For this post, I'll list a bunch of video games, and give a general description about common traits fans of those games seem to possess. This is all intended for comedy, and SHOULD NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. Additionally, not all video games will be covered in this one blog post, because there are simply too many. So I'll be listing a combination of games I personally like and games that are absurdly popular and well-known. With that out of the way, let's begin, shall we?
PAC-MAN: You're a fan of the classics, but you struggle to wrap your head around complicated mechanics in more modern games like a controllable camera or how to play Smash Bros without spamming the taunt button over and over. You also have very mixed feelings about the Pac-Man TV show. This description also applies to fans of the original Donkey Kong.
Donkey Kong Country (series): You like the catchy music, the high-skill platforming, the brutal difficulty spikes, and the bizarre TV show adaptations of Nintendo games during the 90's. You are also biologically incapable of doing anything even slightly impressive without yelling "Banana SLAMMA!!!" at the top of your lungs. But most importantly, DK Rap is unironically your favorite song and you sing it in the shower sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes.
Any Super Mario Game (that isn't Paper Mario): You respect the fact that without Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, and the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom, the video game industry literally wouldn't exist. That said, you gladly turn a blind eye when Nintendo does something stupid with the franchise, like oversimplify the RPG mechanics of Paper Mario until the whole miniseries became an empty shell of it's former glory. But hey! At least the Mario Party games are still a good time with friends (even if the randomness can destroy relationships).
Paper Mario: You fondly reminisce about the good old days. When Nintendo put ACTUAL STORY into Super Mario (and not just excuse plots, but ACTUAL STORY with ACTUAL CHARACTER INTERACTIONS, BELIEVABLE MOTIVATIONS, and even PLOT TWISTS). The fun RPG mechanics that let you fight foes in fun and creative ways. The quirky, charming, and incredibly quotable writing and humor. And then you remember how Nintendo butchered Paper Mario by oversimplifying the RPG mechanics to the point where the game became unfun to play. Not necessarily bad, but definitely disappointing considering how high the first three games set the bar. We will never forget you, Paper Mario. May one day Nintendo see the error of their ways and give us the Paper Mario RPG we deserve.
Legend of Zelda: Hey, listen! You love the epic story. You love the charming supporting characters. You love how handsome Link looks in Breath of the Wild. You love the awe-inspiring music. But most importantly, you love breaking pots, cutting grass, catching bugs, and fishing, all to get the stuff you need for 100% completion. And by golly, it doesn't matter if the world is about to end in three days, nothing will keep you from that last Piece of Heart so you can have a full 20 Heart health gauge for the final boss battle. Also, Groose is your spirit animal.
Metroid: You're sick and tired of Nintendo pumping out kiddy, family friendly party games without end, and because of that, you've welcomed the darker, more atmospheric nature of Metroid. You take to the exploration and "show, don't tell" storytelling like a fish takes to water, and you have convinced yourself that Samus Aran is the coolest video game character ever created. And then your remember that Metroid: Other M exists, and then feel mildly angry about that game's infamous portrayal of Samus (for those curious, she went from cool, no-nonsense mercenary who never puts up with anyone's shenanigans, to naive, gullible little girl who can't do anything unless her jerk of a boss authorizes her to). But hey! One bad game out of 15 great games is actually a really good ratio for long running video game franchises. Plus, Other M actually wasn't that bad, at least in terms of presentation and gameplay.
Any Pokemon Game: There are no less than 6 flavors of Pokemon fans. If you started with the original games and stuck around, you love the franchise as a whole, are completely hyped for the next games in the series, plan on watching the Detective Pikachu movie on release day, and are generally a chill person. If you picked up a more recent game, then you probably weren't a fan until you realized everyone in your social circle liked Pokemon and you didn't want to be left out. If you got in through Pokemon GO, chances are you were living under a rock and had no idea what Pokemon even was prior to playing GO. If you play the games casually and only use Pokemon you think are cool or just have some sort of emotional attachment to, you're similar to flavor 1, but you don't keep track of the more competitive side of the community. If you ONLY use Pokemon with absurd stats, overpowered abilities and moves, and give your Pokemon steroids items to boost their combat prowess, you care too much about the competitive scene, and will berate flavor #4 for using their personal favorites over a full team of perfect, high-bred killing machines that take weeks in real life to set up properly. And finally, if you love the first three games (Red, Blue, and Yellow) but hate everything else, you are a GENWUNNER, a most deplorable excuse for a human being obsessed with ruining the fun of flavors 1-5 with angry Internet rants about how modern Pokemon sucks. You're also a hypocrite for criticizing Pokemon based of food (Vanillish), inanimate objects (Klefki), or disposed waste (Garbodor), when the classic games also had Pokemon based off of food (Eggsecute), inanimate objects (Magnemite), and disposed waste (Muk).
Minecraft: You're a creative type. You always dreamed of a game where you could do or build virtually anything. You also thought that Minecraft being used in some circles as a education tool (teaching basic survival skills, architecture, AND resource management in a fun and engaging way) was cool. You also either believe that Herobrine is totally real or you've been enlightened by the sheer ridiculousness of the Herobrine myth that whenever your superstitious friends mentions Herobrine, all you can do is laugh it off. And then that one troll who hangs out on your multiplayer server pretends to be Herobrine as he "haunts" your three-story mansion that took you five weeks to build, thus reinforcing your superstitious friends' belief that Herobrine is real. Also, you probably have a zero tolerance policy towards swears, apparently. Actually, I'm not sure on that last one, I'm just guessing because of everybody making "Did you just swear on my CHRISTIAN. MINECRAFT. SERVER!?" jokes.
Fortnite: You're a former Minecraft fan that migrated over to Fortnite because of a similar building system, better quality graphics, and because you've realized Fortnite: Battle Royale is secretly an amalgamation of all your favorite fan-made Minecraft minigames, but handled by a professional dev team who actually knows what they're doing. But if you actually aren't a former Minecraft fan, then you are actually a fan of shooters in general but grow tired of the same old gritty, doom and gloom, pointlessly edgy nature of games like DOOM, Call of Duty, and Battlefield. So Fortnite being a cheerful, happy-go-lucky shooter with a more cartoony style is a wonderful change of pace for you. That, or you are a small child who got in the game precisely because of the game's cartoon aesthetic was family friendly enough to convince your over-protective parents that Fortnite is a perfectly child-friendly game despite being a shooter.
UNDERTALE: Oh boy, I could say a LOT about this game's fans. But let's start off simple. If you're favorite video game is UNDERTALE, you love awesome music, quirky and charming supporting characters, surprisingly creepy plot twists, getting overly emotional about pixelated goats, warning everyone around you not to kill anything because it locks you out of the game's true ending, but doing so in an obnoxious and melodramatic way and wind up ironically worsening the experience for everyone else, and making lazy jokes on the Internet. None of that is an insult, by the way, for I too did all of those things myself. Anyway, as much as you are convinced that Sans the Skeleton is your spirit animal, deep down you know that Sans is too cool to be anyone's spirit animal. So you settle for having Dr. Alphys as your spirit animal instead.
Monster Hunter: Oh hey! We reached my personal favorite game! Let's see here... Monster Hunter fans are incredibly knowledgeable about video games and their corresponding fanbases. Yeah, sounds right! Monster Hunter fans also have WAY too much time on their hands and instead of doing something important with their lives they spend 5 hours a day grinding out bosses to get those sweet weapons and armor. ...Yeah, sounds about right. Monster Hunter fans also always, without fail, play as a female character because the male armors are really dumb looking and the female armors actually look nice, if a little impractical. ...Okay, fair enough, the male armors are a little dumb looking sometimes. Monster Hunter fans have a near universal hatred of Plesioth. HECK YEAH WE DO!!! Monster Hunter fans also give fan-favorite monsters silly nicknames, like Steve for Seregios, One Spiky Boi for Nergigante, 52 Bomber for Bazelgeuse, My Little Pony for Kirin, Picklesaurus for Deviljho, and so on. This is the truest part of the description. Because not only do I see my fellow Monster Hunter fans use these nicknames, I use almost all of them myself.
Any Sonic the Hedgehog Game: You love the Blue Blur with all your heart, and you're willing to stick with him even when SEGA pumps out mediocre game after mediocre game. "The Sonic games aren't ALL trash!" you cry, as everyone reminds you that the abomination known as Sonic '06 exists. "That game was released at the wrong place and time!" You cry. "If SEGA had waited a few years to release it they could patch out those glitches and mistakes in programming!". Doesn't change the convoluted, plot hole inducing time travel, the disturbingly realistic looking humans that do not mesh well the tone and style of the franchise, and the fact that in this game, Sonic kissed a girl. And no, not a hedgehog girl. But an actual female human. 2006 was a really weird year. But hey! At least the cartoons are actually pretty good. Also, you're biologically incapable of doing anything even remotely impressive without shouting "GOTTA GO FAST!!!" at the top of your lungs.
Any Animal Crossing Game: You are a real enigma. You like playing a game about maintaining a healthy domestic life, but all your friends and neighbors are anthropomorphic animals instead of humans. So instead of stressing yourself out in real life by the crippling pressure society unjustly puts on your shoulders, you stress yourself out in literally the most calm, relaxing video game ever created, worrying about whether that cute wolf girl will stay in your neighborhood when she decides to go visit her aunt who lives in the middle of no man's land. You never question why your character is the only human in a town full of talking dogs, cats, mice, camels, hippos, crocodiles, storks, raccoons, turtles, owls, wolves, bears, octopodes (and yes, the plural of octopus is octopodes, not octopi), and whatever the heck Dr. Shrunk is. Nor do you wonder if all those insects and fish are as dimwitted as their real-life counterparts or if they are just as anthropomorphic as the rest of the town, and by eating fish-sticks in this universe you are technically becoming a cannibal. Nor do you question why an overweight raccoon owns almost every store in town, with the exception being a black market run by a shady fox, and why he charges stupidly high prices for mortgages (far above what should be legal). But what I want to know is this; for a franchise called "Animal" Crossing, why can't you play AS an animal? Get on it Nintendo! Animal Crossing will never be complete until the day I can play AS a fabulous peacock dude in a rustic neighborhood.
Any Xenoblade Chronicles Game: There are three flavors of Xenoblade Chronicles fans. If you played the original first, then you either helped support Operation Rainfall (a Nintendo fan rally to get some Europe-exclusive games released stateside), or you saw Shulk in Super Smash Bros and thought he was cool and wanted to check out the game he came from. Nothing could prepare for the emotional roller-coaster that is Xenoblade Chronicles' opening hour. Also, you are biologically incapable of doing anything even remotely impressive without shouting "I'M REALLY FEELING IT!!!" or "THIS IS THE MONADO'S POWER!!!". If you played Xenoblade X first (like me), you've realized that this is the one game where RPG mechanics and piloting awesome mecha actually works as intended. You also hate Tatsu with the passion of a thousand dragons. And most importantly, you firmly believe Black Tar and Uncontrollable are the best fight scene songs ever composed. And if you've played Xenoblade 2 first, then you love anime, and Xenoblade 2 is the most anime game ever, which means you love it by default. It also helps that one of the main characters is a cat girl with a Welsh accent who hangs out with a British tiger, which is something that you (and I) never knew we needed in our lives.
Kingdom Hearts (series): You're a Disney fan, a Final Fantasy fan, or both. You try to explain the complex, multilayered story to your uncultured friends, but all they can think is "this is the weirdest junk I've ever heard". Also, Axel is your spirit animal. But most importantly, not only do you think Simple & Clean is a better song than Let It Go (and it is!), you also sing it in the shower. You also at least thought about trying sea-salt ice cream because of this franchise at least once in your life. Got it memorized?
Terraria: You are the divine hybridization of every kind of fan I've listed so far. At first, you argued over whether Minecraft was better than Terraria. But you've seen the light. It doesn't matter, since the games are in completely different genres. Terraria is the one game that has it all. Fishing and breaking pots for Zelda fans, building stuff for Minecraft and Fortnite fans, charming supporting characters for UNDERTALE fans, and awesome boss battles for Monster Hunter fans. But most importantly, Terraria has a skeleton that is both spooky AND scary, and can send shivers down your spine.
Fire Emblem: I'm not gonna lie, this description was the hardest to come up with, due to the "agree to disagree" nature of Fire Emblem fans. But here we go. *ahem* If you played Fire Emblem 1-5, you either were in Japan when the franchise first became a thing or you saw Marth and Roy from Smash Bros and tracked down their games. If you played Fire Emblem 6-8 you have treated yourself to some of the nicest pixel-art in video game history. If you played Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance or it's sequel, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, you either paid a LOT of money to get those games (they can sell anywhere from $300-$1,000 per copy!) or you managed to pick them up at launch. Either way, you are convinced that Path of Radiance has the best story in all of video games. If you played Fire Emblem: Awakening, you're either a long time veteran willing to throw your money at Intelligent Systems so Fire Emblem doesn't meet the same fate that befell Advance Wars, or you are a newcomer who was previously scared off by Fire Emblem's infamous difficulty and permadeath mechanics, but jumped in when a game in the franchise finally introduced the ability to tone the difficulty down. If you played Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright you were ALSO scared off by the infamous difficulty and permadeath mechanics, but you weren't sold on Awakening because you happen to be a fan of romantic love stories and loved having the ability to play matchmaker with just about anyone in Birthright. If you played Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, you're a longtime veteran who has mastered every game in the franchise, and crave a challenge so great you will have no choice but to look up a walkthrough and prepare your endgame team as soon as the campaign begins. Oh, and also you happen to be a fan of romantic love stories, but you don't like romance as much as Birthright fans do. So Conquest giving you the option to make your favorite 'ships canon is just icing on the hard-as-nails strategy RPG cake. If you played Fire Emblem Fates: Revelations, you are the long lost descendant of Goldilocks. "Birthright's too easy!" you cry. "Conquest is to hard! But Revelations is just right!". Oh, and just like Conquest and Birthright fans, you also like romantic love stories, only instead of making your favorite 'ships canon, you play matchmaker with a 60+ character roster so you can create high-bred unstoppable killing machines. Thus you are spiritually linked to the (competitive) Pokemon fans. If you played Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, you are a longtime fan who has become disgruntled by the focus on romance in the Fates trilogy, so when you heard a Fire Emblem was going to tone down the 'shipping you were on board from day one. And yes, you were so excited about not having to dealing with what you dubbed "Shipping Emblem" that you were willing to put up with some of the worst map design in the franchise. And if you've played Fire Emblem: Three Houses, you are a time traveller since that game hasn't been released yet (at the time of writing). The one thing all types of Fire Emblem fans can agree on, is that no matter what happens in Fire Emblem: Heroes, Hector and Reinhardt will ALWAYS be relevant to the competitive scene.
World of Warcraft: You are blissfully unaware that World of Warcraft is actually the fourth game of an established franchise. To be fair though, the first three Warcraft games were really obscure strategy games where you micromanaged an army, while World of Warcraft lets you embrace your inner Dungeons & Dragons nerd by letting you micromanage one extremely overpowered adventurer instead. Seriously! In the older games it took an entire army to defeat the Lich King. Now just any regular joe can train up in their profession to the point where the exact same Lich King that took an several armies just to fend off can now be put down permanently by a single adventurer! Anyway, you are a devout supporter of your chosen faction, and if you are an Alliance player you will constantly demonize the Horde as if they are the second coming of the Nazis. Horde players, meanwhile, defend their actions by pointing out that A) the Horde are homeless refugees and the Alliance were the ones who attacked first, B) the only evil member of the Horde is Sylvanas Windrunner, and not even Horde players like Sylvanas. And C) only a being of pure evil can hate something as weirdly adorable as a female Tauren. Seriously, female Tauren look less like fantasy monsters and more like anime characters. But then the Alliance players remind everyone that they are the only faction with Draenei, and everyone loves Draenei. Also, regardless of your faction, your race, your class, your guild, or even the server you play on, one thing is for certain. Leeroy Jenkins is your spirit animal.
Splatoon: You're similar to the Fortnite fans, in that you love how Splatoon breaks the dark and gritty shooter mold by being bright and cheerful. Unlike the Fortnite fans, there's a dark side lurking underneath your incredibly inky surface. For behind the sea animal puns, the 90's era pop culture references, and the never ending "WOOMY" jokes, lies a tale of two post apocalyptic societies struggling to survive in a flooded future, a morally ambiguous grizzly bear exploiting the Squid Kids' natural warrior instincts for profit, an angry octopus samurai enraged by the Inkling's elitist mindset and the death of his own culture, and an old squid man who is blatantly raciest towards octopodes, and gets called out on his bigotry by a prepubescent rapper who is implied to have quite the foul mouth behind closed doors. But none of that matters to you. All that matters is winning those Splatfests to support your opinion on trivial matters like, whether the egg or the chicken came first (the answer is obviously the egg).
Spyro the Dragon: During the Great Video Game Console War of '96, you chose to support the underdog of platformers. Between Crash Bandicoot's over-the-top marketing, Super Mario 64's legacy, Sly Cooper's edgy, bad boy appeal, and Bubsy's... Wackiness... You chose Spyro, the charming, carefree adventurous dragon with a love for roasted mutton and shiny rocks. But alas! Insomniac Games ran out of ideas after the original Spyro trilogy, handed the IP over to some other dudes, and they rebooted the franchise into a darker, edgier and more serious medieval drama about a modest dragon teen trying to live up the impossible expectations put on him. You also passionately ship Spyro and Cynder together so fiercely that the game devs not only took notice, but rewrote the third game of the Legend of Spyro trilogy to make the ship canon. How do I know this? For you see, I too, shipped Spyro and Cynder together. Because anyone who says Spyro and Cynder wouldn't make a cute couple together is a liar, and a traitor to the title of Spyro fan. Oh, and the only reason you bought those gimmicky toys-to-life platformers was because they used Spyro's star power to help promote the first game in THAT series.
Any Skylanders Game: You are a sub-species of the Spyro fan, as 75% percent of Skylanders fans are former Spyro fans. But if you are NOT a former Spyro fan, then you were probably a little kid when the games first came out, and your little kid brain went "Oh wow! I can bring my toys literally to life! Better go beg my parents for extra allowance money so I can afford it!". And that's assuming you were old enough to be trusted with money in the first place. You also probably never heard of Spyro until your cool older sibling who knows more about video game culture than you was like "Hey you know that one purple dragon that's in every game? He used to get his own games!" And then you checked those games out retroactively. Either you passed on the outdated graphics or you fell in love with that fickle beast known as NOSTALGIA FOR 90'S VIDEO GAMES!!!
Super Smash Bros: You are probably a fan of at least three of the games I've listed so far. And you have thought to yourself "Man, how cool would it be if Mario and Link teamed up against Samus Aran and Pikachu?". And then Daddy Sakurai answered your wish with the most ambitious crossover this side of Ready Player One. You're either a casual player who enjoys the absurdity of it all, or you are ultra competitive and practice 10 hours a day to pull off those absolutely mental combos you see on YouTube all the time. And those are just the two most common types. Smash Bros attracts gamers from all walks of life, so there's so many sub-species of Smash Bros fans I could make a another blog post just for this fanbase by itself.
Any Kirby Game: So you are either a small child whose parents have excellent taste in video games, or you are a grown adult who grew up playing some really great games. Not unlike Splatoon, Kirby has a bit of a dark side underneath the bright colors, the adorably spherical characters, and the heartwarmingly charming music. Anyone remember 0 (pronounced "zee-roh"), the eldritch horror who literally bleeds dark magic? Or Megalor, the sorcerer mutated by a cursed crown into a demonic creature with a MELTING FACE? And we definitely can't forget Marx, whose tomfoolery transforms him into a multicolored bat-like monster who warps, distorts, and even tears apart his own body to attack you. Because of the hidden dark side, you get really angry when detractors dismiss the Kirby games on the grounds of being "for kids". Being family friendly doesn't mean you can't get really creepy. And being "for kids" isn't necessarily a bad thing. Also, Kirby: Right Back At Ya! is your all-time favorite TV show. And you can quote the lyrics to the opening theme song on a dime.
Super Smash Bros: You are probably a fan of at least three of the games I've listed so far. And you have thought to yourself "Man, how cool would it be if Mario and Link teamed up against Samus Aran and Pikachu?". And then Daddy Sakurai answered your wish with the most ambitious crossover this side of Ready Player One. You're either a casual player who enjoys the absurdity of it all, or you are ultra competitive and practice 10 hours a day to pull off those absolutely mental combos you see on YouTube all the time. And those are just the two most common types. Smash Bros attracts gamers from all walks of life, so there's so many sub-species of Smash Bros fans I could make a another blog post just for this fanbase by itself.
Shantae (series): You get overly defensive when people assume you have a crush on Shantae (the character). But that's not why you love the franchise. It's that catchy music, awesome level design, and witty writing that sold you on Shantae. You passionately believe that Shantae deserves to be in Smash Bros, even though almost every niche Shantae could fill has been taken by Shulk (a stance changer who can adapt to any situation), Simon Belmont (a whip-using long-range fighter), AND Bayonetta (having a dancer motif). The one niche Shantae could fill is being the first playable indie character, but since Shovel Knight, the character who proved that indie games could be just as good as mainstream games, got relegated to being an Assist (because Nintendo is elitist), you have almost given up all hope of the Half Genie Hero appearing in Smash Bros. But there's always hope in the next installment!
And now it's time for HONORABLE MENTIONS, and these descriptions are short, simply because I don't know enough about the games or their fanbases to make a full description (or justify putting up their logo).
- Five Nights at Freddy's: You like scary things. But not TOO scary. You also are a big fan of murder mysteries.
- Bendy & the Ink Machine: Spiritually linked to the FN@F fans, you realized how a lot of early Disney movies are actually really messed up (Hunchback of Notre Dame says hi), so having a video game that literally personifies the dark side of Disney was a dream come true for you.
- Street Fighter: You have sacrificed your thumbs in the name of pulling off mind-blowing combos.
- No Man's Sky: "C'mon man, the game isn't trash anymore! They patched out the bad stuff and added all the cool stuff they said would be at launch!". Doesn't change the fact that several features advertised in the game weren't in at launch in the first place.
- Final Fantasy: You like to argue with other Final Fantasy fans over which game is the best in the series. Almost everyone agrees that Final Fantasy XIII is at least mediocre.
And now I'm out of witty descriptions. I mean, I have some more, but they are all for fans of various M-rated games, and as such I can't really put those descriptions up because the blog is supposed to be family friendly. But anyway, did you like this fun little joke post? If at least one of these descriptions made you laugh or smile, then I did my job correctly. Do any of these descriptions apply to you or someone you know? Let me know with a comment for something.
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