It would be neat to create two games that appear to be different, but designed in such a way that the winning user input is the same for both games. A simple and obvious example would be an infinite runner game where the winning input is a certain rhythm of spacebar presses, and a musical rhythm game that requires the same rhythm of spacebar presses. But I'm sure it could be done with much more complex games.
Here's a tool assisted speedrun of a gamer playing Mega Man 3, 4, 5 & 6 all with the same button inputs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5pz6waED0w It's kind of chaotic, and not quite what you described, but similar and still pretty impressive.
Tangent: I briefly worked in the "gaming" (gambling) industry. To cope with the proliferation of laws, the backing algorithms could be changed to match whatever games of chance which were legal in a given jurisdiction, then topologically transformed to look like the desired game. What looked like video poker might actually be bingo, hence legal in a "only bingo is legal" locale.
(ETA: Sorry, no how-to details. I didn't work on that part of the code.)
That's pretty wacky. Could you explain a bit more about how the transformation works? I can't quite see how you run bingo behind the scenes but display something that looks like poker. They seem too different.
The general concept is that the game isn't skill-based anyway; you have a randomly generated X that will have a payout of Y. If you have generated a bingo card + a ball sequence that will lose, then you can map that as a video poker hand that will lose and display that to the customer; if you have generated a bingo card+ball seqence that will win a multiple of 10, then you show that to the customer as a video poker hand that has, say, a full house combination and write in the 'rules' that having a full house hand will pay out a multiple of 10. Sure, it's not proper poker; but it's poker-themed enough to be attractive and such games are manufactured.
You just construct an artificial mapping between losing and winning positions in both games, the rest is cosmetics. You can have an "opponent hand" that is revealed afterwards or deal out "your hand" to you as in hold-em poker - it doesn't mean that the cards need to be "dealt" fairly; they are just illustration for a pregenerated loss/win/bigwin decision.
The most bizarre part, to me, is that the law actually cared about the real probability distribution over winning conditions, instead of the surface appearance. That seems way too sensible for lawyers to have come up with.
Law is often written by people who don't understand something well enough to regulate it sensibly, they just draw some lines in ignorance and then are surprised when the knowing find creative ways around it.
"No gambling here. Bingo only, because little old ladies will vote against us in droves if we ban it too." "Ok, can we do a video bingo game?" "Sure. It's bingo." "Can we line up five bingo cards at once?" "Sure. It's bingo." "Can we add up corresponding cells and display those?" "Uh...sure. It's bingo...ish." "Can we display just the first line of that summation grid?" "Yea....ah. It's still...uh...bingo." "Numbers are just arbitrary-shape symbols; can we display whatever icons we want in place of those numbers?" "Uh...yeah...kinda odd, but don't see why not." "OK, here's our game. Take a look." "Hey! That's poker! That's illegal!" "No, it's bingo. It just looks like poker after every step YOU approved."
Start with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. You and an opponent taking turns picking numbers, each time a number that has not been picked before. The winner is the first person to have picked three numbers that sum to exactly 15.
Try it out with a friend. You will gradually realize that it it seems surprisingly familiar...
> A simple and obvious example would be an infinite runner game where the winning input is a certain rhythm of spacebar presses, and a musical rhythm game that requires the same rhythm of spacebar presses.
The only game that comes close to that, that I'm familiar with is Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure for Nintendo DS. It combines a platformer with a bejeweled-style puzzle on the bottom screen, where the tiles that spawn are tied to what enemies you kill and how much damage you take, and you need to play both games to damage enemies, get bonuses and summon the giant victorian steam/tea-powered robot. Thankfully the top game is paused while you swap tiles on the bottom.
