Looking for the Foursides, Goldenrods, whatever village or town or city you remembered from video games and that can be thoroughly explored and that are considered “big”
Kinda funny but I remember how vast Minniopolis seemed in The Urbz Sims in the City for GBA and DS and I saw a map this year that looked so tiny, amazing how big it felt at the time
It’s not big in an overall area sense but it’s so dense that it can feel massive. Kamurocho from the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games. Seeing it evolve over 20 years in real time and about 35 years in game time has gotten me quite attached too. Each new game I do a loop to check what has changed and see if old friends are still there.
Bonus with having so much in game time in it is that since it’s essentially just Kabukicho in Tokyo, all that in game exploring translates to the real world pretty well.
I actually went to kabujicho after i played the first 5 yakuza games (zero to 4) and it doesn’t looks exactly as in the game but yet it was weird how a place in a city i have never been to felt so familiar, it probably didn’t help that it was a rainy may afternoon but yet, some things were exactly at the same place, like the corner don quichotte at the map border
After Kabukicho I was pretty confident doing the same in Dotenbori in Osaka. Once I got south of the river I got very lost and the whole thing fell apart. It was hilarious. It probably is the same but my memory definitely wasn’t.