Games made up of stolen pieces from recognizable works that recontextualize those pieces into new and beautiful things, often playing off of their pre-existing meanings and contexts. Transcending shitpost games into legitimately meaningful art. This is not a comprehensive list, or a strict definition. It's vaguely ordered to prioritize the games that were personally most seminal in my understanding of the movement, regardless of any historical accuracy.
Update: I am not going to continue keeping it ordered as I add new games, but if you want my "what is plundercore" shortlist, play Titanic 2, Terminal 64, St Wiggler In The Desert, and 2001: Someone tell Luigi. Then, if you want something big and dense to chew on, buy Oikospeil.
Games that aren't on itch.io that fit:
-A collection of "plunderludics", a similar, somewhat overlapping term but more focused on literally directly using gameplay or entire other games in your game, rather than just assets and aesthetics: https://plunderludics.github.io/other-plunderludics/
- Ben Esposito / Arcane Kids's old games i feel like really set the blueprint, tho they differ a little bit from most of my modern itch examples. But, to quote Rebecca Sugar, of all people: "I love Bubsy 3D. You play as Bubsy, and you visit the James Turrell exhibit at the LACMA, and you look at art. And to me, it's incredible and my favorite thing ever, because it's using this ridiculous pop culture nostalgia to force someone to experience art."
-https://gamejolt.com/games/super-plumber-bros/27754
its the simplest possible detournement, and maybe its just cause of the song, but it hit perfectly. turning games about war into games about love is a very noble cause
A lot to say about this one. It feels like a media supercollider, plundering with such range and frequency that it approaches one of those tiktoks with subway surfer and family guy clips in the corners.
also fitting, along those lines, that it contains ai generated voice acting for some characters. outside of its horrible implications for the value of artists in capitalism, Neural Network stuff is really just Advanced and Scrambled sampling, and I think to some degree it can have a place in plundercore. For example, the bugs bunny here is trained on a specific voice, so it can still evoke specific emotional responses that a real middle of the road AI generated gray fantasy landscape painting cannot, its made of too many different things for the inspiration to ring through.
Last thing, is that I think what is so compelling about this and terminal 64 (besides how hilarious and creative and well put together they are) is the idea of making mario a plumber who works with his hands, a hollow player avatar who's job it is to walk forward until victory, face existential dilemmas he was never designed to endure (which is where evangelion comes in, I suppose).
Oh wait, real last thing: the "opera" framing, coupled with the meticulous attention paid to camera and scene transitions makes me feel like this one is really inspired by oikospeil, by far the most long-form plundercore. V cool 2 see.
fish become rooms in a boat the way ripped models become film props the way a shitpost becomes a work of art the way a living person becomes dead.
There's something specifically about mario i think, the vapidness in all of its narrative and character (or lack there of) that makes it especially tempting to fill with sadness or dread. I think if mario and shinji swapped places both worlds would be better off
The importance of the header and title cant be understated. Sometimes all it takes to recontextualize a fun sports game is a single potent phrase
super great, really evoked some strong emotions from me, great repurposing of assets, using mario and luigi's relationship as brothers for far more than any mario game ever would. I almost feel like i must have played it before? like long long ago? if only because it feels now that I've seen it that And Other Stories must have been influenced by it subconsciously.
I cant believe someone got away with selling one of these. This one is so dense with asset and reference and allusion that I feel like i didn't even really process it all. The ocarina of time segments alone plant this firmly in the plundercore camp though, regardless. And generally, its fantastic
There's always a slight vaporwave nostalgia bend to these games, though this is probably the most extreme example
a rare non nintendo one! I haven't played yakuza so I'm not totally sure how that would impact the experience but the use of a commonly recognizable guy for such a transcendant little game means it qualifies imo
Gorgeous and peaceful one, with all of the nostalgia and recontextualizing but absent of (most) of the horror and uncanny-ness present in a lot of these. There really is something about the windfish that I think has captured a lot of people, in some vague indescribable allegorical way. I also think this game might be the source of the movement's obsession with celine dion? hard to say though.
i love the notion of games, or stories, existing side by each. like if you just walked far enough away from battle toads you could end up somewhere better....
plundercore, gurn style. the fabric of these characters violently tearing apart, revealed for the puppets they are. check out the rest of gurn group's work for sure if you're into any of this kind of thing
as far as I know, the first game to be deliberately made in the Plundercore style to the degree that it's mentioned by name (by someone other than me)!
i like that sometimes the music fades away and you just get left with a heartbeat. it makes me think that maybe the mother of this kong is playing it donkey kong music in the womb so it grows up to be bigger stronger and faster too.
More self aware and didactic than most of these (except no sidewalks i guess?) but I still think it fits, and it discusses some of the main sentiments that this genre is about very well. The thing about interpreting link as a flying girl in a green dress, from sidescrolling perspective... genius
Ok so obviously these are plundered from comics, not videogames, but I think it's a great example of recontextualizing pre-existing, recognizable art. I would one day like to make the "LONGPIG" of NES Games plunderludic'd together.
A beautiful dreamy little realm
PLAY FIRST BEFORE READING FURTHER:
A plundercore by the people for the people, handcrafting their own nostalgia. where will it be in a year? will i be nostalgic for the old version of this very game? i hope so
This is an interesting one because while it otherwise absolutely qualifies, the tone switch it's going for is almost opposite to most plundercore games! it takes what i remember as actually being a rare serene moment in the original game and turns it into a legitimately high octane and challenging bullet hell! The fun stuff towards the end helps give it a unique tone and definitely cements it as plundercore rather than simple fan game to me, really perverts and plays with and twists all the assets and concepts it takes from the original. I don't know what the "true" ending is like but the normal ending was great.
I like the narrative in this one, where poppy bros jr is sort of an actor, playing a role as a new character, but its a role I could easily see poppy bros jr filling. I also love "swims the world". There seems to be a very common motif in these games of water and swimming. There's something special about water in games I think.
There's a really cool and obscure relationship of space between the two screens. The bubbles translate linearly between them, but when the frog crosses the threshhold he transforms dramatically, as though much farther away. Sometimes it takes the ds being digitally rendered in front of me to realize the magic in the space between the two screens. (I played most of my ds games emulated back in the day after all!)
While maybe not exactly in line with plundercore (its all original assets and its extremely polished) i think its spirit of taking a hollow corporate character and reinterpreting it into a fun and ominous thing means it gets to be in here
Note that you really have to watch the video linked in the description for this one.
A kind of older example, applied to point n click style gameplay, and a good showcase of the bleed over this kind of thing has with collage art. I played this a long time before any of the others but looking back it definitely fits, in both tone and content
Including this because its the closest thing ive made, but im not so confident in the "meaningful art" part about this one
Another one by me! This one was much more consciously made in the spirit of the plundercore movement, tho it still feels a little removed to me since theres so much original stuff thats sort of stealing focus from the plundered stuff. This one is sort of like, long ago there was old videogames that you recognize, but they're all underwater now.
