Video Game-Themed RPGs

I was wondering if anyone knew of any video game-themed rpgs, purely out of curiosity piqued by reading Fate Core's Save Game. Off-hand I know of Retro Phaze, which mostly seems like an OSR game with old-school video rpg trappings, and Open Adventure, which does probably doesn't intend to, but very much seems to fall under that same description.

Otherwise, I don't really know of any others. This topic is hard to search for for likely obvious reasons.

Well, if you go to 1d4chan (I could link you there if you would prefer further iluciation) you'll find TONS of homebrews, some based off Vidya.

Other than that, I know a d20 Final Fantasy system is floating around the homebrew section on these forums.

A Pokemon TRPG exists.

I suppose the better question is...what are 'ya looking for?

I'd mostly looking for games that evoke the feel of old-school video games or anything Nintendo-made. Oddly-placed item shops, multiple lives, a strange rarity of glass bottles or some other mundane item, etc.

but, really, anything video-game themed works for me. I was just curious about the concept and found that trying to Google it brought up the wrong sort of rpg, but I couldn't eliminate "video game" from the search like I might normally do.

Hmm....well, that first part sounds like design evokities on the GM side of things.

Have you tried including "tabletop" on your queries? "d20 system" or "d6 system" might also help.

Can't help you with actually finding any video game themed RPG's, but man, I would definitely play an RPG about a video game where if you die in the game in the RPG, you die in real life in the RPG, and then if you die in real life in the RPG, you die in real life.

You are looking for Console.

There's three versions plus some expansions there. Feel free to download any or all of it; it's all CC-licensed. If you want to pay for it, you can do so here.

Edit: Now that I think about it, Super Console is probably the closest to what you described.

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Originally Posted by Grinner

You are looking for Console.

There's three versions plus some expansions there. Feel free to download any or all of it; it's all CC-licensed. If you want to pay for it, you can do so here.

Edit: Now that I think about it, Super Console is probably the closest to what you described.

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Huh, that is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing. For some reason I had come across that Handheld version of that game, but didn't know about the others. And it helps me understand what I'm really most interested in.

I'm not really looking for games based on are what are called "RPGs" in the video game world. I don't want something where you'd have visible stats that you're trying to increase. Not that I'm looking for a statless game necessarily, but what I mean is that the fictional player of the fictional video game would not see any sort of stats. So I'm looking for games like Legend of Zelda where you get items that will do a certain thing when you use them, or Mario and other such games where you gain power-ups, and not so much Final Fantasy or Fire Emblem. (Though I certainly won't begrudge you for sharing such thing.)

Perhaps it was a bit confusing that I mentioned Retro Phaze and Open Adventure, since they weren't what I was looking for specifically so much as just examples of video game-like RPGs I knew of.