It's funny how the future will creep up on you. Games have been depicting the "near future" for decades now, but given how time works, what was the future, is now this decade. This means, of course, it is time to take stock and see what to expect from the 2020s. What better place to look for a little insight into what the future holds than video games. Right?
It looks like it is going to be one hell of a decade. We are either going to be dealing with robots, aliens, zombies, or a combination of all of the above. Also, in more than a number of instances, Tokyo doesn't fare so well. Maybe consider a move if that's where you currently reside. Otherwise, prepare yourself for the 2020's, video game style.
10 Super Baseball 2020
Sadly, the robot baseball dream is dead. Pack it up, people. Super Baseball 2020 envisioned a world where humans would face off against robots but the league should already be up and running at this point. This is a fun example of that concept, as it is one of the few instances in fiction of our species battling robots without genocide being involved in the process.
Well, Super Baseball 2020 may not have hit a home run with that prediction, but maybe we can check back in three hundred years and see if Base Wars got it right. We can only hope.
9 Beast Wrestler
Beast Wrestler did get the wrestling part right: that is still a thing that plenty of people like to spend their time watching. It's just the whole gigantic, bioengineered "dragons", as well as robots, acting as the wrestlers part that it didn't quite accurately predict. Still, half-right isn't so bad.
Now, the only question that remains is if these dragons still cut promos and pull their punches. Because while it would surely be novel to watch a couple of three-story-tall kaiju battle it out for our amusement, if they don't have any charisma on the mic then this isn't a future we want to live in.
8 Captain Commando
Well, it was inevitable, we are but a few years away from being overwhelmed by intergalactic, superpowered, street-level crime. On the positive side, at least we will have ninja, mummies, and babies (using mechas, naturally) to fight the hordes of criminals.
On the plausibility scale, this one seems to be less likely, though there is still time for us to be proven wrong. Bring on our rattle shaking, mecha-wielding, infantile defenders of justice. I mean, they couldn't do a much worse job then some of the defenders of justice we have had in the past.
7 The Legend Of Bishin
Let's just quickly run down the checklist on this one… Was there a great depression in the 2010s? Given the expanding wealth gap, we can probably give them half a point (especially when paired with the recession which happened in 2008). What about a fuel shortage? There have been minor fuel shortages, but nothing major enough to create wanton country-wide brawls.
Did Mount Fuji erupt and has Tokyo subsequently become overrun with violent biker gangs? It is going to be harder to give out partial points for that one, though maybe we will have to wait and see.
6 Nanobreaker
This PS2 classic predicted heavy global investments in nanotechnology, which, subsequently, go haywire and need to be dealt with before they escape their containment and cause irreparable damage. In this depiction of 2021, humans are heavily augmented and capable of having superhuman abilities.
On the positive side, Nanobreaker does not ultimately predict a doomsday scenario where an advanced AI takes over. Instead, the problem is caused by a good ol' power grab by a high-up military official. The one threat that never stops being relevant worldwide.
5 Perfect Dark
There's good news and bad news. For the good news, if Perfect Dark has it right, we aren't alone in the universe. Finally, in the 2020s we will get affirmation that there is life on other planets. Aliens are real!
Now for the bad news, we will be at war with them in the very near future. Given what we know about humanity, and how well we play nice with each other, that part definitely checks out. There is also an element of the plot where a corporation has gained control of the NSA and is using it to do its bidding. Which, frighteningly, doesn't sound completely implausible.
4 Deus Ex: Human Revolution
According to Deus Ex: Human Revolution, robotic augmentation is on the way and should be making serious headway by 2027. While things would have to move along pretty quickly to have some of the more far-out implementations that Adam Jensen can be seen rocking, this one seems like it isn't that far off.
Augmented reality peripherals are being developed, and a number of companies are still pushing the idea of more wearable tech. This feels like it is dancing in the shadow of believability. The devaluation of human beings depicted in Human Revolution is less speculative. We don't have to wait until 2027 to see if that one comes true.
3 Doom
Things are a little murky when it comes to the Doom timeline. However, at least one version of Doom (the SNES version) places it in the 2020s. Which, if you aren't familiar with the franchise, isn't super good news for us. If Doom has prophesied our future accurately, we are on the cusp of opening up a gateway to hell.
We may start to sweat if we start to hear about plans to conduct research on a Martian colony. And we all know that a Mars colony in the 2020s is a real possibility. So maybe grab your antiperspirant. The phrase "having a hell of a day" could take on a new, less jovial, connotation in the near future.
2 Shin Megami Tensei: Nine
If Shin Megami Tensei: Nine has it right, sometime during this decade the people of Japan will become subterranean mole people. They will then construct a virtual facsimile of the real world, which we will call "Idea Space", which is where they will spend most of their time escaping their bleak reality.
With the advancement of VR, it isn't actually too hard to believe the virtual world aspect, though we are going to have to wait on the whole "Tokyo being completely destroyed by intercontinental ballistic missiles" part of the prediction. Either way, when the dust settles on this one, it wouldn't be surprising if something somewhat similar to the Idea Space exists by the end of the 2020s.
1 Dead Rising 3
Finally, the zombie apocalypse has arrived. If there is one doomsday it feels like we have all been preparing for over the last couple of decades, this has to be the one. There are literally dozens of zombie survival guides out there at this point.
Though in the world of Dead Rising, the zombie apocalypse is kind of old news by the 2020s. While this is another delightfully far-out prediction, the part about an infection that spreads quickly and refuses to disappear long after a vaccination has been developed is definitely feeling uncomfortably familiar right now.
Source: Read Full Article