Games where you can play in your city and/or state

[bangtango]

Your run of the mill EA Sports NCAA March Madness or NCAA College Football game features pretty much every college team in the US, even weak schools that have no business being in a major tourney or on national tv. I know I am able to use the University of Maine in most (or all) of the recent games from either one of those franchises. I bet any person inside the US loading up one of those two titles could find a school in their state and as a result be able to play their "home games" there.

[Leo_A]

I live in New York state so there are dozens of titles that qualify.

For the small town I live in, just the old ProPilot series by Sierra and the MS Flight Simulator series have it. The airport is just beyond my back yard actually.

A lot of the places I've seen mentioned here have been featured in various racing games. Portland has been featured in several NASCAR and Champ Car games thanks to its short oval and the road course.

Vancouver's street course, as well as Detroits, was in Papyrus's Champ Car titles. Believe both were in Flag to Flag for the Dreamcast as well. Cleveland's airport circuit is in both, too.

Sault Ste. Marie's locks have been modeled in various flight simulators, and the Soo locks been done as a third party add-on for the Ship Simulator series as well.

Fort Worth has been in a lot of games, thanks to the Texas Motor Speedway. Many NASCAR titles, the IRL game on the N64, TOCA 2, and probably others have modeled it.

Someone mentioned Lodi, there's a little short oval there that has been modeled by a third party for Papyrus's NASCAR titles.

Savannah's old short track has been done for NASCAR Legends on the PC.

[Haoie]

Nope.

Unless you count The New Zealand Story.

[emceelokey]

I lived in San Francisco and now live in Las Vegas. Here's what I know of off the top of my head.


San Francisco:
- Bruce Lee (xbox)
- Rise to Honor (PS2) the a lever that actually takes place in the Metreon.
- SF Rush
- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 or 4

Las Vegas (sorta. all of the buildings are trademarked and they would have to pay to use actual likenesses in the games.)
- PGR3 (360)
- Rainbow Six Vegas

[unbroken]

Skate street, one of the maps in Tony Hawk (2?) is like 5 mins from my house.

[Sudo]

I'm pretty sure there aren't any games that feature New Hampshire as a location.

[exit]

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Scarface take place in Miami, that's about all I can think off.

[InsaneDavid]

rampage

Yup, Day 1: San Jose. (NES version)

Demolition Racer (PS1) had the San Jose Stadium as a derby bowl arena.
Most ice hockey games made after the San Jose Sharks were created.

Columbus now shows up in NHL games.

...and got their asses stomped by the Sharks tonight.

THERE IS NO SANCTUARY!

Fish, and plankton, and sea greens, and protein from the sea...

[Blitzwing256]

las vegas:

peekaboopoker, vegas stakes, and about 2 trillion other awfull gambling games ;-)

[Frogger49]

Apparently, in one of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games, there is a level that takes place in Troy, NY. My mailing address is there, although I don't live in the city. There have been add-on tracks for computer games of the local dirt tracks near me (Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, Albany-Saratoga Speedway in Malta and Fonda Speedway in Fonda). Other than that and college basketball games with Siena and SUNY Albany in it, that's it.

[Iron Draggon]

Fort Worth has been in a lot of games, thanks to the Texas Motor Speedway. Many NASCAR titles, the IRL game on the N64, TOCA 2, and probably others have modeled it.

oh DUH... I totally forgot that... I guess because I was too busy trying to think of an example besides a sports game... it's too obvious and too easy... I was hoping for something more along the lines of an old west game where you have to defend the fort, or something like that... something more unique

anyway, while we're on the subject of cities in games, I'd just like to say that some cities have been featured in so many different games now that they've become cliche... San Francisco comes to mind... yeah, it's a great setting for a game, but do we really need to see it in anymore games now? I'm getting really tired of it... and I bet people who live there are even more tired of it... I can almost hear them groaning in desparation for a game that lets them do something anywhere else in the world... oh great, yet another game that lets me escape my own reality by featuring my own reality...

New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco... those 4 cities really should be permanently banned from being featured in any video game that doesn't require it... IE, sports games... give them a fucking rest already... there's hundreds of other cities in America, not to mention the world... so why do we keep on seeing the same cities appearing in games over and over again? I know, I know, famous landmarks... they all have them, but do we really need to see them in a game anymore? they've been done and redone in every way conceivable... set in the past, set in the present, set in the future, set in an alternate reality... but they're still the same tired old cliche cities... and even worse yet, they've been worn out to the point that we've all come to expect seeing them... so if they don't appear, we wonder what happened to them... OMG, did The Big One finally take out San Francisco? where did it go? why isn't it in the game? how could they not include it? it's like a cultural icon! and of course the same could be said for London, Paris, Rome, and Tokyo... ban all 4 of those cities from being featured in a video game forever too... how many more times do we need to see them to be reminded they exist?

so there's 8 cities dominating the video game world as we know it... 4 in America, and 4 in foreign countries... are there no other cities in the world that would be as fun to visit in a virtual world? can we not enjoy a game without all the usual famous landmarks in it? what is it about seeing all these famous landmarks showing up in a game that makes them so fascinating?

no wonder Godzilla always seemed to be having so much fun destroying them all, and no wonder so many of us always cheered for him as he did so... the rest of the world might as well not even exist... only those 8 cities matter...

Houston, we have a problem... you're the 4th largest city in America, and yet you've never been featured in any games other than sports games, and only a couple of racers... and when you appeared in racers, you really could've been anywhere, because you were actually just a place called Houston... you looked nothing at all like you look in reality... you were never painstakingly modeled in intricate detail, to highlight your unique skyline, like the famous 4 of the omnipresent 8 have been over and over again... you just don't seem to matter at all... unless it's a space game... then you might be mentioned, but you'll never be seen... you're more famous for a quote from Apollo 13... and so it goes... the whole world watched, the whole world waited, and the whole world could care less about the city of Houston... the home of Mission Control... so what if you guide spaceships? we'd rather play Missile Command!

[emceelokey]

I could go for another S.F. based game. I think there should be a big push for a game based in Nebraska though.

[mailman187666]

I live in MA and there is a Tony Hawk game (can't think of which one) that has Boston in it and it includes a lot of the landmarks in the level that are actually in Boston. Also this doesn't really count, but I went over to Moscow for a couple of weeks, and naturally I brought my PSP with me. Well I was playing Twisted Metal: Head on, and they had a Moscow level that was very close to what it was actually like there. It wasn't quite spot on but it was close enough. I played through the level and thought to myself "wow, I was just standing right there." I thought that was pretty cool to see.

[Mr. Smashy]

For non-sports games, the only one I can think of with Edmonton is MDK2 from BioWare.

[MASTERWEEDO]

Houston was in Rampage I think

[Iron Draggon]

Houston was in Rampage I think

I think you're right, but practically everywhere was in Rampage... and none of the locations in that game actually looked like the real locations... that's what pisses me off... they model places like San Francisco to death, but the few times they even bother to include a less famous location, it's just some generic cityscape that's merely supposed to represent the actual location...

it was forgivable back in the days of Rampage, because graphics technology wasn't good enough to make extremely accurate and detailed cityscapes, but it's not forgivable at all now... developers who do things like that these days are just being lazy... oh there's no major landmarks in Houston that most people would recognize, so we can just make a generic cityscape and call it Houston... who will care, besides people who actually live there? and they'll prolly be thrilled just to see that we actually bothered to mention Houston...

sad but true... apparently, cities need major landmarks to draw attention to themselves... and even then, it doesn't always guarantee that it'll make a city famous... when was the last time you saw St Louis and its Gateway Arch in a game? I don't recall any... I'm sure there were some, but it's still not a cultural icon like San Francisco and its Golden Gate Bridge... so it takes more than just a landmark... it has to be a place that people wanna be in as well...

but still though, you'd think that developers would get tired of modeling the same old places over and over again... and apparently some of them are... I was very surprised to see that Test Drive Unlimited chose to model Hawaii... I would've expected it to feature one of the same tired old places that I've seen featured in games over and over again for the last two decades or so...

I'm liking this topic... it's very cool that this is being discussed here... I had no idea that some of the more obscure locations have been featured in a few games before, aside from all the ones in Rampage... so it's cool to see it...

[VinnyT]

Rhode Island is too small for games to take place here.

Family Guy: The Video Game.

[NinjaJoey23]

Gun-Nac has a level called Atlantajorja.

I dig it.