Alternate History / Video Games

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• 80 Days, rather than being a straight adaptation of its source material, takes the characters and basic premise of the novel and places them in an alternate Earth featuring steampunk technology, examining the effects that technologies such as robots (called automata in the game) would have on 1872 society.
• The English localization of the Ace Attorney series is this thanks to its insistence on the series taking place in California. The localization team had to handwave away the increasing amount of Japanese cultural elements, as well as the distinctly Japanese court system, by claiming that in the universe the series takes place in, California never enacted any anti-immigration laws, explaining the increased proliferation of Japanese culture, while the court system was revamped at some point in time to prioritize reaching verdicts as quickly as possible.
• Akatsuki Blitzkampf presumably takes place in a world where the Axis won World War II and the post-war world is between an Imperial Japan that controls most of a highly dystopian, war-torn and militarised Asia, and Those Wacky Nazis. Rather than being defined by nuclear weapons, the cold war is defined by Super-Soldier projects born from shocking examples of human experimentation.
• In Ancient Wars: Sparta, the Greek and Egyptian campaigns diverge from real life. In the former, King Xerxes is killed in Salamis (a battle the real one didn't even partake in), and in the latter, Inaros' rebellion succeeds (when in real life it was crushed).
• In Aotearoa the continent of Zealandia didn't sink during the Cretaceous period and still has dinosaurs.
• Assassin's Creed:
  • Used subtly in Assassin's Creed, to explain the differences in construction styles from history (which to the expert border on Schizo Tech, but to the layman are nearly invisible and easily justifiable through Scenery Porn and Rule of Cool) and also to insert the Assassins and the Templars into the political mix. So, you have several buildings in a Gothic style that wouldn't come in vogue for hundreds of years, and several people who died historically during the time of the first game were "revealed" to have been killed by Altair (your targets in-game). Also, the 20 Minutes into the Future framing story, with plagues sending people illegally migrating to Mexico and year-round hurricanes, not to mention the presence of the Animus itself, suggest a far different history than our own. However, this is all covered up by the Templars.
  • The Tyranny of King Washington, the Assassin's Creed III expansions, asks What If? George Washington had accepted the title of King instead of President. This is one of the only scenarios deliberately included for the sake of the alternate scenario in the entire series — even Connor is surprised to learn of all this in-game because he's basically been transplanted from in-universe actual history, too.
  • Generally speaking, a lot of discrepancies in Assassin's Creed concerning some locations is at least partly justified with the Framing Device of the Animus — simply put, the game isn't portraying history exactly as it was in-universe or in real-life, but a computer reconstruction of it — and the in-game encyclopedia even lampshades it at time (the Queen's Staircase in Nassau in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is explicitly stated to be included because it's such an iconic landmark despite not being built until half a century after the game takes place). Some others are justified by being a result of real-life hardware limitations, such as the attempt on Lorenzo de Medici's life in the second game taking place outside the Florence Cathedral instead of inside like it actually did because the developers couldn't get the scene to take place inside and then move outside. Most of the others can be handwaved by incomplete historical records in real-life, such as Anne Bonny's role in Black Flag working because no one really knows what happened to her after 1720.
• The RTS version of Axis & Allies features two campaigns: one for the Allies and one for the Axis. The Axis campaign diverges with the Battle of Crete going well for the Germans. Afterwards, Rommel takes El Alamein and the Suez Canal, followed by Manstein seizing Stalingrad. The Japanese invade Australia, depriving the Americans of a staging area in the Pacific. The Allies launch the D-Day Invasion, but Rommel and Rundstedt drive them back, setting the stage for victory in Operation Sea Lion. The Japanese then stomp out the last British resistance in India and later aide the Germans in the capture of Moscow. Finally, Admiral Yamamoto wipes out the American fleet, captures Midway and Hawaii, leaving the Americans unable to continue fighting.
• Aztec Wars: The Aztecs decided to move out of the Americas before their discovery by Columbus, and proceeded to conquer most of the world. The Russians and Chinese are the only ones holding out against them. All sides use Steampunk liberally.
• Starting with Arkham City, the Batman: Arkham Series has suggested that it takes place in one of these, as one of the levels in City revolves around a place called Wonder City, which Gotham was built on top of, having technology powered by one of Ra's al Ghul's Lazarus pits and fully-functioning robots, and a partially-crumbled plaque above the gates of the titular Arkham City suggests the prison was opened sometime during the 1990s, rather than the 2000s (as Asylum was released in 2009) or 2010s (as City was released in 2011). A sidequest in Arkham Orgins had functional automobiles in 1855, as opposed to cars only first showing up in the 20th century, and in general a lot of technology was more advanced than what was around in 2001 (canonically, Asylum takes place eight years after Origins). Knight has Deathstroke, who is 55 around the game (his age was listed in Origins as 45 and Knight canonically takes place 10 years after it), suggest that like his comics counterpart, he took part in the The Vietnam War.
• One can only speculate what might have happened if one of the battle outcomes possible in Battlefield 1 happened in real life, but thankfully the narrator is there to briefly explore it after each match.
  "One can only speculate what an Austro-Hungarian victory would've meant for the future of Europe. It is possible that success could've united the crumbling empire, allowing the Hapsburgs to keep control of their countries, races, and ethnicities for at least a few months longer."
• Battlezone (1998) takes place in the 1960s, during The Space Race. However, instead of simply launching a couple of men into space, the USA and the USSR have been launching hundreds of soldiers to the moon and other planets in order to find more of the Bio-Metal that allows them to create extremely advanced Hover Tanks in mere seconds. The first mission starts off panning around the Apollo 11 lander sitting on the lunar surface, then spins around to show an entire military base in the background, with a hover tank driving towards it.
  Grizzly One: Armstrong and Shephard get all the credit. But we all wanted to win the Cold War. And we were ready to commit our lives to getting more of the Bio metal... They went looking for a few cowboys to do the job. So in the end, they created the world's biggest cover-up.
  • Battlezone II: Combat Commander takes place 30 years after the first game. Bio-metal is now public knowledge, though the real events of the Space Race are still top secret. The International Space Defense Force possesses huge interplanetary carriers, laser cannons, and fusion reactors.
• BioShock: Eccentric billionaire Andrew Ryan, disgusted by those he deems parasites hampering societal progress, decides to create his own society devoted to Objectivism, free will, and self-improvement. This becomes Rapture, a city built on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean between November 5, 1946 and late 1951. Many prominent figures disappear from the surface to live in the city, free to exercise their creativity free from things like "petty" morality. This leads to major advancements in technology and genetics, including the discovery of a wonder drug called ADAM, but all residents are forbidden from contacting the surface. Clashing ideals and ideologies lead to a civil war in the city, with the protagonist arriving during a plane crash one year later to discover the aftermath. Of course, he's not as much of an outsider as one may initially think.
  • BioShock Infinite: Self-proclaimed prophet Zachary Hale Comstock, with assistance from Rosaland Lutece and the U.S. Government, creates the floating city of Columbia to champion American exceptionalism. The city appears at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, goes on a tour around the country and then the world. However, when Americans are taken hostage during the Boxer Rebellion, Columbia goes in and reveals itself to be a floating fortress. The United States ordered Columbia to return to sovereign soil, but Comstock responded by declaring their secession on July 6th, 1902. After that, Columbia disappeared into the clouds. The city then became something of an unsolved mystery to the world along the lines of the Bermuda Triangle. In March 1981, a building from Columbia was found high in the Alps, having apparently fallen out of the sky. In at least one timeline, Columbia (lead by an elderly Elizabeth) goes on to destroy New York City in 1984.
• Body Harvest starts out as this. The aliens attack in 1916 in the middle of World War I, and then slowly annihilate mankind by returning once every 25 years to consume entire countries.
• Castlevania takes place in a timeline where once every century, Count Dracula ravages Europe with his army of monsters, requiring a member of the Belmont family to put him down until the next generation. He has emerged during several periods in time, with Bram Stoker's novel being considered canon with the series' events (although the game's version of those events is somewhat different; Quincey Morris dies without children in the novel, while in the games he had a son and is part of an entire offshoot family of the Belmonts), and according to Bloodlines, World War I was provoked by one of Dracula's minions. His allegedly final appearance would be in 1999, during a devastating war whose details seem intentionally vague, but was said to be so destructive that it couldn't be given justice if depicted in any game. Other differences include that Frankenstein's monster exists (fought as a boss in several games) and the surrealist painter Victor Brauner had children, only to lose them in World War I, leading him to become a vampire.
  • The Castlevania: Lords of Shadow reboot series is more explicit about being alternate history than the original continuity, since during 1047, Europe has fallen under the grasp of a trio of Evil Overlords and there is also a long-destroyed ancient civilization of immortal humans that created giant statues.
    • In the second game, the centuries-long struggle between Count Dracula and the Brotherhood of Light are recorded historical facts by the modern day, as the final battle against him resulted in a great explosion that leveled the battlefield and could have been seen from space.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert is set in a timeline where Adolf Hitler was removed from time by a time-traveling Albert Einstein before coming to power, and World War II was instead fought a decade later between the Soviet Union and a European coalition. The main Command & Conquer series, set 20 Minutes into the Future at the time of its release, may be considered honorary alternate history.
  • Kane making cameos in the Soviet campaign (especially the final cutscene, which actively name-drops the Brotherhood of Nod) might be a pretty clear hint.
    • Red Alert 2 made it much harder to make a consistent timeline leading from an Allied victory to the Brotherhood of Nod running around in the open by 1996, leading to a persistent fandom interpretation that, while the Allied ending to RA1 lead to RA2, the Soviet ending lead to Tiberian Dawn — that the mass-murdering Soviet forces winning somehow allows for the UN-backed Global Defense Initiative to be created. All Word of God eventually said on the issue was that the Red Alert and Tiberium series were now entirely separate from each other.
  • Red Alert 3 confuses the situation even more, when a Soviet time travel experiment in the immediate aftermath of RA2 causes Einstein to be removed from time in the '20s, causing a 3-way war between the Allies, the Soviets, and the Japanese where nuclear weapons were never invented but most of Einstein's creations from the previous games were instead created by a Dutch technology firm called FutureTech.
• In Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Cortex was able to use N. Tropy's Time-Twister machine to insert himself into positions of power throughout history, which you see evidence of as you play through the levels. For instance, the ancient Egypt stages have hieroglyphs that portray Cortex as the Pharaoh, the motorbiking stages (set in 1950's America) have billboards promoting Cortex as the local mayor, and he features as the emperor of the Roman empire during the colliseum boss fight against Tiny.
• Cultist Simulator has an interesting take: there is one future, but there's more than one history. 5 major branches of histories existed, with the 2nd being implied to be ours, and apparently a lot of smaller branches existed as well. Also, all of them are true. At once. Or at least some of the part is, considering that most likely the Hours pick and choose various parts of histories and blended them together to the current present.
• Used quite often in Dark Chronicle.
  • The Big Bad erases the Origin Points, those being events/places/people where history began, thus altering the intended future, however the heroes restore the Origin Points but instead of creating the intended history, they create alternate versions of it; for example in the intended history Aeroharmonics was never perfected, but after the heroes defeat Dr. Jaming, Aeroharmonics was developed and mastered.
  • Taken to a naturally epic extreme when the Floating Fortress Paznos confronts Griffon's brand new flying Moon Flower Palace. Paznos was only supposed to be a mobile fortress, but Max and Monica's interference resulted in the Gundorada engineers building it as a Humongous Transforming Mecha that plays catch with the collapsing Palace.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution, while taking place in the future, reveals itself to be this in the background material. For starters, the level of prosthesis technology had advanced to such a degree that in the early 2000's, U.S Soldiers were using early mechanical augmentations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another point of divergence is that Blackwater completely broke up, rather than reforming into Xi, allowing for the rise of Belltower.
• The Dynasty Warriors series has always contained a certain degree of Alternate History — though largely limited to the outcome of China's 'Three Kingdoms Era' civil war. In the older games, you basically changed history based on which character or faction you chose to play as, but the more recent games have put more effort into depicting the actual history. in 7, you actually played through the historical era, with each campaign basically covering the 'era of greatness' for that particular kingdom, culminating in a newly-added campaign for the kingdom of Jin — who, historically, were the ones to finally reunite China. Perhaps in response to this, 8 featured the most direct and elaborate application of Alternate History — each kingdom's campaign 'branches' at a crucial point, where you have the ability to direct the story down its historical path or — if you have changed history enough during earlier battles, usually by saving characters who would normally have died — take it down the 'Alternate' path by winning a great battle that they historically lost, and then going on to uniting the empire in their own way.
  • The Xtreme Legends add-on throws even MORE 'what-if' scenarios into the mix, such as Yuan Shao winning the Battle at Guandu, defeating Cao Cao and becoming the primary power of northern China — leading to Cao Cao fleeing south and allying with Wu for an alternate version of the historic Battle at Chibi. Or Shu maintaining their alliance with Wu by ceding the Central Plains, avoiding the betrayal that would historically lead to the death of Guan Yu at Fan Castle, and eventually launching a joint attack against Wei.
  • One might also mention a certain, inherent 'Alternate History' value in the weapons being wielded, which start with Automatic Crossbows and get progressively more ridiculous from there — most notable in the warriors of Jin, who are 'late' in the history of the Three Kingdoms (That is, around the year 250 AD) who wield, amongst other things, a rocket-powered 'Siege Lance', a huge, mechanical drill, and a miniature gatling-gun with a giant bayonet. A DLC-pack adds several more weapons to the mix, including one literally referred to as the 'Automatic Crossbow', which appears to be an arrow-based version of a GAU-10 autocannon. Alternate, indeed...
• Election Year Knockout is a pretty humorous example of one. This game is set in a world where it has been determined that instead of the president of the United States being decided through elections, it is decided through who is the best boxer.
• Touched upon in Eternal Darkness, where certain key events of history (namely the assassination of Emperor Charlemagne, World War I and the Gulf War) turn out to be plots by the antagonists in order to keep humanity from unifying by slaughtering itself.
• Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is set in a 1980’s English village where the protagonist discovers that everyone in the village and possibly the entire world has disappeared, taken by something called 'the pattern' which may or may not be an extraterrestrial intelligence.
• Employed by all games in the Strategy RPG series Expeditions by Logic Artists.
  • The intro of Expeditions: Conquistador explictly says that the Player Character undertaking their expedition to Mexico means that Hernan Cortes will in turn never be able make his. This leaves the fate of early Spanish colonisation attempts, as well as that of the Aztec Empire, in the hands of the player.
  • Expeditions: Viking starts out with the subtly different detail that the famous Viking raid on Lindisfarne which kicked off The Viking Age happens around 789, rather than in 793 as it did in OTL. Over the course of the game's story, it is possible to have the Player Character's viking expedition be the spearhead for a Norse conquring of Britain a 100 years before that was a historical reality in real life. It can then be taking further, culimating in the Player Character leading the Danes and Northmen to conquer all of Pictland and Northumbria as part of a Northern Scandinavian Empire. Essentially establishing the Danelaw at least a century too early, and the North Sea Empire 3 centuries too early.
  • Expeditions: Rome has the Player Character meet a young Julius Caesar in the opening chapter of the game. From there, however, Caesar ends up getting killed early on, essentially leaving the Player Character and their companions to navigate all the political troubles surrounding the alling Roman Republic that this version of Caesar won't be around to involve himself in. The Player Character can ultimately choose to walk Caesar's path and attempt to overthrow the Republic and install themselves as Dictator, or they can dedicate themselves to try and pull the Republic back from the brink.
• In the Fallout universe, The '60s as we know them never occurred, and the sociopolitical standards of The '50s continued well into the 21st century, with all the extenuating political, artistic, and scientific implications:
  • The Cold War never ended, and China became the United States' ultimate enemy.
  • The US invaded Mexico in 2051 and annexed Canada in 2076.
  • Computing evolved to the degree at which robots were commonplace and sentient computers were uncommon; however, said computers are still powered by vacuum tubes and have monochromatic monitors as the Transistor wasn't invented until much later, hence the micronization of technology never happened (the world nuked itself before it could take off).
  • Cold fusion was discovered (from Power armor research) and even some cars run on nuclear batteries (as evidenced in Fallout 3, when you blow up a car and a mushroom cloud forms).
  • There are minor changes in the history of the Fallout universe pre-WWII; witness, for example, alien abductions at least since 1603 and the Sunset Sarsaparilla est 1918. Abraham Lincoln's gold-plated Henry repeater actually existed — although in the Fallout universe, it was chambered in .44 Magnum, rather than .44 Henry.
  • On a more lighthearted note, an article in the old Boston Bugle building in Fallout 4 notes that the Boston baseball team who played in Fenway Park (basically, the Red Sox) was up three games to none in the best-of-seven 2077 World Series, on the verge of breaking a 159-year-old championship drought — the Curse of the Bambino^note the supposed explanation as to why the Red Sox did not win another World Series after selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919 remains alive and well in the Fallout universe when the Real Life Curse was broken in 2004. Note the use of present tense — Game 4 was scheduled for the day the world nuked itself. When we said a more lighthearted note, keep in mind this is Fallout we're talking about.
    Boston Bugle article: On Saturday, October 23rd, 2077, the only thing that could snatch away victory is an act of God, or some obscene calamity of man. Tomorrow, my friends, the unthinkable will finally come to pass. And life in Boston will never be the same again.
  • Some Sixties elements do pop up, but the implication is that a lot of those elements were delayed some 110 years... meaning that they were still new-fangled things that hadn't had time to fully spread through society by the time the bombs fell (for instance, transistors were invented but seemingly only recently enough that computing was still in the vacuum tube-transistor hybrid period). The Hippie subculture also seemed to have had some presence before the nuclear apocalypse, some evidences are the graffiti with Hippie symbols and phrases in the Hidden Valley bunkers in the Mojave Wasteland and the Sunshine Tidings co-op settlement in The Commonwealth, which used to be a hippie commune.
  • Some events from the Fallout universe also sync up with our own, but with different contexts. This can be seen with the space race: on May 5, 1961, the same date that Alan Shepard became the first American in space in real life, Carl Bell became not only the first American but the first human in space... and also its first casualty (in real life that "honor" went to Vladimir Komarov, in 1967). His orbit lasted twelve minutes and seven seconds, went once around the Earth, then crashed on reentry. The first moon landing also took place July 16, 1969, but the ship was called Valiant 11, piloted by Richard Wade, Mark Garris, and Michael Hagen.
• The Flower Collectors takes place in The '70s during Spain's rampant political unrest. Specifically, it takes place after Francisco Franco died and the country was transitioning from nationalism to a democracy. The big glaring difference here is that the world is populated by anthropomorphic animals.
• The game Freedom Fighters (2003) takes place in an alternate history in which two key things changed — first, the Soviets invented the atomic bomb and used it to end World War II in Europe, and secondly, the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved in their favor. The strategic and political repercussions of these changes allowed the Soviet Union not only to survive, but to begin an invasion of the US in the early 21st century.
• Girls' Frontline starts diverging from our timeline at the Tunguska Event, caused by the Russian Empire finding and mishandling artifacts and technology from an unknown civilization. After World War II, the discovery of a corpse from that civilization and the Allies fighting each other over the Nazi research on it before the UN steps in after discovering more artifacts causes ELID outbreaks. The breaking point happens in 2030 as a sealed-off site gets destroyed by the Chinese following an ELID outbreak, nearly wiping out humanity, who start producing Autonomous Dolls as manpower.
• At a first glance, Honkai Impact 3rd seems to be set in a real world, just with many Fantasy and Science Fiction elements. However as the plot progresses, it becomes apparent that history of this world is very different from ours. Even though action is set in year 2015, human civilization has existed for over 50 000 years and was nearly wiped out by Honkai multiple times. This may explain why some flashbacks taking place a long time ago show humanity to be equally technologically advanced as in present and some other, less distant, look more like Middle Ages or ancient times. Additionally, many historical figures here (such as Shakespeare) are gender-flipped and Really 700 Years Old. Also, one of Fu Hua's flashbacks suggests Sherlock Holmes really existed in this world.
• Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number reveals that the series takes place in an alternate history where the Cold War escalated to the point that Russia invaded Hawaii and eventually dropped a nuke on San Francisco, forcing America into a Russian-American coalition that ends when 50 Blessings assassinates the leaders of both countries and Russia nukes America into oblivion in retaliation.
• Hypnospace Outlaw is set in an alternate version of 1999. Aside from the whole idea of an internet that can be accessed through a Brain/Computer Interface, this story contains elements that separate this game's world from our own.
  • The POTUS is a "President Hughes" instead of Bill Clinton.
  • Tennis somehow got mangled into a game called "trennis", which involves playing on a circular court, three players hitting the ball and a ball-catcher in the center of the court. A Conspiracy Theorist in the Open Eyed Zone claims to be the descendant of the true inventor of tennis, which was then warped into trennis.
• In Ikemen Sengoku, the main character and Sasuke unwittingly create an alternate timeline by preventing the historical deaths of Nobunaga Oda and Kenshin Uesugi, respectively, and these characters eventually participate in opposing sides of a war that never occurred in the main character and Sasuke's original timeline.
• Into the Radius has history deviate in 1987 when 'Pechorsk Event' leads to laws of physics become more of a suggest in Pechorsk and its surrounding area, creating Pechorsk Radius, administered by the UN.
• Iron Harvest takes place in an alternate 1920s Europe where Humongous Mecha and Powered Armor were developed instead of tanks during World War I. In addition, Europe has been changed in other ways such as Saxony-Goethburg apparently unified Germany instead of Prussia and Grigori Rasputin is a Russian rebel leader.
• According to the backstory of Mace: The Dark Age, neither Christianity and Islam exist in this game’s timeline, and as such, Europe and Arabia are highly balkanized and divided thanks to the Covenant of the Seven's actions. Meanwhile in Asia, Genghis Khan's descendants continue to rule.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater does this by explaining that the Cold War happened because the Soviet Union, China and America originally plotted together to combat the Axis Powers and that after the war there has been a power struggle to reobtain the vast amount of wealth they have pooled. Other oddities created by this include the existence of the Cobra unit and mobile nuclear death machines. This, in turn, has also caused things like virtual reality training, nanomachines, various war robots, and cyborgs to become widespread across the world by 2018. As you can see by looking around, that sort of stuff isn't visible now.
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army and its sequel, Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon, do this quite discreetly, by using the Japanese calendar and noting the year as Taisho 20, when in real history, the Taisho era only lasted fifteen years. It's noted in the first game that, should the timeline remain unpolluted, the result would have been the Crapsack World that is Shin Megami Tensei I and Shin Megami Tensei II. After the modifications imposed by a time-traveling villain, the timeline's implied to have diverged irrevocably into the world where the other Devil Summoner games and the Persona series all take place.
• Several realistically-toned Real-Time Strategy and Simulation Games released in the late '90s through the 2000s use the classic "The Cold War went hot" plot :
  • World in Conflict
  • Operation Flashpoint
  • Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath
  • Wargame: European Escalation
  • Flashpoint Campaigns
  • Harpoon wasn't completely "alternate" history when it was released in 1989, because the cold war going hot was still a possibility because the Soviet Union didn't break apart until 1991. The modern versions of the game are filled with a combination of various types of alt history like the European Union either breaking up or ending up in a war with the United States, various expansions of the Gulf War or Iraq War into the involvement of Iran, Israel, Turkey and India, scenarios where Russia, China and North Korea join forces to attack Japan, South Korea and the United States Pacific Fleet and so on.
• The old PlayStation 2 game Ring of Red asks what if the atomic bombs were never dropped, and instead, the US and Soviet Union invaded Japan... Oh, and what if Humongous Mecha were developed in the war.
• Forms the crux of the plot of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.: Philemon erases the global-scale destruction that took place during Innocent Sin by erasing the day that the protagonists (Tatsuya, Maya, Eikichi, Jun, and Lisa) met as children, resulting in a brand-new timeline with several changes. Some are minor (Jun's father is alive and his family life is much more stable; the fake band that Lisa was set up to participate in is a real band made genuinely in Eternal Punishment), some major (the new Joker is Tatsuya Sudou, who was The Dragon to the Joker in Innocent Sin). The Joker curse itself is also different, as are the rumors that are spread and turned real. A point of conflict is the fact that Tatsuya retains his memories of the now-destroyed reality from Innocent Sin, which not only gives him two sets of memories, but allows for Nyarlathotep to repeat the events of that game in Eternal Punishment.
• Resistance: Fall of Man takes place in an alternate history where, in the 30s, The Virus appeared and swept across Europe in place of the Nazis. The game takes place in the early 50s, by which time it's reached England.
  • According to the website for the first game the point of divergence for the timeline was the Spanish-American War not happening, even after the USS Maine incident. Instead Cuba gets its independence without bloodshed. For some reason after that event, the White Russians won the Russian Civil War, the United States did not pass the Smooth-Hawley Tariff Act so it only faced a recession instead of the Great Depression, and without economic collapse Germany stayed with the Weimar Republic. The real point of divergence, of course, was when The Virus arrived in Russia with the meteor that hit during the Tunguska incident, ultimately resulting in every other divergence from real history not really mattering. The upside, at least, is that technology advanced far quicker than in reality, with the Western powers making use of tilt-rotor transports to deliver infantry using what is effectively the M14 EBR with a wooden stock in 1950.
• The Role-Playing Game Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader is set in the 16th century, in a timeline where an event in the Third Crusade caused all variety of mythical creatures to become real.
• After completing The World Ends with You, you can access the "Another Day" chapter, which takes place in an alternate storyline in which the main characters take on completely different lives; Neku's passion in life is a Mini-Game that has become Serious Business, Higashizawa is a booth babe, Konishi is Beat's teacher, among other things. Collecting Secret Reports reveals that Another Day is an alternate, parallel timeline, one of many that people of higher powers can jump to.
• Iron Storm was set in a Dystopian Alternate History where World War I had dragged on until 1964. A number of changes include dieselpunkish assault rifles and powered armor.
• Chrome Hounds: The game is set in 2006, with the USSR still in existence, the US out of touch with mostly everyone, and most importantly: Humongous Mecha being deployed in warzones.
• The 1946 expansion pack of the IL-2 Sturmovik combat flight sim series focused on an alternate World War II, which got prolonged by a year due to a botched Operation Overlord. It featured many prototypes of Cool Planes of both the Allies and Axis, most of which never got into the air or even off the drawing board due to the end of the war. A lot of these are early jet fighters.
• The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, set in the infamous Exclusion zone around the ill-fated Chernobyl Powerplant in northern Ukraine. It became a Dark World version of itself after a second, unexplained catastrophical event at the plant occured some time in the early 1990s, apparently caused by some mysterious Applied Phlebotinum.
• Virtually all grand strategy games made by Paradox Interactive allow this — to a very big degree. Brabant ruling half of North America and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth colonising Australia? With a bit of knowledge and some skill, it's certainly possible...
  • Creative Assembly's Total War series does the same, but with the addition of the most epic real-time historical battles in the history of gaming.
  • Ditto for Big Huge Games' Rise of Nations, which is essentially a blend of Age of Empires, Civilization and Risk. While the original game's campaign mode is simply the various nations trying to Take Over the World with little to no relation to real history, the Expansion Pack Thrones and Patriots features several historical campaigns, which can easily result in a Alternative History Wank or Space-Filling Empire depending on the choices the player makes, such as the United States conquering both American continents or the Soviet Union winning the Cold War.
  • Same thing but on the smaller scale of Medieval Europe happens in Knights of Honor. You start out in a historical correct situation, but you (and the AI) change history simply by playing the game. Space-Filling Empire happens a lot, but thanks to political unrest it almost as often devolves into Balkanize Me.
  • The Sunset Invasion DLC for Crusader Kings II guarantees it, creating an alternate history where the Aztecs invade Europe in the Middle Ages^note It's meant to be every bit as ludicrous as it sounds.
  • Practically inevitable in the hideously complicated strategy game Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun. Encompasses the entire globe and allows dozens of playable factions, from 1836 to 1920. Victorian Britain, The American Civil War, World War I, Jidaigeki, Darkest Africa, you name it, it's there for the changing. The main menu art for the second game depicts a gunfight between Confederate troops and British redcoats.
  • Hearts of Iron has gained increasingly esoteric and far fetched alternative history paths for nations as more DLC has been added to the game. Examples of truly outlandish alt paths include being able to create a British monarchy in the United States or bringing back the Confederacy, Communist Japan, Trotsky taking over Mexico and outlandishly, being able to put Wotjek The Bear in charge of Poland.
  • Some of the most high-profile mods for the above are ones that make the starting scenario alternate — Hearts of Iron has Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg (German victory in the Great War), Victoria has Divergences (Plantagenet victory in the Hundred Years' War)...
  • Kaiserreich now has a Dating Sim (yes, really) set in the same universe, titled Edelweiss.
• DEFCON is a tongue-firmly-in-cheek RTS that lets you spark World War III and the following End of the World as We Know It. However, its underlying hidden message about nuclear war is very serious in tone.
• Date Warp involves a setting in which The American Revolution never happened, and the area equivalent to the USA is split into Atlanta, which is part of the British Commonwealth, and Eldorado, which isn't.
• Battlestations: Pacific, has an entire campaign based around this, ending in the US signing a surrender treaty onboard the IJN battleship Yamato in San Francisco Bay.
• According to Jumper, attempts at creating "ultimate soldiers" began as early as 1888.
• The tutorial campaign of Empire Earth 2 follows the Aztec Empire through an alternate history where it wins against the conquistadors, establishes an independent nation, helps the Americans defeat the British, and ends up fighting a war with a fascist Inca Empire in the 1930s.
• Jeanne d'Arc: The famous French Martyr was a Magical Girl who fought the Legions of Hell (and the English) to stop King Henry (possessed by an Eldritch Abomination, no less!) from plunging the world into hell. She also wasn't martyred.
• Covert Front has three main points of divergence: a technological revolution in the 19th century that leads to a Steampunk world, World War I beginning in 1901, and scientists inventing a device that can spontaneously create whatever a hooked-up person is thinking of.
• The Doomsday expansion for Hearts of Iron II has for its titular campaign an alternate 1945/46 where the Allies and Soviets declare war on each other almost right after World War II ends. Some of the series' mods, such as Kaiserreich, take the concept further.
  • This is based on a real life contingency plan by the western Allies, called Operation Unthinkable, for an attack on Soviet forces, using captured and rearmed German troops as auxiliaries. It was ultimately ruled unfeasible, as the Red Army outnumbered Anglo-American forces 3:1, had better and shorter supply lines, and nuclear weaponry could not be produced fast enough to be effective. See the other Wiki.
  • The Armageddon expansion includes a campaign where World War II happened differently. Multiple points of divergence occurred.
    • The Russian Revolution failed while Ukraine seceded to become the Cossacks. The Bourbon dynasty continues and manages to merge the Spanish and French branches. Africa and South America embraces Communism after the fall of former European colonies. India becomes a Republic after the British lost control. Siam unifies Southeast Asia to repel colonial forces. Sweden annexes its neighbors. The United States annexed Canada at the cost of recognizing the Confederates. The United Kingdom, Persia, Italy and Japan fell to Communism as a result of poor leadership. China continues to be a Republic without it splintering into warlord groups. Prussia and the Ottoman Empire attempt to restore their glory. And finally, for some reason Tannu Tuva is the only nation in the world that didn't pick a side.
  • Hearts of Iron IV gives players the option to enable or disable historical focuses for AI-controlled nations. If enabled, Germany and the USSR sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Japan attacks Pearl Harbour, etc. If disabled, you get crazy shit like Germany staying a democracy and reaching a peaceful conclusion over Danzig, Britain becoming an absolute monarchy under King George VI and attempting to reconquer the United States, Japan embracing communism, the Republicans winning the Spanish Civil War resulting in the Spanish Anarchists kicking off a global revolution...
• Mini-Manhattan in [PROTOTYPE] has its tallest in-game building resembling one of the former World Trade Center towers, if only vaguely.
• Making History is all about creating this, without a particular alternate timeline in mind.
• Illusion of Gaia turns out to be this, to an extreme degree- a comet that contains Dark Gaia passed by the Earth at some point and scrambled history severely. Certain things still exist but the planet was quite messed up. After defeating Dark Gaia in the end, the planet is restored to its modern 20th century.
  • Until the sequel, Terranigma, where Dark Gaia comes back and completely wipes out the Earth again. The hero is sent out to the surface to revive everything, turning the world into a mix between Alternate History and Anachronism Stew — Christopher Columbus exists alongside modern New York and futuristic Tokyo.
• The original Mega Man (Classic) series takes place in early 21st century (the earliest games actually marked the year 200X instead of 20XX) and because it's already 2012 by now, it's safe to assume that the series takes place in an Alternate Techline where robots evolved quite quickly during the Cold War.
  • Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force takes place in an Alternate History to the main series where, instead of robots, computers evolved rather quickly.
• Cancelled post-apocalyptic RPG Nuclear Union was set in an alternate 2012. The changes are best illustrated by this (ironic) quote from the promotional material;
  "Every child knows the glorious story that lead to today. When the Capitalist Alliance lead by the Americans refused to allow our defensive screen in Cuba, in 1962, and then attacked us with nuclear weapons. However our Motherland and the Soviet Forces were better prepared than the dogs knew. We leveled them, and half the planet, to show our sickle is sharp and the hammer hits hard indeed!"
• Enigma: Rising Tide is a naval simulation game set in alternate 1937, where Imperial Germany (now called the German Weltreich) dominates Europe, as a result of the RMS Lusitania never being sunk, and the US never joining World War I. There are three sides in the game: Germany (maintaining a large fleet of U-boats and battleships), US (carriers and destroyers), and the League of Free Nations (submarines and the HMS Hood). The LFN is composed of Imperial Japan and the British government-in-exile headed by Churchill. Interestingly, the ending of chapter 1 (chapter 2 was never made due to the developer going out of business) implies that the Americans are evil in this version of history, as their surprise attack on Scapa Flow, crippling the German fleet, has clear parallels to Pearl Harbor in our history. Chancellor von Richthofen (yes, that one) gives a speech eerily similar to FDR's own following the attack and declares the end of the age of the battleship. The ending cutscene shows the Bismark and the Tirpitz being converted into a new class of ship — the battlecarrier, featuring a flight deck but still having large forward-facing guns.
• Naval Assault: The Killing Tide uses an alternate history World War II with some major alterations to benefit the naval combat of the game. The Nazis emerge victorious over the Soviets in 1943, and as a result of the Royal Navy not sinking the French fleet at anchor, Germany is able to press both of their fleets into German service, greatly strengthening their naval surface forces, but the Royal Navy still controls the North Atlantic. Apparently the Japanese never attacked Pearl Harbor, as the US is at peace when the Germans launch a massive surprise naval attack in 1944 all along the American east coast, hoping to cripple the American navy and ensure their own Naval Blockade of England is a success. History proceeds quite differently as the Allies, which consist of only the US and UK at this point, launch a land invasion of France via the Bay of Biscay, which is quickly routed by German forces, and the US Navy is forced to retreat back to the US where it's revealed with most of the US military either in England or retreating from the failed Biscay landing, the German military is able to successful land and occupy Long Island, New York, and are transporting two nuclear warheads to the territory in order to force the Americans to surrender. The US Navy destroys all of the German Naval forces around New York harbor and successfully intercepts the submarine transporting the nukes, however it's very obvious the war is nowhere near over yet as the game ends.
• March of War takes place in alternate Diesel Punk version of the 1940s with World War II being waged by six superpowers and alliances.
• The prologue of Wolfenstein: The New Order has World War II continue onward into 1946... and going horribly for the Allies. The POD came when the Nazis discovered a cache of Jewish super-technology and underwent a staggering technological leap forward. They eventually conquer Britain, the Soviet Union and China, betray Italy and Japan, and force the United States to unconditionally surrender by nuking New York. The Nazis won the war and conquered the planet. Luckily, we still have one man:
  "Nazi scum!"
• Prince of Qin begins with the historical death of the first Qin Emperor but then diverges when the Emperor's order to commit suicide (actually a fake written by prime Minister Li Si and chief eunuch Zhao Gao) is sent to Emperor's exiled son, Fusu and respected general Meng Tian. In real life they believed the order and carried it out, while in the game they see through it and Fusu soon joins the historical rebellion against their rule. Plus, there's also tons of Chinese elemental magic involved in the gameplay.
• Hammer and Sickle, the officially sanctioned commercial mod to Silent Storm, is set in the alternate 1949, and the plot involves utterly fictional Hammer of Thor organisation. The player is a Soviet agent in West Germany, and if they fail to be sufficiently subtle in resolving the plotline conspiracy, their actions can well lead to World War II.
• Subtly invoked in Last Word. While St. Lauden is obviously a fictional country, it is still located in Europe, as countries like France get occasional references. Then, the setting seems to be technologically equivalent to the time of First World War, or perhaps slightly earlier, as while electric lighting is present, one-way intercoms are said to be still in prototype stages. There are also significant social differences, with a greater accent on noble classes, but practically no gender divide. Female boxers are absolutely normal, and women freely serve in the army, with a female general (something still practically unheard of in the real world) being present at the party.
• BattleCry has a catastrophic war at the start of the 20th century result in both war and guns being banned in favour of a sort of Combat by Champion, which is the focus of the game.
• Sakura Wars takes place in an alternate version of the early 20th century with steampunk technology and demons (in fact, the Demon Wars of 1918 replaced the actual World War I). Additionally, Japan never falls under the control of ultranationalist militarists, and Emperor Taishō still reigns as late as 1940 (in real life, the Taishō period ended in 1926).
• While the first game was initially a future history, Homefront: The Revolution is explicitly set in an alternate timeline. North Korea lost the Korean war and embraced a progressive free market economy instead of communism or juche. After the disastrous failure of Apollo 10 forced the US to cancel their space program, the Soviets, who are still alive and well in the 21st century, were the first to land a man on the moon in 1971. This feat inspired North Korea, leading to an era of technological and economic growth throughout the 70's and the rise of the MegaCorp APEX, who hired people such as Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak. Kim-il Sung lost credibility after a series of floods devastated the country, which resulted in APEX taking control and North Korea becoming a corpocracy that manufactures the world's highest demanded technology, including weapons. The 2003 invasion of Iraq caused the situation in the middle east to spiral out of control, bringing the US into further military interventions in Iran, Syria, and Egypt. President John McCain's unwillingness to back down on American military activity in these regions, especially with Soviet control over many oil fields, lead to a smuggled Iranian nuke being detonated in Riyadh. This triggered civil unrest in the United States at the same time as the subprime mortgage crisis, resulting in a state of emergency, the suspension of the 2016 elections, and the US defaulting on its debt to APEX. North Korea saw this as an opportunity and invaded the country under the pretext of a humanitarian mission, using secret back doors they'd established to literally shut down America's military.
• Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg is a popular Hearts of Iron mod where World War I went very well for the Central Powers, securing French capitulation in 1919 and a prolonged naval stalemate with the British lasting until 1921, when a "Peace with Honour" was signed. The world after the Weltkrieg is vastly different from our own:
  • The German Empire is currently the single most powerful nation in the world, a constitutional monarchy ruled by the Hohenzollern dynasty and with colonial holdings in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Hitler died in the Weltkrieg and so fascism is practically non-existent as a political force in Germany in this timeline, though Germany is still quite authoritarian in state policy. Germany also leads Mitteleuropa, an economic union and military alliance between several eastern European nations.
  • Devastated by the Weltkrieg and losing her overseas empire, Britain became the scene of a popular syndicalist socialist revolution in 1925 after a miner's strike in Wales escalated into a general strike and then into open rebellion, leading the monarchy and upper class to flee to Canada as a Government in Exile. The new Union of Britain emphasizes decentralisation, co-operativism and national self-reliance, building socialism in isolation while protected by the Republican Air Force and Navy.
  • Russia came off from the war relatively well. The Russian Revolution of 1917 still happened, but the Bolsheviks were defeated by the White Army after intervention from the German Empire. It currently exists as a nice independent constitutional republic under President Alexander Kerensky, but still under threat from various political forces such as reactionaries in the rural centre and separatists in Siberia and the Far East.
  • The United States has seen relatively little change, at least on the surface, having remained neutral throughout the war, but the Great Depression really walloped them. American investments and loans to Britain and France were lost forever, and the Germans, dominant in world trade and vengeful that the Americans spent the whole war sitting on their hands, gradually forced America out of markets in Europe, Africa, Asia and even parts of South America. The two-party system is still in place and largely dominant on the western seaboard (where strong trade with Russia and Japan has mitigated most of the economic damage), but on the eastern seaboard, two new political ideologies are gaining traction; the technocratic populist right American First Union Party based around the Deep South, and the revolutionary leftist Combined Syndicates of America based around the American industrial heartlands of the Midwest. The 1936 election is not far away, but defeat in elections will likely mean more state secessions, and maybe another civil war on American soil.
  • In the Indian subcontinent, the socialist revolution in Britain and subsequent collapse of the British Empire left the peoples of India to find their own way. Currently the continent is split into three states: the British-sympathetic nation of Delhi in the northwest, the socialist Bharitya Commune in the northeast, and the isolationist and traditionalist Princely Federation in the south.
  • Romania is currently under the boot of the ultranationalist, anti-capitalist and anti-communist, anti-semitic Iron Guard, which was able to overthrow the monarchy and seize control.
  • Japan is perhaps the least changed due to its geographical distance from the events of the Weltkrieg, and has broadly similar foreign policy in seeking to conquer China and maintaining puppet states in conquered lands as part of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. However, internally, it has not fallen to military dictatorship like Japan did in our own timeline (though a military dictatorship can still happen to Japan) and maintains some degree of democracy/constitutional monarchy.
  • In addition to being its own Alternate History setting, in-game events present two In-Universe alternate history novels, both of which have garnered interest as spin-off mod projects:
    • The first is Führerreich by Erich Maria Remarque, which is essentially an attempt to visualize a timeline very similar to our own that seems plausible from what they know. Since it is common knowledge that Woodrow Wilson would never get the USA involved in the Weltkrieg, Theodore Roosevelt wins re-election in 1912 under the Bull Moose Party and joins the Weltkrieg on the side of the Entente, leading to Germany's defeat in 1919. Germany is occupied and gripped by economic and political crises, while the Reds win the Russian Revolution due to Germany being unable to back the Whites. In Germany, a bitter and nationalist Weltkrieg soldier named Adam Dressler champions an extreme right-wing ideology that calls itself "People's Socialism" and he takes leadership of the "German Workers' Party", and after a failed putsch and a stint in prison during which he writes a manifesto, Dressler takes over the German government as Führer and declares a "New Reich". Dressler goes on to exploit the war-weariness and internal disputes of the victors of the Weltkrieg to annex parts of former Austria-Hungary and ally the other defeated powers from the Weltkrieg before starting a new war against the Entente in which France falls quickly, followed by a war against Soviet Russia that goes well at first.
    • The second is The Red Flood by Lithuanian author Ignas Šeinius, instead differs greatly from both the Kaiserreich timeline and our own. 'Red Flood uses the Brusilov Offensive, which failed in the Kaiserreich timeline, as its point of divergence and with an overwhelming Russian victory in the battle, Austria-Hungary is forced to withdraw from the Weltkrieg in 1916, setting the stage for an Entente victory without American intervention. After the war, Germany is gripped by a syndicalist revolution and Russia suffers a coup by Admiral Alexandr Kolchak, who leads a totalitarian, ultranationalist dictatorship. Before long, Germany and Russia locked in an incredibly bloody stalemate in Eastern Europe centered in Šeinius's home country of Lithuania and Britain is considering taking action against the German syndicalists.
• The New Order Last Days Of Europe is a Hearts of Iron Game Mod in which the Axis powers are able to win World War II. A combination of the Soviets having different (and less competent) leadership and America wanting to stay isolationist allows for the Germans and Japanese to carve up the world. The game starts in the 1960s, with a cold war between Germany, Japan, and the United States.
• The Shadow Hearts trilogy (and predecessor Koudelka) generally follow along with established history, but with much more fantastical elements as well as instances of Schizo Tech. Interacting with real-life personages is part of the series' charm.
• It's implied at the end of Ryse: Son of Rome that thanks to Marius' actions, the Roman Empire never fell, surviving to the modern ages, as in the final shot of Marius' Triumphal Memorial Column, one can see both a church and the intact Coliseum.
• A big reason why Paradox Interactive games, most notably Europa Universalis, are so popular. With over 200 nations represented across the world (and each and every one of them being playable — that said, some are more playable than others), a lot of this is likely to happen in any game even without player involvement. This has led to the concept of "hands-off games" where the player picks an out of the way island nation like Ceylon or Iceland, disables pop-ups, leaves the game running for a few hours and then comes back to see what ensued, or alternatively just uses the "Spectator Mode" console command which lets an AI take over the player nation and reveals the entire world map. In the hands of a player meanwhile, countries can get up to all kinds of wacky shenanigans: Milan conquering most of Europe, England and Scotland getting gobbled up by a united Ireland or Northumbria, Syria becoming Protestant, the west African kingdom of Mali becoming a colonial powerhouse in the Americas and Asia, and Ming China colonising the east African coast. Taking obscure one-province minors like Navarra and Trebizond and turning them into world powers is practically a pastime for experienced players.
• Turning Point: Fall of Liberty starts in an alternate 1953 where, due to Winston Churchill being killed by a taxi cab in 1931, Britain was unable to resist the German onslaught and fell to the Nazis in 1940. With no hope for the European continent, America continued its policies of neutrality as Germany solidifies its foothold on Europe and becomes the Greater German Reich, building its military power and allowing Japan and Italy to share in its successes into the 1950's, while America remains one of the few remaining bastions of freedom in the world, led by president Thomas E. Dewey, who defeated Truman in 1948. This all comes crashing down in 1953, when Germany launches a massive invasion of America and kicks off the plot of the game.
• ULTRAKILL, though it’s not immediately apparent. Terminal entries for certain enemies in Hell’s layer of Violence reveal that the game’s events stem from World War I spiraling out of control after the introduction of increasingly powerful, blood-dependent combat machines.
• Warframe is typically in an Ambigous Time Period; however, as seein The Whispers in the Walls, a character from Warframe's time travels back to 1999 AD. Albrecht's notes on the era call 1999 a 'plague year' for currently unclear reasons; Albrecht apparently brought a cure for this plague to this time, and in the process, turned at least two people into human-warframe hybrids using Helminth.
• Project Wingman has a worldwide catastrophe called the Calamity, which saw tectonic and volcanic activity skyrocket along the Ring of Fire, changing the world map and almost bringing humanity down with it. 400 years later, technology is back at a level similar to ours (save for artillery-sized railguns becoming standard weapons on ships and bunkers) with Cordium and geothermal energy becoming the world's most used energy sources. The biggest and most powerful nation of the world is the Pacific Federation (englobing all the Eastern Asian coast, a very large chunk of Russia, Japan, Indonesia, Hawaii and Australia) and its member (or rather puppet) states, with the plot of the game kicking in when Cascadia (covering the whole American Western seaboard from Alaska to southern Mexico), a Federation-affiliated state, breaks off to gain independence.
• We Happy Few is set in a 1960's Britain where the Nazis lost control of Germany, which became the German Empire; instead of Hitler, Rommel got control of Germany. The Empire started World War II, and went through with a full-blown invasion of Britain. America retained its policies of neutrality due to Roosevelt being assassinated and replaced with a less competent leader, meaning Britain was by itself when the Germans invaded. However, the war still did not go well for them, with the Soviet side of the war progressing mostly unaltered, forcing Germany to take more and more desperate measures as the Soviets advanced, including conscripting everyone who was at least thirteen in the parts of Britain they managed to occupy in order to fight against the Soviet Union. Wellington Wells became involved when what appeared to be a German armored regiment surrounded their town and demanded their children; to save the town from apparent destruction they acquiesced to their demands, but later discovered that the "tanks" were fakes, having been built to conceal just how badly the German armies were struggling and that Wellington Wells could very easily have resisted their rule if they had chose to do so. To add icing to this horrifying cake, the children from Wellington Wells were killed before they even made it to the training camp when their train was bombed, essentially rendering Wellington Wells' surrender completely pointless. Wellington Wells was so horrified at their deeds that they devoted their entire society to forgetting it ever happened and pretending everything was fine.
• In Xenonauts, history diverged when First Contact was made in Iceland in 1958 leading to the founding of the Xenonauts, an international organisation dedicated to studying and combating extraterrestrials. Fast forward to September 1979, a massive fleet of alien warships arrives in Earth's orbit, and so begins the war for humanity's survival.

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