After hiding some awful movies as Easter eggs in the first game, High On Life 2 is doing something similar but for bad video games.
We didn’t think too highly of 2022’s High On Life, the former Xbox exclusive first person shooter from Rick & Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, but its sense of humour was certainly unique.
One gag that we defintely appreciated was that you could watch four full-length feature films on an in-game TV; all of which are very obscure and considered enjoyably awful.
For the sequel, that was announced at June’s Xbox showcase, developer Squanch Games is revisiting this idea with more hidden movies, but it’s also going one step further by adding emulated retro video games you’ve probably never heard of.
Squanch Games’ chief creative officer Mike Spano shared this info with IGN while demoing High On Life 2 at Gamescom, confirming that ‘more than five’ officially licensed games will be featured and fully playable.
Spano refrained from naming all of them, but he did share one example that helps set the standard for what sort of games you can expect: Bible Adventures.
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Released in 1991 for the NES, Bible Adventures was a 2D platformer that was technically three games in one, with each one being based on a different bible story: Noah’s ark, the baby Moses, and David and Goliath.
However, it was never sold at retailers and was only available at Christian bookstores, reportedly selling 350,000 copies. It’s also not very good, having been criticised for being a poor knock-off of Super Mario Bros. 2, of all things.
It’s addition in High On Life 2 makes it the only legal way of playing it (since it’s never officially been re-released) and strongly suggests that all the other emulated games will be of a similar nature.
The idea of including awful video games as an Easter egg is in keeping in High On Life’s style of humour, although bad video games are rarely as entertaining as so-bad-they’re-good movies.
As a reminder, High On Life 2 is launching not just for Xbox Series X/S and PC but also PlayStation 5. Although we’re honestly surprised it’s coming out at all considering what happened with Roiland.
Not long after High On Life launched, Roiland was charged with felony domestic violence, which led to Adult Swim cutting ties with him and his removal from Rick & Morty.
He also left Squanch Games, which he had co-founded in 2016, and given how heavily involved he was with the studio’s output, it seemed at one point that Squanch Games wouldn’t survive.
Clearly, that hasn’t been the case though. Despite High On Life 2 carrying over its predecessor’s sense of humour, there’s nothing to indicate Roiland has had any involvement in its development.
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