7 Times Video Games Made Me HUNGRY

Hunger is not a word I typically associate with video games. Yet there are some games that have made me run to the kitchen for a snack on the odd occasion. With Thanksgiving coming up we’re all thinking about what’s for dinner, so I’m going to talk about the 7 times video games made my tummy grumble.

The cake wasn’t a lie (Portal)

In the first person puzzle game Portal you play as a young woman performing a series of tests in the Aperture Science research facility. Along the way you’re guided by the AI that runs the place, GlaDos.

With the eerie atmosphere and no sign of other humans, it becomes clear early on that something isn’t quite right. But GlaDos spurs you onwards with the promise of a delicious cake awaiting you at the end. Spoiler alert: she tries to kill you. Which means the cake probably never existed to begin with.

But with some quick thinking you can eventually destroy the crazy AI and blow up a large portion of the facility with her. Just before the credits roll though, you’re shown that deep within the facility, there actually was a cake. And boy does it look delicious! It only appears for a few brief seconds before a robot arm turns out the lights, but just the mere sight of it makes me want a slice.

Sadly, even if GlaDos hadn’t tried to murder me, she probably wouldn’t have shared the cake. To add insult to injury, GlaDos mocked me in the end credits song. She states how the cake is “delicious and moist”. Which I found odd because A. She’s a robot and can’t taste things and B. I just blew her to smithereens.

Turns out the cake was modeled after a Black Forest Cake. It’s a type of chocolate sponge cake with a cherry filling in between the layers. Never was much of a cherry guy. So maybe I didn’t miss out after all!

Corvo the gourmet (Dishonored)

To this day, Dishonored is one of my favorite games of all time. It’s a beautifully constructed stealth game with so many different paths and methods available to achieve your goals.

But forget about that. We’re here to talk about food! And despite Dishonored’s grim setting, it’s got plenty of goodies to munch on.

Ok, “goodies” probably isn’t the best word to use. In fact, a lot of the food in the game is pretty disgusting, like whale blubber and rat on a stick. But hey! Eating will restore your health so why not?

Mmmmm, jellied eels! My favorite!

But if the food isn’t super appetizing, why am I even talking about it? Well that’s because when you do decide to partake in the game’s… delicacies, you’re treated to a great use of sound effects. The most satisfying munching noise plays every time protagonist Corvo Attano eats. This prompted me to clear out entire tables of food. Even when I didn’t need health. Even when I was trespassing through some noble’s manor and had guards hot on my heels.

I know that might not sound like much. But it was more than enough for me to eat every character out of house and home.

The gorilla and the popsicle (Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze)

Donkey Kong games have always had plenty of food in them! Bananas being to DK what coins are to Mario, you’ll collect your fair share of them. I hope you like potassium. But while nutritious, bananas aren’t all that appetizing. Not to me anyway. Fortunately, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze offered an alternative treat for people like me.

In the Juicy Jungle world, there’s a big emphasis on, well, juice. There are rivers of it flowing everywhere that get converted into different snacks. But that’s not what got me hankering for a meal. Level 5–6: Frosty Fruits, did.

(Screenshot taken from Zephiel810 on YouTube)

It’s a fairly standard ice level for the most part. But what makes it stand out is the fact that it has platforms made out of giant popsicles. That’s all there is to it really. They look delicious. You can’t actually make DK eat them though and they’ll slide right off their sticks if you jump on them.

That being said, Juicy Jungle’s boss did get to enjoy one for a little while before I showed up to ruin his fun. I still feel bad about it even after all this time.

Link gets cooking (Breath of the Wild)

In The Legend of Zelda, you don’t normally do a whole lot of eating. The closest thing you get to gourmet meals is farm fresh milk in Ocarina of Time and Grandma’s Soup in Wind Waker. But Breath of the Wild changed this by adding the ability to cook tons of different dishes using various pots you find scattered throughout Hyrule.

I’m not entirely sure how you can make things like cake and salad by tossing ingredients into boiling water, but I’m down for that method. The sound effects as your concoction swirls around in the pot are satisfying and the dishes that pop out can heal AND provide status buffs.

Plus when you actually decide to eat the food, Link looks so happy as he wolfs down whatever dish you prepared for him. There’s not much more to say about it. I guess I could mention some of the questionable methods I used for gathering ingredients. For example, throwing a bomb into a pond full of fish. Don’t judge me. You know you’d try it.

Ignis makes toast (Final Fantasy 15)

Final Fantasy 15 was a very mixed bag for me. It’s probably not something I’ll play through again anytime soon. But if anything can motivate me to pop it back into my Playstation 4, it’s the beautifully rendered food.

If night falls and there’s not a hotel nearby to rest at, you can set up a campsite. It’s here that dagger wielding party member Ignis can use ingredients you’ve scavenged to make a variety of different dishes. Just like in Breath of the Wild, they provide status buffs. But I don’t care about that.

What I do care about is how unbelievably good the food looks! I drooled every time Ignis laid dinner out on the table. The meat looked so juicy! The soup looked so spicy! Even the dishes with cooked vegetables (yuck) looked good! And if you happen to have no ingredients for some reason, don’t worry! Ignis will just slap down a plate of toast. Before you ask, yes. Even that looks appetizing.

I’m not a huge advocate for making graphics look as detailed as possible but I’ll make an exception just this once. The food looks way too tasty not to.

Let Kirby eat cake! (Kirby’s Dream Buffet)

In a list about food in video games, it makes sense that I would include everyone’s favorite pink glutton Kirby. After all, I don’t think any other character in video games or otherwise eats as much as he does.

But as fun as it is to see him snack on enemies, projectiles, and the occasional tree, it’s not enough to make me hungry. So how about a giant cake instead? That’s right, I’m talking about Kirby’s Dream Buffet.

It’s sort of a racer / battle royale game where the point is to get Kirby as fat as possible before reaching the finish line. You roll him through obstacle courses made entirely out of cake, bacon, burgers, you name it. And if you reach the end of the course before anyone else, you get to watch him pig out on one of three cakes that are several times his size.

The aesthetic alone is enough to give me a hankering for a snack, but the fact that eating is such a big part of the gameplay amplifies it ten-fold. That being said, I feel like this entry is kind of cheating. Why? Because I haven’t actually played the game yet. You’ll have to give me a break though. My backlog is huge and if you’re a fellow gamer, you can probably relate.

Chef Mario and the volcano soup of doom (Super Mario Odyssey)

Super Mario Odyssey. I have sunk so many hours into thee. And no matter how many times I play through you, I always look forward to paying a visit to the Luncheon Kingdom.

You can probably tell by the name, but there’s a lot of food involved in this level. For example, the fact that the entire place is made out of polygonal grub!

Nothing escapes the tasty treatment. Walkways are covered in piles of salt. Giant corn cobs act as rolling platforms, breakable blocks are just cheese, and the residents are all sentient utensils. The area is also surrounded by some kind of pink molten substance. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was edible as well.

But the crown jewel of the Luncheon Kingdom is its signature Stupendous Stew. It’s a very sacred concoction that the locals take very seriously. So seriously in fact that they cook the entire thing in a giant pot on top of an active volcano.

It’s got to be my favorite level in the entire game. Not just because of its aesthetic, but because it houses some of my favorite things to do. Like getting to toss random ingredients into a pot for coins and power moons. Or purchasing a chef costume for Mario. Or even liberating the stupendous stew from a giant bird cook! That one wasn’t too difficult. Just beat it up, drop it into the mixture, and voila! One blatant health code violation coming right up!

Meal time

Thanks for reading! But now I’ve got to ask, what are some of the times video games made you hungry? Let me know in the comments if the mood strikes you. Happy Thanksgiving!