafted by machines.
• The Jade Empire is an All Myths Are True version of ancient China, so the various ghosts, demons and animated Terracotta soldiers are all to be expected, but the ubiquitous rocket-powered bamboo flying machines cause this trope to come into effect. Sure the player's Global Airship is a product of Kang the amnesiac God of Inventors, but ingame text makes it clear that flyers were around for years before he turned up.
• The technology of the humans Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds is mostly in line with 1898 England with some acceleration like tanks, but then there's stuff like the tunneling track layer.
• The world of Kenshi is filled with schizo tech. Sentient robots fight using swords and crossbows, electrified towns are defended by ninjas and harpoon turrets, and stick-wielding cannibals live near to rogue security mechs. A lot of this has to do with the game taking place after not one, but two societal collapses which resulted in very patchy technological backsliding. It also means that any pre-collapse documents are incredibly valuable, as they allow the recovery of ancient technologies.
• In Kerbal Space Program, this can happen if you mix high tier rocket parts and low tier parts on the same spacecraft, if you read each parts' descriptions. You can have a rocket that uses advanced super-efficient atomic rocket motors and experimental power generators that don't need refueling to get to another planet... with stabilizer fins that were literally found discarded by the side of the road, and take temperature readings of said alien planet using a store-bought thermometer with the tags removed.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising has a lot of futuristic technology in its ancient Greek mythology setting, including an internet for celestial beings (complete with blogs), Laser Blades, Cherubots, spaceships, and pizza delivery. It's mentioned that some of this technology is exclusive to divine beings, and that humans can't be trusted with it.
• Kingdom of Loathing is a fantasy game. The Magi Mech Tech Mecha Mech, the El Vibrato constructs, the Crimborg, any any things we have today exists as Rule of Funny. The Vibrato monsters were left by Precursors and the Crimborg are aliens, though. Lampshaded in the Rumpus Room: 'You pause briefly to wonder what an electrical socket is.'
• Kingpin: Life of Crime is set in "a past that never happened", where 1990s rap music by Cypress Hill, modern vernacular and urban ghetto architecture clash with firearms and vehicles from the 1920s and 30s. Various props like radios and TVs look like they come straight from the 1940s and 50s.
• Knights of Ambrose: Justified. Due to Scitech's time machine and the Black Tower's ability to contain objects from other timelines, modern and futuristic technology can be found in Ambrose during its medieval period. By the time of Absinthia, many of the typical JRPG towns also have television sets.
• In La Pucelle Tactics, the setting appears to be fairly standard medieval fantasy. Until one of the characters whips out a walkie-talkie, that is.
• The Legend of Zelda series has elements of this. It's mostly medieval-style, but you'll occasionally run into jukeboxes, neon lights, telephones, shotguns, and other technology. Something of note is that apart from the sword and shield, Link's most recurring weapon in the series are handheld explosives.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening: There are telephone houses in several parts of Koholint Island, and Link can use them to communicate with a supporting character who gives him tips about what to do next in his adventure. Other anachronistic elements include photography, an electric organ, and a crane game. Though the game justifies many of its quirky traits by taking place within a Dream Land, it's not explained what exactly led to the conception of this technology in the island (since either Link or the Wind Fish has to have encountered the ideas somewhere), since many other elements are known to exist (or have a plausible equivalent) in the real Zelda universe.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The trope is especially noticeable in this game. The third dungeon, the Great Bay Temple, is very steampunk-inspired and is in sharp contrast with the other more typical brick-and-mortar dungeons in the game (and most of the series, even). The pictobox is a camera capable of taking black and white photographs. There's also the Pirates' Fortress, which not only has an industrial-styled design, but also has the Gerudo Pirates ride around on boats with combustion engines on them.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: You find ceiling fans in the Wind Temple, as well as the room of Ganon's Tower based on it. And while you never see such things in the game or any other in the series, Salvatore's Battleship-like arcade game thing mentions radar and sonar, making one wonder how he knows the terms. The pictobox returns and Link actually invents color photography during the course of the game. There's also the Lost Technology within the Tower of the Gods, complete with the mechanical Armos, laser barriers and the futuristic battlefield where Gohdan (the boss) is fought; however, as it's a very ancient location, it's likely attributed to a divine creation instead of mankind.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap has two examples, both coming from the Minish tribe; it's surprising when you consider that they otherwise live with a very rural, barely technological lifestyle:
    • The Armos that are located in the Wind Ruins and guard the way to the Fortress of Winds are shown to be automatons created by the Minish to serve the Wind Tribe as guardians. Link can shrink his size and enter one to either enable or disable them by pressing their internal activation switches. The Fortress of Winds itself, in turn, has Mazaal, a robotic boss akin to Gohdan from The Wind Waker which is believed to protect the Wind Element (though Link and Ezlo later find out that the Element isn't there anymore).
    • There's a Minish who, early on in the game, gives Link a Bomb Bag. Much later, after a certain Kinstone fusion is performed, this Minish comes up with the novel invention of Remote Bombs; these can explode whenever Link wishes to (by pressing the same button that has them equipped), and instead of fuses they have bulbs glowing orange and blue at their top,
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has the industrial Goron Mines which has functional electromagnets, and the parts of Hyrule and the dungeons that make use of the Spinner. In addition, once the player meets the requirements for the opening of Malo Mart, you enter to find neon lights, and the shopkeeper actually has a speaker rotating on his head, as well as a microphone. Partway into the music loop, the music volume goes down a bit (implying it is going over the same speaker), and he will excitedly jabber in the first instance of spoken Hylian ever heard in the entire series. There's also the Twilight Realm's tech, complete with Tron Lines; but again it's an ancient thing, likely attributed to divine creation rather than mankind.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks features Link riding around on a steam train. While also being the sword-swinging hero we all know and love. And upon being asked in one interview why they insert a Train in a game set in Medieval Stasis, Eiji Aonuma replied that the Hookshot could be considered schizo tech as well: It's a small device featuring a massive chain, which is at least 20 meters long (Hammerspace?) and a feather-mechanism that strong enough to move an adult human, even while wearing iron boots. Military tanks and turrets are present as well. Spirit Tracks also has an Anouki mentioning his friends at home worrying about their electric bills. Granted, the Anouki basically run on Rule of Funny, and are far enough removed from the rest of the Zelda universe that references like that are par for the course from them. Similarly, a little girl in Papuchia also claims that she is destined to be a movie star.^note and is glad that she won't be an extra, which is ironic given that her role in the game is just that — a nameless, optional, one-line character, which is probably what allows them to get away with the joke
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has an in-universe justification for the series via means of Precursors having advanced technology to begin with, having been long lost due to the war against the Demon King. The entirety of Lanayru Province, which covers the Mine, the Desert, the Temple of Time, the Mining Facility, all areas of the Sand Sea (Ancient Harbor, Skipper's Retreat, Shipyard, Pirate Stronghold and Sandship), and the Gorge, shows what kind of technology these precursors used to have through the Timeshift Stones. Lanayru Province is also the birthplace for advanced gadgets like the Beetle, the two Clawshots and the Gust Bellows. Despite it being ancient, though, some characters living in the Sky have stumbled upon this tech and appropriated it to suit their needs, as in the case of Beedle the shopkeeper and Dodoh the Fun Fun Island clown.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Link's arsenal includes various weapons obtained from monsters, food to replenish health, clothing, and... a tablet computer. And among the monsters in this iteration of Hyrule, there are Starfish Robots with powerful laser weapons roaming the world. This technology is the remnants of a highly advanced Sheikah civilization, which thrived until they were banished from Hyrule.
• Limbo is full of this, from neon lights to anti-gravity generators, to wood huts and bear traps.
• In The Lost Vikings, three Vikings battle green monsters and evil computers. When they do get home, they proceed to show off what they learned to their families... which is apparently The Power of Rock.
• Mass Effect:
  • The series features this in an in-universe way: due to the huge difference in histories, cultures, geographies, and biologies of the different species, one species' tech development could easily appear this way to another species. The unbelievable speed of human expansion and advancement in the galaxy... while a vast majority of the human population still resides on Earth (a mere forty years after the huge, game-changing technological discovery on Mars), where it's likely you can still easily find communities existing at only slightly futuristic (or less) technology levels.
  • The Normandy itself was part of a joint human-turian project to test both races' comparative engineering designs, in addition to a stealth vessel. Its successor, the Normandy SR-2, is a Cerberus refinement of this, and can be further upgraded with a turian-designed Thanix cannon (which itself was reverse-engineered from Reaper technology), as well as Quarian multicore shielding.
  • The Crucible in Mass Effect 3 is a (supposedly) Prothean designed superweapon to defeat the Reapers, with multiple races in the galaxy coming together to aid in its construction. It's later revealed that, much like the mass relays, the Protheans weren't the original builders, but merely the last ones to attempt to build it. The Crucible is actually the result of countless Cycles refining the design over millions of years.
• Metal Gear has often featured technology far more advanced than the year that the games were set in, featuring large automatons like the Shagohod in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, but special mention goes to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: even though the game takes place in The '80s, the game features infantry-sized robot walkers, myoelectric prosthetic arms that can fire lightning or be launched as a projectile unto itself, biological weapons that make sarin gas look tame in comparison, and a handheld device with features that can put iPhones and Android phones to shame.
• The Might and Magic series of RPGs are apparently set in a fantasy world, but the characters will eventually run into robots, technical maintenance tunnels, and space ships. And wield blasters in place of Infinity Plus One Swords. The in-game explanation is that the fantasy world was created by a high-tech race as an experiment.
  • The first games has vague mentions of a war between the Ancients (said to be the good guys, and the creators of the worlds in question) and the Creators. The retardation of technology seems to be at least somewhat deliberate, and part of the experiment — to keep the would-be colonists from finding out they are on (part of) a ship, for instance. From Might & Magic VI onward? Well, there is a reason for the dating system being 'After the Silence'...
  • Word of God noted that there's nothing that would make the worlds in question follow Earth's technological development directly, especially not with magic around. Which presumably explains how a world without guns, or at least with guns being very, very rare, could also have a prototype fleet-sinking cannon.
• At first glance, Miitopia seems to take place in a quirky but nonetheless medieval setting, with Greenhorne being a stereotypical medieval little kingdom, Neksdor an Arabian-flaired kingdom and the Realm of the Fay being straight out of medieval fairy folklore. But then, you will notice that the Popstar class, and then the Scientist and Tank classes are oddly out of place... And is this an ocean liner that sails the Miis to their luxury vacation island, which by the way features a Ferris wheel? And THEN, after beating the Disc-One Final Boss, you are send into the very urban and modern Traveller's Hub which looks like a nowaday city, visit Nimbus which is loaded with Zeerust backgrounds, sterile and ultramodern plants, fight UFOs and goblins wearing astronaut suits in space and eat microwaved food for lunch. And let's not start about New Lumos...
• In Mitsumete Knight, a game set in a medieval setting, the country the Asian (aka the player) is fighting for as a mercenary, Dolphan Kingdom, has a very advanced medicine level for a medieval country: blood transfusion is common technique, plastic surgery apparently exists and is effective, and researches on heart diseases are already ongoing.
• The Monkey Island series takes place in the 1700s, and you can still see neon signs, nacho machines, etc.
  Guybrush: Shoddy seventeenth-century electrical wiring.
• Monster Girl Quest:
  • The first trilogy features a medieval setting that is beginning to adopt gunpowder: cannons and bombs exist, but handheld guns have yet to replace bows. Then the genetically engineered chimeras, cyborgs, and digital computers (including one fully fledged AI) begin showing up. These are mainly the work of Promestein, an Omnidisciplinary Mad Scientist angel who's been researching and inventing for centuries, without bothering with any sense of ethics.
  • Monster Girl Quest! Paradox RPG takes this further. An event known as the Great Disaster has opened up massive caverns (actually tunnels to parallel universes) all over the world. From these people are able to salvage advanced technology, ranging from mundane guns to outright futuristic technology such as Vibro Weapons. Despite this, most of the world continues to retain a medieval aesthetic: for example, knights still ride horses and use melee weapons.
• Monster Hunter:
  • Most of the technology and culture in the original game (Monster Hunter (2004)) indicates a roughly Bronze Age/Iron Age tribal society... except that they have firearms. Huge, clumsy firearms, but still firearms. Later games advance the overall tech level... but also advance the firearms, so they continue to be better than what should be available — the second generation has a medieval-looking society (indicated by the city of Dundorma in Monster Hunter 2 (dos) and later 4 Ultimate, or the Town area in Monster Hunter Freedom 2) with guns that look comparable to late 19th or early 20th century models... and Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) takes place in what looks to be a small fishing village during the equivalent of the 1400s or 1500s, with modern firearms cobbled together with materials and production methods they'd actually have access to.
  • The Gunlances introduced in 2... It's an RPG launcher — either with mounted bayonet, or integrated into a lance — with a time-fused explosive triggered to detonate at near point-blank range. It also has a short-range flamethrower alternate fire which ends with what appears to be a small thermobaric detonation. In a game that takes place in a small fishing village (For console) or Northern Mongolian mountain village (for Freedom) in what appears to be roughly the medieval period. They are vaguely similar to the fire lances that actually existed at the time, if you squint really hard and ignore the fact that several of them are nearly indistinguishable from a modern revolving-action RPG launcher except for the mounted bayonet.
  • Airships start showing up in Monster Hunter Frontier, to be joined by Steamships and Sandships in Tri. A village is set inside a large-sized flying ship in Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate.
  • Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin has full-on Decade Dissonance, with most civilizations being somewhere between Bronze Age and the early Middle Ages in technology. The city of Lulucion is the exception though, whose technology seems closer to the 19th century or early 20th century, with its Hunters wielding full control of their ecosystem (no small feat, considering the very premise of this series is that there are very strong monsters everywhere) that the citizens are mass-producing items synthesized from monster parts on an industrial scale. In certain areas of Lulucion, you can see partially automated assembly lines turning monster parts into things for everyday use.
• The Monster Rancher series of games has various examples of schizo tech. While the world itself has a charming sort of 1800s look to it, with fancy clothing, old-fashioned ranches, and no vehicles beyond monster-drawn carts, they have technology capable of Harmless Freezing, movies, vast underground machine cities, pop idols, and goodness knows what else.
• Mother 3 has a peaceful agrarian village menaced by pig-masked Stormtroopers, flying vehicles and cyborg/chimerised animals. This makes sense in the context, however, since the story is largely about how the lives of the people of Tazmily are changed by the influence of modernization brought to the islands by Porky (who comes straight from Earthbound, which is set in a modern world) and his minions.
• Nexus Clash has modern-day earthlike Valhalla mixed with rustic angelic Elysium and Dark Ages demonic Stygia, resulting in a war fought with swords and bows as much as guns and grenades. Thanks to mortal bionics, angelic Clock Punk powers, and unholy demonic war engines, it's not immediately clear which is the most advanced and which is the least, nor whether those guns and bows are really as low-tech as they seem.
• Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom takes place in a fantasy world that is largely Steampunk in its tech levels—there are no cars, nor does there seem to be large-scale industrial production, things like swords and spears are the most common weapons, and large mechanical structures exist but are uncommon. However, ornithopter-like personal flying machines exist, and the kingdom of Broadleaf is technology-themed with a heavy emphasis on Magitek, including robots. In addition, smartphones (known as Leafbooks) and the internet exist, and the protagonist Evan even manages to drum up some support for the new kingdom he's creating because it goes viral online!
• Noblemen: 1896 by Foursaken Media takes place in 1896 after a zombie-creating plague had killed 70% of the population of the US. Your nobleman and his forces will use tech from the US Civil War including crank-operated machine guns, sailed warships, horse cavalry and muskets (plus an expy of the USS Monitor is the mightiest naval vessel available). However there's also an ongoing Lensman Arms Race in this Steampunk and Tesla Tech Timeline world. So there's also combat biplanes, Deflector Shields, Lightning Guns, Magnetic Weapons, Tesla teleporters, zeppelin gunships, Power Armor, recoil-operated machine guns, steam-powered carriages and a tank that looks like something from World War 1.
• Nobody Saves the World: New Oldtown looks like a stereotypical medieval village that has a king's castle and a tavern with the guild of royal knights. Damptonia is similar, only populated by witches. But Mutown has a nuclear power plant and a giant robot. The witch Octavia is also a Mad Scientist who uses Magitek, and one of the dungeons is a crashed alien spaceship.
• Obduction takes place in a "scooped-up-from-Earth" late-1800s mining town on another planet, with similarly-appropriated Earth locations and technology from various time periods, such as a 1980s Suburbia house, what appears to be a 1970s gas station and garage, and a 1940s daredevil plane. Add to that, alien imagers, weapons, and teleportation devices.
• Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath seems to have an eclectic blend of Wild West steampunk and futuristic technology. The final boss battle takes place between an armored character using a crossbow that uses live insects and rodents as ammo and a guy in a energy-shielded battlemech.
• Ōkami seems to be set in a romanticized Feudal Japan, but then you find an elevator, as well as two spaceships.
• Outcast has a medieval society except from energy weapons and teleports. This, however, has an in-game reason, it is an alternate dimension, and modern humans have visited it before.
• Outer Wilds:
  • The Hearthians look like a pre- or early-industrial society that has recently incorporated electric lighting into their log cabins, but they're also very enthusiastic about their new space program, casually flying to other planets in their solar system in mostly-wooden spaceships.
  • The Echoes of the Eye DLC introduces an unnamed race of aliens who have definitely skipped around on the Tech Tree. They were capable of building a Ring World that could travel between star systems on Solar Sails, and concealed their presence beneath an Invisibility Cloak. But they relied upon Centrifugal Gravity rather than artificial gravity like the Nomai developed, and the interior of said ringworld was set up as a rustic riverside village, with wooden dwellings and some baroque iron lanterns, elevators and door locks - even the ringworld's command center and laboratory are primarily made from wood, though their hangar and flying saucers at least are metal. The aliens also never developed proper film, and instead used slide reels placed around lanterns to project images on screens. Most significantly, the aliens were able to develop a virtual reality so sophisticated that it could be mistaken for the real world, one that could even serve as an Artificial Afterlife if a user died near its interface... but it's unclear whether it's wholly scientific, considering that one enters the simulation by going to sleep next to an eerie green fire, while holding an odd lantern that lights as soon as one "wakes up" in the simulation.
• ParaWorld has an alternate reality where the locals use Bamboo Technology and trained dinosaurs (and other prehistoric animals that are all somehow existing in the same time period). The Northmen are a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Vikings who rely more on their Steampunk technology than animals. They have steam tanks and steamships... which are equivalent to the other two factions' use of animals. Oh, and their titan is still a giant animal (a triceratops), so it's not unusual to see a group of Northmen riding a triceratops charging into battle wielding bows and arrows, while supported by steam tanks. Also, for some strange reason, electricity doesn't exist in this world. Not just hadn't been invented, but actually does not exist as a physical phenomenon. An inventor from our world was forced to come up with alternate means of energy. Also, the Big Bad's troops field 20th-century weapons alongside local soldiers.
• Phantasy Star III is a medieval fantasy setting with the science fiction elements placed seemingly randomly: the game takes place on a space ark that has been fleeing its doomed homeworld, Palma, of Phantasy Star II for a thousand years, and its residents have long-since forgotten. IV was more of a sci-fi/fantasy western, and all of its sci-fi elements are a product of Lost Technology. The first two games mostly avert this, however; they're more-or-less fully Science Fantasy settings, and while melee weapons such as swords and tiger claws are in use, even they are normally made of advanced materials (such as advanced ceramics or Laconia), or are Laser Blades.
• In Phoenotopia, Earth and (futuristic) humanity barely survive a war with alien invaders. Centuries later, Earth recovers and humanity lives in a mostly Middle Ages-like setting, but with a fair amount of ancient robot technology. If you collect 30 moonstones, teleporters make a comeback, too, though this is equal parts engineering and taking advantage of machines from pre-war Earth. In the remake, Phoenotopia: Awakening, this is justified: Since the backstory catastrophe was changed from an alien invasion to a world war, there is an international institution in place, the Peace Ministers, whose goal is to limit humanity's technological advancement to prevent another war.
• Visible between the various countries in Piratez, some of which are clearly in Cyberpunk age (The Eurosyndicate), while others have fallen to Dark Ages (Fuso).
• In Pocket God, sharks have lasers on their heads and drain plugs have been invented during the Prehistoric Era.
• Perhaps due to the various mundane uses for Mons, Pokémon games see this pop up often.
  • Most of their technology is the same as ours, except they have inexpensive devices that can dematerialize and re-materialize living creatures and transmit them over the internet, and telepads are as common than elevators.
  • Guns are a rarity, but when literally hundreds of creatures that live nearby can learn how to breathe fire (among many other things), does anyone really need them? A library books in the Port Town of Canalave City depicts a Fantasy Gun Control where people don't use weapons because they essentially have an ancient spiritual contract with Pokémon to never use them, in exchange for being able to master and control Pokémon.
  • The third generation of games shows that cars do exist, since you start the game in the back of a moving truck, but they're unusual. The lack of motor vehicles is probably a combination of Law of Conservation of Detail, as well as the fact that you can use Pokémon with certain HM moves for transportation. In Gen V, you can see plenty of cars and trucks driving by beneath you whenever you cross over Skyarrow Bridge. The majority are what appear to be cargo trucks, however, so it could be that motorized vehicles are primarily only used to transport large groups of things/people, and considered pointless for anything else. However in Pokémon X and Y the player can use taxis to get around Lumiose City.
  • Pokémon Legends: Arceus is set in Hisui, the Sinnoh region in the Industrial Era. However, Arceus drops an Arceus-themed smartphone into the area, and pre-release material also shows someone in Hisui owning a camcorder and using it proficiently. The smartphone is justified, as the player character is actually from the Present Day before they ended up in Hisui via Time Travel. The smartphone was originally the player's, which Arceus transforms into the Arc Phone.
  • Pokémon Conquest takes place in Ransei, a country that seems to be in an era similar to Sengoku period of Japan. Until you see the walls of computers in the background of the Bank, the Zeppelins that carry Warlords long distances, and a kingdom that has automated security cameras.
• Professor Layton:
  • Professor Layton and the Curious Village at first appears to be set sometime in the early 1900s-1930s — the professor himself wears a top hat, and the titular village has a sort of quaint charm to it. However, several of the puzzles (which are technically supposed to exist in-universe) feature things such as digital clocks, cell phones, and computers. And if that doesn't strike you as being "pure" enough? Highly advanced robotics also play an important role in the plot, and you even get to assemble a robot dog. Also, Layton's car is a 2cv from the late fifties, but the browns point to The '70s.
  • Artwork for Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, which involves Time Travel ten years into the future, features a slot machine-like clock flickering between sixty- and seventy-four... but the first number of the date is obscured.
  • One of the prequels, Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, features a minigame where you have to guide a robot (previously assembled by Emmy) through a series of levels that include conveyor belts, robotic mice and empowering windup keys.
  • Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy: Over the course of the story, Layton and his friends investigate an ancient civilization that was capable of creating all sorts of marvelous inventions (some of which were seen sporadically in the previous games of the prequel trilogy). This includes a large army of destructive robots which activate when Aurora (who is revealed to be an Azran Emissary) is forced to awaken them in the last chapter.
• In Ragnarok Online:
  • Back during the early years of the game when the game still has no technologically advanced stuff, and feels more medieval fantasy-like, one of the headgears that already exist at that time, is a headphone, incorrectly named as "Headset" despite lacking microphone. One of the early years official artwork even feature a Wizard wearing one, listening to music from his portable cassette player attached to the headphone.
  • Much later in the game's lifetime, "Rocket Helm" is implemented, a levitating headgear in the shape of a spaceship, but to this day there's still no space travel, rocket launching, or even any space research agency seen in the game. The game still has a decidedly medieval flavor, but now mixes it with the discovery of robots from Juperos and Verus ancient technology, but robots are the extent of it — nothing about space travel is even implied, which makes the Rocket Helm feels really out of place (and time).
• Resident Evil 4: The castle, which was built centuries before the game's events, has some examples of modern technology in it, including a gatling gun and Salazar's giant mechanical statue. It gets even more apparent when you get to the island, where the paramilitaries there use stun rods and miniguns while simultaneously wielding the same medieval flails and wooden shields that the cultists in the castle used.
• Any given planet in Rimworld will be populated by crashed spacecraft survivors, pirate raiders, hardy explorers, luddites, colonists and all their descendants. Many of them have descended into a pre-industrial or even pre-agricultural state of existence through the centuries or even millennia, and a few have managed to keep pieces of advanced technology. As a result, colonists may use an eclectic mixture of ancient and medieval weaponry alongside more modern firearms and science-fiction machinery. Off the Rimworlds, there are futuristic "Glitterworlds" and so-called "Transcendent Worlds" where unrestricted archotech development has led to unfathomable machine intelligences that have converted the entire planet into a giant computing engine, with unlimited power generation and all manner of dangerous mechanoid beings and devices; bits and pieces of these Transcendant technological wonders sometimes turn up on your Rimworld where they nearly always pose a grave threat to your colony which may be straight out of the 1800s or barely out of the stone age.
• There's a similar effect in Rise of Nations. You can theoretically be researching computerisation during the Enlightenment (Babbage-style Steampunk calculation engines, perhaps?), have England not get around to adopting monotheism until circa the First World War, or even develop nuclear weaponry while your enemies (or even your own troops) are still brandishing muskets.
• Very apparent in Rise of the Reds. It is set in a speculative 2040s where The War on Terror went horribly wrong and resulted in a bleak, militarized future where technological development has been stunted and international diplomacy fails catastrophically on a regular basis. The ECA's Manticore Superheavy is practically a WWII-era Maus tank made possible with futuristic nuclear fusion, nanotechnology, and AI pilot assistance. Russia use mostly updated variants of contemporary and Cold War-era equipment, reflecting a preference for rugged, tried-and-true weapon systems alongside their trademark Post-Soviet Superscience Tesla weapons. The king of this trope however is China, who as a consequence of highly sophisticated EMP and ECM warfare development on their part, have reverted to flak-based munitions and modernized versions of tanks, vehicles and infantry arms and tactics straight from the 1950s.
• The NLF and ARVN factions in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam play this straight and downplay it, respectively.
  • The former, being guerillas, have a mixed arsenal of: improvised explosives made from scrap, old WWI and WWII vintage firearms like the Mosin-Nagant, to some of the more advanced firearms in the Soviet and Communist Chinese arsenals like the Type 56, RPG-7, and RPD.
  • The latter are given are a mix of old WWII-era firearms like the M1 Garand, Thompson, and BAR as well as newer, up-to-date weapons like the M16 and M60.
• Rune Factory has this. It seems like a typical fantasy based, medieval game franchise, however... they have microwaves, recorders, mixers, light bulbs, among other things.
  • Its sister franchise, Harvest Moon, has this too. It appears to be set in various times, depending on the game. Anywhere from the late 1800s to 21st century. Even in games with typically older feels, your dress code and the way people act is considerable modern; Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life seems both early 20th century and late 19th century, made even more confusing by the fact it has a sequel set 100 years later, where it's considerably modern (DVD players and all). However the games typically have a steady technology level. It's Hand Waved in some games by stating the area is rural, so it's not as advanced looking as other places.
• Vendors in Ryzom can sell you bows, pistols, bow-pistols, rifles, bow-rifles, rocket launchers, and automatic rocket launchers at the same time.
• The Sakura Wars series takes place in an Alternate History where Steampunk technology has outpaced all others. This is most prominent in the use of Mini-Mecha by the games' protagonists, but later games feature steam-powered computers and mobile phones. Sakura Wars (2019) takes this even further with automated ticket booths at train stations and steam-powered smartphones.
• Even though Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is set in the late Sengoku period, one of Sword Saint Isshin Ashina's attacks is a rapid-firing pistol. However, every other gun-wielding enemy uses more historically accurate firearms that require the user to manually reload after each shot, mostly in the form of tanegashima matchlocks.
• Despite being set during the warring states period of Japan, Sengoku Basara has Honda Tadakatsu, a giant cyborg gundam-samurai combination.
• Shadow of the Beast seems to establish a somewhat medieval world (albeit a very alien one)... Then you face biomechanical monstrosities and get a jetpack and laser gun for a shoot-'em-up sequence. This continues throughout the series; in the sequel, Aarbon is partially returned to his human form, which resembles a Neanderthals. But it gets even weirder in the third game, in which Aarbron becomes an Indiana Jones Expy with ninja stars who flies a very 1930s-looking airplane.
• Shadows of Doubt takes place in a strange Alternate Universe 1970s, with old fashioned grampahones existing alongside black and white TV, personal computers with color screens, phone booths with rotary phones and phone books, pneumatic-tube messaging, mass produced synthetic meat, short order cooks, motion sensor cameras, laser-guided sentry turrets, mechanical tumbler locks, a pervasive citizen identification network, disposable hand-held cameras, hand held infrared fingerprint scanners, and plain gauze bandages for injuries...sold from a genetic engineering clinic.
• The Sims 3 takes place 50 years prior to The Sims 1 and it does seem to be going for a 50s feel in many respects (some of the clothing for example).. But it's also a Cosmetically-Advanced Prequel full of late 2000s technology, clothing, and social views.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, most people use technology almost identical to that in the present day, but the military has super-advanced robots (justified in that said military robots were reverse-engineered from Dr. Eggman's robots that had been destroyed). Space Colony Ark, which is supposed to be like 60 years old, has even more extremely advanced technology and was apparently the site of extensive genetic engineering.
  • Sonic Riders has Extreme Gear, highly advanced hoverboard technology, invented by the Babylonians, a society of anthropomorphic birds, thousands of years ago so they wouldn't have to expend as much energy flying around looking for treasure. The settings of the race stages in the spin off series tend to be more technologically advanced than some stages you encounter in the main series...except for Rocky Ridge, which appears to be firmly in The Wild West.
• The Spyro the Dragon series is littered with this trope:
  • In the first game, players observe such oddities as a giant robot with a Mohawk (named Metalhead, interestingly) in the same general area as where a bunch of swampland dragons reside in huts built on sticks.
  • In Ripto's Rage (Gateway to Glimmer in Europe) and Year of the Dragon, this trope still exists. It's kind of funny to go from regions with bone-people living in bone huts to robotic cities...
• The eponymous Stardew Valley has a very bizarre technology mish-mash. There are a couple of cars and one character owns a motorbike, but there are no major roads and nobody seems to have heard of a tractor. There's a modern gym and hot springs, some people in town own computers and one of them can even build a functioning robot, but your player character has to farm with basic hand tools, starting with stone ones, and also has to work hard to unlock basic things like water sprinklers. There's a modern war apparently going on off-screen, but Fantasy Gun Control is in full effect and monster-hunting is done with swords, clubs and slingshots.
• Star Fox Adventures: Scales and the rest of the SharpClaw are running around with steel weapons, artillery, and hoverbikes. The CloudRunner fortress is powered by Magitek. The LightFoot tribe seems to thrive on Bamboo Technology. And at least one member of the ThornTail tribe is utterly fascinated by the "metal bird" you fly around in.
• Star Ocean started in a fantasy world, and then you travel back in time 300 years to the same fantasy world... but two of the main characters are commanding staff on a spaceship from Earth. (Before you get to go back in time, you're required to dump all futuristic weapons... including the swords, for some reason.) They adapt with frightening ease; Captain Ronyx even takes up magic.
• In Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, in a setting containing energy weapons, force fields, antigravity tanks, laser swords and hyperdrive, the Naboo have the Royal Crusader, who runs around on the back of a space horse and hits people with a polearm. It can be upgraded with a personal shield generator, meaning he's using an ultra-advanced force field to make his polearm more effective.
• Strife has a weird world of medieval castles, cyborgs, crossbows that shoot electric bolts, and robots armed with flamethrowers. While certain developments (like the cybernetics and robots) are thanks to The Order making technological leaps and bounds, it's unclear how many modern elements were around before the events laid out in the intro cutscene and manual.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • While it's allegedly set mainly within a medieval-style kingdom where spears, heavy armor, steam trains, wooden ships, and dirt roads are the norm, the games (especially the RPGs) are chock-full of modern-day technologies like televisions, cars, neon signs, electric lights, jukeboxes, conveyor belts, bazookas, computers, pagers, cell phones (both with ringtones), rocket ships, jet planes, blimps, handheld video game consoles, and more wherever it would be funny or cool. It's gotten to the point where the impression of the Mushroom Kingdom has reversed, the kingdom is a modern civilization that just happens to have a medieval-style castle and other old fashioned trappings, rather than the other way around.
  • The Sensor Lab phones from Paper Mario: The Origami King are generally designed like modern corded phones with faxing, except that they also have rotary dials.
• Tales of Symphonia, particularly within the waning world of Sylverant. While the Sylveranti consider a coal-powered steamship to be their most technologically advanced vehicle, Cruxis, the Renegades, and later the main party possess Rheairds, which are basically personal interdimensional jets. Note also the Desian human ranches. While they have elevators, electric lights, automated factories with electronic control panels, AND autonomous robots with lasers, the outside world is comparatively primitive. Heck, people have to travel to the Thoda Geyser using wooden wash buckets.
• Team Fortress 2 sports this to a degree.
  • The game is set somewhere in the 1960s but there are still Teleporters, invisibility watches, mechanic limbs and automatic gun turrets. Later updates have introduced laser cannons, high-tech sniper rifles, projectile-destroying zappers and a handful of hats and costume items that far exceed the technology of the time. Many of these items are the result of a crossover promotion with Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
  • Other updates have pushed this in the opposite direction. The Demoman has received swords and shields, the sniper can equip a bow, a wooden shield with a car battery attached to it, the medic has a crossbow, and you have medieval mode, were everyone is limited to melee weapons. Of course, melee weapons range everything from wooden clubs to robotic limbs.
  • The discovery of australium pushed Australia into a technological golden age very early. They are reluctant to share too much of their tech or australium with the rest of the world, though.
  • The update introducing the Gunboats explains that in the TF2 universe, the rocket launcher was invented in the 18th century by Shakespearicles, while stairs were first prototyped (but took a while to be adopted) in the 19th century. In the interium century, Rocket Jumping was the only way to get to the second floor of a building, which was how Abraham Lincoln (tragically, the inventor of stairs) died.
• Thief series features among other things: Medieval swords and armor, bow and arrow (prominently), robots, proximity mines and surveillance cameras.
• The Tiamat Sacrament: Ry'jin rebuilt an otherwise normal medieval castle into a laboratory that matches the aesthetic of the Gestahlian Empire. It looks out of place compared to the standard RPG Maker 2003 RTP, but it's also a sign that Ry'jin spends the nation's resources on himself than improving the citizens' standard of living.
• Due to similar reasons to the Ravenloft setting in literature, Timestalkers, a little known Dreamcast RPG, suffers from this. Suffers, because your characters really have no damn good reason for eschewing modern tech aside from soda pop and pre-packaged foods yet choose to do so anyway. (as the few enemies with projectile weaponry do just as much damage as melee monsters if not more.) Storywise, the reason for this is a crazy old wizard grabs hunks from various times in the world and smashes them together, and your people come from them, one from each 'piece.' Also, the one person who ought to have schizo tech knowledge, the 'lady of the night' from the modern era setpiece? Prefers to fight by kicking monsters with her heels. Oddly, she's a reimagining of earlier Climax character Lady, who lived in a decidedly non-modern world and used traditional weapons, being an obvious Captain Ersatz for Alena from Dragon Quest IV... making her handling even more bizarre.
• In the Total War: Warhammer franchise:
  • The Lizardmen have extremely fragmented technological capabilities. Skinks rely mainly on wooden javelins and blowguns but they can also be called upon to crew laser cannons mounted to dinosaurs. Indeed they appear to have levitation technology but not the wheel. This is the result of their Gods vanishing, thus cutting off their direct access to advanced technology, and the fact that the Slann Mage Priests slept/meditated through thousands of years of decline. Fear of violating The Great Plan seems to prevent most innovation.
  • The Lizardmen's ancient enemy the Skaven also have radically divergent technology fielding ranged units with everything from slings to grenades to flamethrowers. They still consider the catapult an important weapon of war despite having enormous lightning cannons available. Their lack of cavalry is compensated for by having a giant monowheel war machine with lasers stuck to it that constantly fire in random directions which is powered by giant rats on treadmills.
• Touhou Project: The primary setting was sealed off from the outside world in the late 1800s, but was a rural backwater at the time, giving a fairly low base level of technology. But objects and people from the outside world still trickle in, including a fairly major power that's looking to modernize. And the kappa are fantastic engineers, but in too short a supply to have a major effect on the setting. Then there's the Lunarians, who have sci-fi tech, but the only ones around limit themselves to medicines. One of the stranger uses of this trope is for Akyu's Untouched Score (AKA the PC-98 Touhou soundtracks).^note In-Universe, the soundtrack was made by a band... in it's FM synthesized integrality!
• The four The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel games see the Erebonian Empire undergo quite the technological advancements, most notably in the first game. The ARCUS units handed to Class VII are implied to be have the world's first handheld communication device built into them. These were made in 1203 and officially rolled out in 1204 (the year the game takes place in). Then, in the summer of that year, the player can help test what is implied to be the world's first ever motorcycle. And only three or four months later, at the end of October 1204, the Noble Faction invades the imperial capitol with an army of Panzer Soldats. Even before the Panzer Soldats come into the picture, characters start questioning the value of swordsmanship in a world were tanks dominate the battlefields. Later games in the series reveal that certain advancements, such as the Panzer Soldats and the long-range communication of the ARCUS, have been reverse-engineered from ancient human technology that is far beyond the capabilities of modern humans.
• All of the Ultima games, particularly the earliest ones, which had spaceships and starfighters coexisting with a high medieval civilization, and a cybernetic Big Bad in Ultima III: Exodus.
• In The Universim, your civilisation progresses to the medieval age after you unlock electricity.
• Valkyria Chronicles: Architecture and societal progress seems to be roughly 1930s-vintage, small arms are late World War II-level (the main weapons are quite explicitly modelled on the Gewehr 43 and Sturmgewehr 44), flight technology hasn't reached World War I yet, tanks are mostly interbellum-level (though there are some Super Prototypes rolling around that would make the Maus feel inadequate). However Gallia's cultural and aesthetic mores mirror that of a kingdom from a Medieval European Fantasy setting with the tech on fast forward, so you also get forts that look like castles, anti-tank RPG launchers shaped like knightly jousting lances, and heavy troops wearing 16th century plate armour. Which is undeniably cool as fuck.
• Vanguard Bandits is your standard medieval fantasy RPG about a war between The Good Kingdom and The Empire.... except for the fact the war is being waged with Humongous Mecha. The game's backstory establishes that the founders of all of the countries on the continent in which the game takes place were immigrants who discovered the continent and settled there. Archaeological expeditions discovered a number of magic-powered mecha throughout the continent, but as the continent was formerly uninhabited, no one knows where they came from or who made them and how. The excavated mechas were studied and reverse-engineered to create more mechas. How did a medieval society reverse-engineer and mass-produce several armies' worth of mechas? Why are the mechas the only semblance of advanced technology that can be found anywhere? Who knows, just roll with it.
• The Warcraft series threw in more schizo tech as it went along, thanks to the combined engineering efforts of dwarfs, gnomes, and goblins.
  • The strategy game series featured swords and sorcery, guns and cannons, and flying machines. World of Warcraft added mass transit (in the form of the Deeprun Tram between Ironforge and Stormwind), robots, and teleportation devices.
  • The demons also got a lot of technology out of nowhere, including Humongous Mecha and Anti-Air cannons. They're shooting at people who are riding the highly advanced Giant Bird Thing technology. Nuclear warfare is also only for use on cavemen. Unsuccessfully. Clubs made of bone are much tougher.
  • By World of Warcraft, it becomes clear that technology in Azeroth is roughly equivalent to modern society, but the universe is quite different thanks to magic and the constant warfare between dozens of intelligent species. Well apart from the Steampunk and the fact that Magic Rock Beats Laser.
  • The Iron Horde in Warlords of Draenor is a textbook example. Garrosh travels to the past and gives the Pre-Fel Corrupted Orcs of Draenor advanced Goblin technology, but only the weapons technology. So the Iron Horde has guns (lots of guns), Iron Star shells, artillery, ironclads, an armored train, an assembly-line foundry, and more. But most of their people still have a tribal hunter-gatherer lifestyle and half of their cannons end up strapped to the backs of giants rather than on a mechanical chassis.
• In War Wind, normal soldiers tend to be melee, but then you have the Obblinox, angry pigmen who use modern weaponry like shotguns and machine guns and are generally very Post-Apoc Punk in their technologies (the biker unit eschews guns for Rule of Cool axes), and there's even an in-race example, as the Eaggra are all 'medieval' until you create the sniper, who gets a nifty telescoping monocle, who can then be upgraded to the superunit Grenadier, who trades his crossbow in for a GRENADE LAUNCHER. The Tha'Roon have melee weaponry, choosing to rely on their magic for long-range attacks. Until one of them is fully cybered up, and can then be upgraded into a Jump Trooper, who functions much like the soldiers in the book version of Starship Troopers.
• Featured prominently in the Wild ARMs series. All of the games features Western-themed elements, but the world is actually riddled with technology way beyond colonial period or even modern capabilities. In fact, the first game starts off distinctly Western/medieval and ends up in a space station for the final battle, while the third uses databases and nanotechnology. See also: Lost Technology.
• Wild Guns (no relation to Wild ARMs), features a general Wild West theme merged with sci-fi, bringing everything from cyborg rustlers on flying robotic horses to giant enemy crab robots to the table. No revolvers for our heroes, though, straight to grenade launchers and vulcan cannons for some good old-fashioned blowing things up.
• Wildstar sees swords being used in an age of lasers, space travel, and psychic powers. NUCLEAR-POWERED swords. Magic and Science coexist in this universe, but it doesn't really explain why massive tech-swords are still a viable weapon, when plasma rifles, blasters, and magic revolvers are available.
• A trademark of the Wizardry series of video games. it featured the standard fantasy swords and magic type world. But also spacefaring races, using 17th century firearms and 80s computers. Or light sabers. And robots as Mecha-Mooks or Angels. Special mention goes to Wizardry 8, with technology levels ranging from spaceships to a primitive race armed with stone spears. Even within said race, the Trynnies, there is a gadgeteer who has access to a telescope and other high-tech equipment while living in a tree village made up of ancient huts, protected by spear-armed guards.
• Xenoblade Chronicles:
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Justified, as the different races have varying levels of technology. The Homs have quaint little countryside villages, with swords, guns, airships, and Mini-Mecha, with the more advanced stuff likely being adapted from their robotic invaders. The Nopon are less advanced, having a more tribal style society and weapons, but they are familiar with the other races technology. The High Entia have a mix of sleek futuristicness and Magitek. The Machina also have futuristic cities, though theirs looks less sleek and more lifeless. Some of the lesser races are only to the point of sharp rock on a stick.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2, for the most part, has the world of Alrest relying mainly on Gaslamp Fantasy conventions, such as the utilization of ether in place of gasoline or oil, which is also utilized by Driver and Blade pairs in combat for affinity, thus making ether act less as stand-in for real-world substances and more as a source of magic utilized in the technology of its world. Then you reach the interior of the World Tree and the First Low Orbit Station, which contain futuristic technology spawned from the humans of our Earth.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3 features this contrast in spades, given that its a sequel to the previous two numbered games. The technology of Keves, the nation made up of the descendants of characters from the first game, utilizes the crude and mechanical technology once used by the Homs and Machina, while the technology of Agnus, made up of the descendants of characters from the second game, utilizes the Magitek technology found in Alrest.
• The world of Zork developed with technology and magic going hand-in-hand. In Zork: Grand Inquisitor, where magic is banned by the Inquisition, the world has a technology level somewhere around World War II. They can harness the power of electricity, and have radio, television, and movies, but don't have the technology for cars, planes, or firearms. Seems possible they either don't the ingredients or never figured out how to refine fossil fuels or invent gunpowder.

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