A Brief History of Video Games Breaking the Fourth Wall

Gamingsurvival.com looks back at the history of video games breaking the fourth wall. From The Secret of Monkey Island to more recently Batman Arkham Asylum, we provide a brief list of titles that are guilty of this video game trope. You may not see every occurrence covered, but we're sure you'll find some of your favorites.

[Pikajew]

Cthulhu Saves the World breaks the fourth wall so much.

[fallacious]

There should be a Deadpool game, it would be awesome, god knows how he loves to break the fourth wall.

[RchrdJ]

If I remember correctly, he did it a few times during his appearance in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.

[rdgneoz3]

And MUA 2, and in Marvel vs Capcom 3.

Gotta love, http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[Abdou23]

I'm sorry did he just describe MGS 1 as bad ?!

I don't even know what to say here....

[Relientk77]

Don't listen to him. He's hysterical.

[snipes101]

He was saying the examples in the last paragraph were bad examples of breaking the fourth wall, not that the game was bad.

[Abdou23]

Even so, they are not.The whole game is amazing and the Psycho Mantis fight was incredible and waaaay ahead of it's time.the whole game was.

[snipes101]

He meant that they were not the best examples in the context of the article I'm pretty sure, not the game.

[humbleopinion]

Where's The Bard's Tale?
Any where's every Lucasarts graphic adventure game from the golden days?

[wallis]

Cool article. I like the abstract approach to topic ideas seen in a lot of recent articles popping up. I like it and the idea of examining the breaking of the fourth wall in games is a great example of paying attention to something that isn't totally banal. Graphics, game X vs. game Y, 8 year late reviews, and sexism seem to be topics of about 80% of the articles I see lately.

[pandaboy]

I'm playing dungeon keeper 2 just now and I like this one:

"Your nocturnal perseverance has earned you a secret, GO TO BED!"

it was 3am when I was playing haha!

[Asthenos]

Technically TES games break the fourth wall all the time, but it's actually really subtle and included in the lore. There are certain instances like in books where it mentions how the character could stop time mid battle and restore his health (i.e. pausing the game and using a potion). Even some of the characters themselves recognize that they, and the world they live in, exist in a game. It's really cool how Bethesda created all this.

http://thepixelbeat.wordpre...