ON National Video Game Day, we thought it only right to look back at some of the times Cumbria has been represented in video games across the last 30 years.
There are certainly some surprising inclusions, and with the vast library of games that have been released in history, we may have missed some.
Perhaps the most famous example of Cumbria featuring in a video game is in the original Tekken, a hugely popular fighting game series which first launched in 1994 and launched its eighth edition earlier this year in the 30th anniversary of its original release.
The first edition of the arcade game sees players fight in locations such as Kyoto, Venice, Chicago... and Lake Windermere.
The largest lake in the UK is obviously a beautiful place and one of the biggest hotspots in Cumbria, but few would have picked it out as a spot for a traditional Tekken fight.
Another golden oldie to visit Cumbria is the Test Drive series, which featured on Playstation One and Microsoft Windows.
Test Drive is a series of racing video games that were originally published by Accolade until they were bought by Infogrames. The first game was released in 1987 and has since been followed by several sequels and spin-offs, the last of which was released in 2012.
In Test Drive 4, a 1997 release, players have 14 supercars and muscle cars to choose from as they race against the computer in a wide variety of tracks based on real life locations, including Keswick.
Cumbria proved so popular in Test Drive 4 that they returned to Keswick in the game's sequel Test Drive 5, released in 1999.
Earlier this year it was confirmed that, while no flights will be leaving Carlisle's airport in real life, gamers can land and take off from runways via Microsoft Flight Simulator, a 2020 video game release.
Of course, football teams Carlisle United and Barrow will have featured regularly in footballing video games such as FIFA/EAFC and Football Manager/Championship Manager over the years.
Meanwhile, Atomfall will take things to the next step when it releases in March 2025, with the game taking place in the Lake District, in an open-world game set in the aftermath of the 1957 Windscale disaster.
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