Obsessively Cataloging Video Game "Pop" Culture
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth adds these ornate black-and-gold potion vending machines to Cloud Strife’s quest, and longtime visitors to the Video Game Soda Machine Project already know the truth: potions are just fantasy soda. [Source]
Magic: The Gathering brought the post-nuclear Wasteland to the tabletop with its 2024 collaboration, Magic: The Gathering – Fallout. The cards later made the jump to Magic: The Gathering Online, which means we have an entirely new batch of digital Nuka-Cola machines to catalog!
In the first screenshot, we have a Nuka-Cola Vending Machine artifact card that comes in two delicious flavors. I’m not an MTG guy, but if I understand the text correctly, it’s basically: “Buy a Nuka-Cola, drink it to heal, and get a cap back toward your next purchase.”
We also have a few cards with art that features Nuka-Cola machines tucked away in the background. Tunnel Snakes rule!
Finally, I wanted to highlight this gorgeous card art from the collaboration featuring Sierra Petrovita, Nuka-Cola’s number-one fan and the patron saint of the Video Game Soda Machine Project!
In Kirby and the Forgotten Land, everyone’s favorite pink guy can inhale a soda machine to activate Vending Mouth mode. In this new and deeply troubling form, Kirby can spit soda cans at enemies to defeat them. [Source]
Here’s the drink machine that Kirby… inhales?… consumes?… envelops?… to transubstantiate into Vending Mouth mode.
BONUS! I recently stumbled across a plush version of Vending Mouth Kirby at MINISO. That’s right — it’s a plush version of a video game character who ate a video game soda machine and became a video game character who’s also a video game soda machine!
Infamous: Festival of Blood is a “what if?” spin-off where protagonist Cole MacGrath gets turned into a vampire by Bloody Mary and adds bloodsucking abilities to his usual electrokinetic powerset. I guess when the soda machines are this empty, drinking blood is your next best option.
I’m not sure whose idea it was to put a soda machine in a cemetery, but I guess even ghosts get thirsty in Spirit Hunter: NG. [Source]
I don’t know a lot about this game, but I’m going to assume that guy with the axe is named something like the Corpulent Butcher, and the dog is barking to keep him away from the soda machine. [Source]
Here’s another random vending machine from the game. Multiply the numerals given by the waxing moons? Look, are you just going to tell me how much a soda costs, or do I have to guess? [Source]
Undead Week
Frank West takes a break from chainsawing his way through an ever-growing zombie horde to enjoy a refreshing soda. You know, I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen this Cold Drinks machine somewhere before. Maybe Raccoon City? [Source]
Undead Week
This VR soda machine from The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners conceals the entrance to a speakeasy. If I had a shiny purple nickel for every time that happened in a video game, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right? [Source]
Undead Week
Better board up the windows before cracking open an ice-cold can of Fatty Cola in Dead Block. That encroaching zombie horde probably won’t wait for you to finish your drink.
Undead Week
Exiled from Transylvania for preferring soda to blood, the protagonist of Soda Pop Vampire must sneak from the blue soda machine to the red soda machine, level after level, before his carbonated lifeblood runs out.
I’d like to think those color choices are a metaphor for blood circulating through the arteries and veins of the human body, but I might be overthinking this.
Undead Week
This soda machine from Resident Evil Requiem has seen better days, but then again, so has Raccoon City. [Source]
Undead Week