Eight Videogame Creatures that are Real!

Posted April 27, 2012 by Jallen (608)

Videogames are great. Now you might consider me bias on the subject, you know due to the fact I write for a gaming site and am paid many pesos for giving good reviews to shitty games, but it’s true. They enable us to go on adventures we could never possibly hope to do otherwise. Like Mining, or Farming, hell even something as unlikely as dating…women! Mind-blowing stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.

On the more mundane level they also allow us to fight mystical creatures, aliens and whatever the else human mind can conjure up. Thankfully though we know that they’re fantasy; we’re not going to turn around and suddenly going to bump into a monster from a videogame. Well as you can probably guess from the title that isn’t always the case. So here’s a list of eight creatures from videogames that exist, now, for real!

Metroids from ‘Metroid’

Metroids are the big thing in the Metroid universe, probably unsurprising given the title of the franchise. They were artificially created by a group of aliens called the Chozo for use as bioweapons. They use those moving fangs to grapple onto enemies and suck the life-force from their victims. Thankfully nothing like that exists in reality.

The Real Life Creature:

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Ahhh, what the hell is that? The Tiburonia granrojo jellyfish, AKA The Big Red Jellyfish. This jellyfish lives at the depth around 600-1500 metres and was first seen in 1998. It wasn’t until 2003 when it was classified. To date only 23 have been seen, and of those 23 only one (a juvenile) was captured. They grow to the size of a meter in diameter but it’s possible that this isn’t the maximum size.

Big Red is almost a complete mystery. It is a completely new subspecies of jellyfish, that’s the equivalent to the difference between your common household cat and a lion. It doesn’t have tentacles, those things hanging out the bottom are best described as fleshy tongues. Also the number of tongues varies from specimen to specimen. One only had four, while others have six and the maximum reached was seven. We also have no idea what it eats but I think we can have a pretty good guess can’t we.

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Yes I’m saying it right now, they feed on life-force, or “souls” if you will. The only reason why they suddenly popped up was because somebody created these creatures and in a lab and have released them to wreak vengeance. They’re currently biding their time in the deep waters of the world but when the time comes; they shall walk the Earth and consume the very existence of life itself.

Seaman from ‘Seaman’

Honestly Japan, I’m never sure whether to tell you to seek counselling or to never change, but ‘Seaman’ definitely goes into the former column. ‘Seaman’ was created for the Sega Dreamcast back in 2001. It was a virtual pet which you would talk to with the Dreamcast’s over priced microphone. Sorta like what Kinect’s Milo would have turned into, if Peter Molyneux wasn’t insane. At any rate you had to log in every day and talk to this bizarre fish or else it would die. It would then either give you some useless trivia or insult you. It would evolve as you went along eventually turning into a bizarre frog monstrosity. A sequel was made in 2007 but oddly enough it was only released in Japan, no idea why.

The Real life creature:

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Well, actually that looks less disturbing than the game. In fact if I could slip a dress on it I would take it out for dinner. All I would have to remember is not to take it for sushi. It’s a Matsuba Koi also known as Jinmengyo koi. Yeah you know koi, they’re those expensive fish you see in ponds.

This isn’t even that rare either, there are plenty of these fish swimming around with human faces. It’s really just an odd way for the koi’s usual markings to form. Creating what we, as creatures that search for familiar patterning in everything, see as a face. Still I think we can all pretend that bored fishermen had a little too much time on their hands, did something with their own “seaman”, and that’s the result. At least that’s what I’ll be telling the children at the local park at any rate.

Slime from ‘Dragon Quest’

Slime(s) is the mascot for the RPG ‘Dragon Quest’. Originally an Enix series it has of course turned into a Square-Enix series. However the Slime was such a favourite to the Enix crew that it became the Enix mascot to put on their mechanise, along with Square’s chocobo (which in keeping with the theme of the list could have lived for real in Madagascar in prehistory, as Elephant Birds). They’re the weakest creature in the series and are probably the first monster the new player will ever meet. However Slimes do get around and have been pallet-swapped so many times that there is literally a rainbow of different types. For the purpose of this list let’s look at the Metal Slime.

Real Life creature;

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“Oh my God, kill it, it’s the only humane thing to do! What do you mean it’s already dead? BURN IT, BURN IT BEFORE I COMIT SUICIDE!” Such is the usual response from first seeing the Blobfish. This unfortunate looking creature (seriously that glob of drool coming out its mouth is really distracting) lives off the coast of Australia at the depths of around 600–1200m hanging out around the sea floor. It doesn’t swim per se, it just sort of, floats. It uses gas bladders to remain buoyant and to hunt is just engulfs crabs whole.

As you probably suspect; this slimy bag of gas doesn’t taste nice and apparently is inedible. However we are catching them and possibly driving the species to extinction due to bottom fishing trawlers. As I mentioned they don’t swim, but float, it seems that slowly hovering a couple feet off the bottom of the sea-floor isn’t the best way to avoid being caught (who knew). Like I said “kill it” is the usual response.

Cutlasses from ‘Devil May Cry 4’

Cutlasses from the fourth incarnation of the ‘Devil May Cry’ franchise were artificially created demons. Created so they could be used as weapons, I guess, you know what? I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the plot. At any rate these creatures would swim through solid rock and then leap up at you and personally I found them a massive pain. As you can see from the above picture they have two forms, one when they’re jumping with an elongated nose and another while submerged with a long blade coming out of the top.

The real life creature:

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Two of them? Well as I mentioned the Cutlass’ has two states and while I can’t find a creature that shape-shifts I can give you two fish from the same family. The first is the Longnosed Chimaera Fish which lives at depths of around 200-2000m. The long snout is used to sense fish probably in the same way certain sharks can use their odd noses to sense electric fields to find their prey. It also contains a potent poison in the spiky looking dorsal fin.

The latter is the Pacific Black Ghost Ratfish and is another type of Chimaera but I can’t figure out which. Or maybe it’s neither of those things. To be honest I’m not particularly well equipped to distinguish between different types of deep water fish, but I’ve tried my best to figure it out. This confusion is just compounded by websites that proudly claim the above image (which is close to meme status now) is X and only X. So I’m not doing that, do your own damn research.

Head over to page two, for the remaining four creatures.

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Devil May Cry, Dragon Quest, Metroid, Resident Evil, Seaman, Sonic the Hedgehog

About the Author

Jallen

Spends his days reporting on games, talking about games, thinking about games, watching videos about games and reading about games. So much so has little time to actually play any of them.