Habitat II

Habitat 2

After Lucasfilm Games released its breakthrough MMO Habitat in 1986, Fujitsu licensed the technology to create its own Fujitsu Habitat for the Japanese market in 1990. Fujitsu would later purchase the Habitat IP outright and use the underlying technology to launch the WorldsAway virtual world on CompuServe in 1995.  Fujitsu went on to localize WorldsAway for the Japanese market, releasing it for Windows, Macintosh, and the Sega Saturn as Habitat II in 1996.

With all of that history out of the way, the screenshot above features a beverage-dispensing vendroid unit, which provided players with soda, coffee, hot chocolate, and other drinks they could use to customize their avatars.

Thanks to RenoProjectIV on Twitter for filling in some of these historical details! You can learn much, much more about Habitat and its follow-ups at the official RenoProject archive.

Final Fantasy VII Remake

Final Fantasy VII Remake

I’m awarding bonus points to this Energy Drink Potion machine from Final Fantasy VII remake for its savvy bench ads. After all, bench advertising is a cost-efficient way to generate high impressions and enhance brand recognition across a wide demographic range. Even a mercenary like Cloud Strife knows that’s good business.

Thanks for the screenshot, Oscar!

Valorant

Valorant

Kingdom Kola: “Better than Pep-Pep!”

After playing the Valorant beta for a couple of hours, the game still makes absolutely no sense to me. At least there are some caffeinated constants you can always depend on. Thanks for the head-up on this one, Jack!

198X

198X

Before you slap your your quarter down on the Dig Dug cabinet and call dibs on the next round, grab a snack and a drink from the vending machine in multi-genre arcade epic 198X!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

We’ve covered Animal Crossing: New Horizons already in recent entries, but it turns out we were just scratching the surface. The amazing Reb Valentine has managed to assemble a collection of all the different soda machine models available on Tom Nook’s not-so-deserted island.

As Reb points out, “The drinks inside each machine are unique to each color! Green seems to have the canned drink Nook likes. Pink has water and a lot of cans with hearts. Red has a generic, varied selection. Black appears to include Mountain Dew?” Also, as seen in the screenshot below, each color has a different design on the side.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Even better, players can customize the advertisement panel on the front of the soda machines with one of four labels: orange juice (default), sports drink, sale, and cute. That means there’s a total of 24 possible soda machine and label combinations in the game.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

But wait, there’s more! Players can also apply custom labels to the drink machines, which arguably makes Animal Crossing: New Horizons the first game to feature a near-infinite number of potential soda machine options!

How can you get a soda machine on your island? Here’s Reb: “You can buy one for 2,000 Nook Miles once the Town Hall unlocks. However, you can only purchase one color, randomized for your town! If you want others, you’ll have to talk to friends. You cannot order more from the catalog.”

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

That means to grab the screenshot at the beginning of this entry, Reb had to reach out to her fellow AC:NH players for help assembling a full collection. So, in addition to a mega-super-thanks to Reb Valentine, this entry wouldn’t have been possible without help from TristanACooper, kyle_toom, KFoleyFL, RType88, iyagovos, and MllPilgrim. Thanks, everyone!

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Rush: A Disney•Pixar Adventure

Rush: A Disney•Pixar Adventure

Allow me to drop some automotive science on you. Cars drink motor oil. Ergo, this motor oil vending machine from Rush: A Disney•Pixar Adventure is the Cars universe equivalent of a soda machine.

Rush: A Disney•Pixar Adventure

I know what you’re thinking. Wouldn’t that make the hubcap vending machine in the above screenshot some kind of weird automotive shoe dispenser? Wrong. In the Cars universe, cars eat hubcaps. We just never see it on screen. Therefore, this is technically a snack machine. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.