Obsessively Cataloging Video Game "Pop" Culture
Transform your family’s rundown laundromat into a gaming hotspot in Arcade Paradise. And with all that retro joystick jockeying, customers will definitely need some refreshment. That’s where this Fizz vending machine comes in.
Notably, the same Fiz vending machine also appears in RoboCop: Rogue City. This suggests one of two things: either Arcade Paradise is set in the RoboCop Cinematic Universe, or the Fiz machine is a stock 3D asset. I choose to believe the former.
I’m a huge fan of Beneath a Steel Sky, so it’s a treat to find this Spankles the Clown vending machine waiting in the dystopian future of its sequel, Beyond a Steel Sky. Spankles™: Explodes your mind!
Thanks for the outstanding screenshots, Martin!
Want to see our protagonist hack this machine? Click below to watch a video.
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The Mystery Shack is a little old place where we can get together and drink Pitt Cola in Gravity Falls: Li’l Gideon Shrinks Back! You can see the vending machine tucked away on the Shack’s starboard porch in this level-select screen.
Chai may be fighting an evil megacorporation to the beat, but even future rock stars have time to stop and Touch the Sky with an ice-cold soda.
Hatris for the NES styles its stage select screen as a soda machine. Sure, it’s like putting a hat on a hat, but I’ll allow it!
I have no idea how this one flew under my radar for so long.
This is a big one, folks! Greg Hassett’s 1978 TRS-80 text adventure Journey to the Center of the Earth features the Coke machine described above, which means the Video Game Soda Machine Project just found a soda machine five years older than 1983’s Catch-A-Coke!
Catch-A-Coke still features the oldest graphical soda machine in the archive, but this is now the earliest confirmed soda machine appearance in a video game.
Fallout’s Wasteland comes to Minecraft, blocky Nuka-Cola machines and all, in 2024’s official Vault-Tec Mash-Up!
High on Life 2 is a surreal, candy-colored fever dream where talking guns, bizarre aliens, and questionable consumer products are the norm, so this Bounty Juice vending machines fits right in.
Here are two more soda machines from the game.
You can’t run a proper pet spa in The Sims 2: Apartment Pets without a vending machine or two! First up, we have a standard vending machine that sells soda and bottled water.
Upscale clientele might prefer the deluxe model that dispenses “everything but the kitchen sink.”
Or, you know, if you hail from the distant future, maybe the Ultimate Vending Machine is more your style.
Finally, here are the icons for each vending machine from the game’s furniture menu.
I can’t speak for TONY, SAL, VINNIE, or MARIA, but I’d definitely grab a cold drink from this soda machine in the DOS spy thriller, The Nine Lives of Secret Agent Katt!
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