Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities
This list includes all of the games covered in Konstantinos Dimopoulos' book, 'Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities'.
In his words:
"Virtual cities are places of often-fractured geographies, impossible physics, outrageous assumptions, and almost untamed imaginations given their freedom from the constraints of reality. This book, the first atlas of its kind, aims to explore, map, study, and celebrate them. To imagine what they would be like in reality. To paint a lasting picture of their domes, arches, and walls"
"Each of the forty-five cities contained within this atlas is presented from an in-universe point-of-view. These cities, you see, have been reimagined not simply as game spaces, but like actual urban formations that can be visited, and can sensibly exist within the confines and rules of their respective settings. Nobody in Midgar would ever reference New York, and only survivors could attempt to describe the madness of Silent Hill. I have chosen to avoid employing omniscient narrations, and chose instead to imagine in-universe characters describing each city—a geographer perhaps, a chronicler, or someone writing a tourist guide. Similarly, the maps accompanying each entry were never meant to replicate game spaces, but to cartographically describe settlements plausibly existing in fantastical worlds. These are meant to fill in gaps, and to tie disparate locations into cohesive cities; cartographic artefacts of the described realities. After all, many game cities are heavily stylized, and thoroughly abstracted, and what I felt I had to do was to critically reimagine them in ways that would look familiar in the eyes of a fictional local surveyor."
In his words:
"Virtual cities are places of often-fractured geographies, impossible physics, outrageous assumptions, and almost untamed imaginations given their freedom from the constraints of reality. This book, the first atlas of its kind, aims to explore, map, study, and celebrate them. To imagine what they would be like in reality. To paint a lasting picture of their domes, arches, and walls"
"Each of the forty-five cities contained within this atlas is presented from an in-universe point-of-view. These cities, you see, have been reimagined not simply as game spaces, but like actual urban formations that can be visited, and can sensibly exist within the confines and rules of their respective settings. Nobody in Midgar would ever reference New York, and only survivors could attempt to describe the madness of Silent Hill. I have chosen to avoid employing omniscient narrations, and chose instead to imagine in-universe characters describing each city—a geographer perhaps, a chronicler, or someone writing a tourist guide. Similarly, the maps accompanying each entry were never meant to replicate game spaces, but to cartographically describe settlements plausibly existing in fantastical worlds. These are meant to fill in gaps, and to tie disparate locations into cohesive cities; cartographic artefacts of the described realities. After all, many game cities are heavily stylized, and thoroughly abstracted, and what I felt I had to do was to critically reimagine them in ways that would look familiar in the eyes of a fictional local surveyor."
45 Games
Antescher
Dun Darach
Woodtick
Rubacava
The City
Sigil
Clock Town
Orgrimmar
London
Anor Londo
Whiterun
Dunwall
Yharnam
Novigrad
Neketaka
Metro City
Lizard Breath
New Orleans
Fourside
Raccoon City
Silent Hill
Wan Chai
Olympic City
Pripyat
Arkham City
Steelport
Kamurocho
London
Milton
New Donk City
Anytown, USA
Seaside Valley
New Bretagne
Rockvil
Terrapolis
Union City
Midgar
Mega-Primus
Tarsonis City
New York City
City 17
Citadel
New Vegas
Propast, Europolis
Hong Kong