Tons of books, movies and songs have been inspired by that magical feeling you get from walking around San Francisco’s hilly, Victorian-lined streets. But what about video games? Well, we have had plenty of those too — some great, some terrible.
The problem that content creators face when making a game (or any type of media) about San Francisco is that many seem to see San Francisco only as a city of landmarks—with the people and culture extracted—as if the skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge are all there is to the city. To add insult to injury, oftentimes games will depict the people of San Francisco as offensive caricatures. (Because, really, what symbolizes the spirit of the Bay better than a gay Chinese immigrant wearing a tie-dye shirt protesting for the rights of nudists while smoking weed?)
That said, here’s a look at some of the very best (and the very worst and offensive) games that have used San Francisco as their virtual world.
The Best
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
My first experience with a virtual adaptation of San Francisco came in 2005 when Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas introduced us to San Fierro. I didn’t really understand how good Rockstar Games was at city simulation until I began exploring the extremely detailed (by PlayStation 2 standards) streets of the San Francisco–inspired city of San Fierro.
When you’re not being a career criminal or mindlessly plowing through pedestrians while police give pursuit, there are a multitude of funny references that Bay Area natives will pick up on throughout their playtime. The San Francisco 49ers are the San Fierro 69ers; the Castro is renamed Queens; and Haight-Ashbury is simply Hashbury. There are also geographic details that make the game feel more alive. When roaming San Fierro at certain times of day, the city is filled with fog to the point where you can’t see anything. They even feature Mount Diablo in the game (renamed Mount Chiliad).
Driver: San Francisco
If you’ve ever wanted to recklessly drive around San Francisco without being arrested, dealing with traffic or ending up verbally eviscerated by Stanley Roberts on a “People Behaving Badly” segment, then Driver: San Francisco may be the game for you.
It features all the landmarks you’d expect — the Golden Gate Bridge, the Transamerica Pyramid, Chinatown and Pier 39 — but that’s not what’s great about the game. The best part is that you can rush to these destinations at 100 miles per hour, chasing bad guys while shit explodes around you. It’s one thing to drive down Lombard Street, but it’s another thing to front-flip over it to save San Francisco from crime bosses and international terrorists.
The Worst
Godzilla Unleashed
Back in 2007 the Nintendo Wii was going through a period of releasing a mountain of uninspired shovelware from publishers trying to capitalize on the Wii’s record-breaking sales. Godzilla Unleashed was one of these garbage titles that should never have existed in the first place. The graphics were bad; the controls were clunky; the sound effects sucked; the game was glitchy as hell; and aside from the Transamerica Pyramid or the semi-recognizable Golden Gate Bridge, you had no clue that any of this was taking place in San Francisco at all.
If you want to see for yourself how bad the game is, watch this video.
Psychic Detective
If you were to ask me, “What is the worst game that ever had the audacity to take place in San Francisco?” without even thinking about it, I would immediately say Psychic Detective.
The game is about a guy named Eric Fox who happens to be psychic. He works at a bar in the Tenderloin, where he’s approached by some girl who knows he has superpowers, because she has superpowers. She teaches him how to invade other people’s bodies, and this somehow turns into him meeting this weird family that has connections to a cult. Some people get murdered, and after that the whole story goes pants-on-head crazy.
To even call Psychic Detective a game feels like an insult to gaming as a whole. It’s more like an interactive movie, which was all the rage in the mid-’90s, for some reason. The genre is irrelevant, and the game is bad — really bad. So bad, in fact, that it’s actually a cult hit among nerds who like bad games.
What’s Next?
The trend of video games being set in and around San Francisco doesn’t seem to be slowing. In 2014, the Golden Gate Bridge was featured in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare; in 2015, the Adam Sandler flick Pixels featured San Francisco being destroyed by famous video-game characters; and just this past June, Ubisoft announced Watch Dogs 2, to be set in various locations around the Bay Area. Will Watch Dogs 2 be among our best games or our worst? We’ll have to wait until November to see.
Did we miss your favorite (or least favorite) SF-centric game? Add it in the comments.
