“13 Thanksgiving video games! Yes… they’re all food-related…”

Thanksgiving, as we’ll discover in this article, can be a complicated, treacherous, satisfying, and stressful time for us. But whether you want to avoid meeting your cousin’s new boyfriend or you don’t like the tuna cocktails or you’re just feeling anti-social (who isn’t?), video games are here for you. Loving you. Unconditionally. And we’re thankful for them. Here are thirteen Thanksgiving video games and what we can learn from them. Share these games with friends and family. Or use them to ignore your relatives.

Pac-Man

The original eater of video games kept busy devouring supernatural apparitions (which humans can’t eat) as well as cherries, strawberries, oranges, apples, and melons, fruit (which humans can eat). We can learn a lot from the gluttonous hero. Remember your fruits and veggies this Thanksgiving. Save room on those plates next to the turkey and mashed potatoes. Just ensure you don’t follow the entire Pac-Man diet. The game had him also eating spaceships and keys.

Burger Time

Also from the heyday of gaming, Burger Time reminds us that it’s okay to nix the more elaborate gatherings furnished with candle-lit tables, gilded dinnerware, and so on. You can forgo four forks for each setting. Tradition is nice but the holiday can mean whatever you want or need it to mean, even something as simple as sharing a simple meal with somebody. And hey, burgers are nice. Make it a turkey burger and you’re still sticking to the lore.

Castlevania

This time of the year can be stressful for many. As stressful as storming an ancient castle solo, armed with nothing but a whip to beat back hordes of the undead? Maybe. But when you play Castlevania and find that turkey hidden in the wall, it’s a sigh of relief. May this coming holiday represent a sigh of relief, like a healing item embedded in a secret passage in the wall. We’re all low on health these days. The last thing we need is a holiday so exhausting we need another holiday. You know, like when you go out of your way to get that power up and end up wasting more in-game resources than you gain?

Kirby Super Star

Perhaps the game that best represents Thanksgiving for me. Why? Two words: Gourmet Race. That’s what Thanksgiving was like growing up in the food culture of Hawaii, a mad bum rush to the table to devour everything as if the finite nature of the consumptive materials actually meant something. You’re awesome if you can hear the Gourmet Race song in your head right now.

Cooking Mama

Legacy. That’s Cooking Mama. Thanksgiving is a holiday with a lot of traditions for different families. Those traditions get passed down in the form of awkwardly sitting around with relatives you barely know, baring your soul to the void when asked what you’re thankful for, disremembering your nephews and nieces names because they all start with the letter B, or having to drive to two different houses and eat two different dinners because of biological and legal loyalties to two different families. Or there’s recipes that get passed down, too. My grandmother (rest in peace) made a killer mango bread, as in I’d kill for some of that traditional mango bread with butter right about now.

Overcooked

Remember I mentioned Thanksgiving can be an exhausting holiday? It really can. Cooking is work. Setting up a table and serving a meal is work. Staging your home and preparing for guests is work. Watching the Macy’s Day parade on repeat is work. Seriously, though, they normally pay people to do a lot of this stuff. Hug a chef. When asked about what you’re thankful for, maybe take the opportunity to tell someone how much you appreciate all the work they put into the meal and the hosting. As someone who came from the hectic Overcooked-like restaurant industry, personal gratitude goes a long way.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

“Try new things!” That’s the refrain for picky eaters. “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it, but just taste it.” Visiting other people for Thanksgiving can sometimes mean trying food that you wouldn’t normally eat, or even dream of eating. Hopefully nobody is serving snake (or heaven forbid tsuchinoko) but it might be time to channel your inner legendary soldier, muscle up, and nibble the thing. Dinner etiquette can be a complex social dance but it’s polite to at least try something, especially if you’re asked. And if you don’t like it, you don’t like it. Just don’t spin around afterward and throw up on the floor.

I Am Bread

Don’t play with your food.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Experimentation and exploration are two words that acutely sum up what makes Breath of the Wild so special. Let us never forget that the kitchen, like post-apocalyptic Hyrule, is a laboratory. Tradition is nice, but it’s okay to put some ghost peppers in the casserole. Egg nog in the turkey gravy. How about theming the meal around regional food from another country? Or maybe it could be a fun admixture of cultures if you combined the backgrounds of the guests in the special dinner’s cuisine? Alright, don’t go crazy. Nobody wants a plate of burned ebon ash, but we wouldn’t enjoy the foods we have today if somebody in the past didn’t say “gee, I wonder what’d happen if I shoved this hen up this duck and then stuck it up this turkey…”

Final Fantasy XV

A family can be anything. Even four brothers. A meal can be anything. Even Cup Noodles. There’s nothin’ else like ’em. They’re easy to make whenever you’ve got a craving and they’re delicious to boot. I’ll never forget my first time… Any food you make tastes better when you use good ingredients, right? Then, if you take something already delicious like Cup Noodles and add in the finest, freshest ingredients, what do you get? The ultimate flavor experience! Sure, FFXV has other cooking. But Cup Noodles is all that matters.

Monster Hunter World

So far we’ve thought of Thanksgiving as a time for food, a time for family, a time for tradition, somewhat exhausting, somewhat relieving, somewhat experimental. There’s more, though. Thanksgiving can be a time to prepare. The very next day is Black Friday, a day enshrining greed and avarice instead of gratitude and contentment. The juxtaposition in American culture couldn’t be more jarring. But if you play your cards right, you don’t have to be trampled by angry mobs trying to get a flatscreen for a nickel. Times have changed. Cyber Monday became cyber week. Black Friday began being “celebrated” in July. You can grab plenty of goodies for cheap online. You just need to ensure you prep for adventure strategically, like a monster hunter stocking up on calories via cat chef!

Resident Evil 7

Not all families are a real peach. While blood is technically thicker than water, let’s be real: being with family isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. In real life, we don’t have the relationships of a Hallmark card commercial. That’s just natural. We’re humans. We’re flawed. Sure it’s an opportunity to catch up and reconnect with relatives, but there can be a lot of anxiety, past feelings, grudges held, rants made, political ideologizing, sentiments of lack of acceptance, dysfunction, and so on that make the holiday difficult. I don’t have a one-size-fits-all word of wisdom here. I guess all I can say is look on the bright side? At least you’re not going to be dining tied to a chair in a hovel with people gorging on rancid cannibalistic offal. That’d be a Biohazard.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

What could be more like real life than a life sim? ACNH makes even the most mundane tasks a pleasure, like cleaning, organizing, changing clothes, paying off debts, or repaving your driveway one isometric square at a time. The recent update that added over 9000 items in the game (WHAT?!) brought me back to Magic Isle where I’ve been happily crafting more hedge mazes and Chrono Trigger sprites. The game also has the not-at-all-too-on-the-nose Turkey Day, substituting for Thanksgiving. On the in-game holiday, which you can play right now by time traveling, Franklin the turkey (Hah! Get it?) gives you fetch quests so tediously enjoyable that completing them is its own reward, not the kitschy Turkey Day furniture he gives you. Nothing screams vapid, commercialized, sanitized Thanksgiving quite like Turkey Day, but you already bought the game. Can you really stay away?

And that’s the list of Thanksgiving video games! How many of these games have you played? What else could have made this list?

Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Twitter @thewellredmage or Mage Cast.