Essence of theGamer Zone

This Essence tastes like plastic wrapping and packing peanuts, the vial is shaped like an original Nintendo controller, game buttons can be seen floating within it. You are granted these boons:

• Full body, mind, and soul restoration back to an ideal state and a one time body remodel allowing you to be any humanoid creature, sans their powers. You can look like a Saiyan, or any other weird combination, but you don't get Ki or magic nor Oozaru or super forms.

• Clarity of mind, crystal clear memory of everything you've experienced along with greater creativity. You also have infinite memory and data storing, perfect cross referencing, protection from harmful memories, immunity to memory tampering, and the ability to store away selected memories without detriment so they aren't remembered, or even let them fade away like normal.

• The ability to access Zones. These spaces are like Instant Dungeons/Dimensions/Demiplanes that are based on the games you've beaten, even if you didn't play through the whole game yourself and merely defeated the final boss, won the last race, reached the end of the final level, etc. They have an extreme and adaptable time dilation effect where no matter how much time you spend inside only 3 seconds passes outside. You can only enter Zones as long as you aren't being attacked or considered to be in Active Combat, such as before or after a fight or escaping a place that you have minutes to vacate.

• With multiple endings, only one must be completed to unlock a Zone. In the case of multiplayer games like Fortnite, Overwatch, Team Fortress 2, and others, a minimum of 20 matches total must be won. In the case of endless levels like Pac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, Tetris, and others, a set amount of levels must be reached. In the case of games that have no story or levels, such as Minecraft, The Sims, Harvest Moon, etc. certain milestones must be passed. Some Zones have stat or Transformation ability requirements before they can be entered because some games have a "must be this tall to compete" threshold before a normal human could survive them like Sonic the Hedgehog, Spyro, Little Big Planet, or Smash Bros.

• While you are within a Zone you have access to a Gamer User Interface that allows you to gain Skills, level Attributes, Perks, and Party with others you bring with you, if you choose to, as well as other benefits like an Inventory, a Store, Gamer's Body, and Respawn. Skills are gained from Skill Books based on what was in the games, as well as created with enough repeated actions. Want to jump like Mario? You can learn. Use weapons like Link? Here's a Skill Book. Some Skills may even be given in place of equipment such as a Double Jump, a staple in many games. Gamer's Body prevents you from starving, aging, ensures you don't need a bathroom, nor require sleep; breathing you'll have to learn to do without on your own or pick it up as a Skill.

• There are special Shards hidden throughout the Zones that allow you to unlock Perks, which come in two versions; System Wide that affects everyone, and Individual. One such Perk allows a form of limited shapeshifting or Transformation based on the PCs or Character Customization featured in the original media or its' mods, including racial options. You do not look exactly like the character, rather a form more tailored to you, but you'll gain all their racial advantages and disadvantages, any starting powers they had, and any power potential they possessed. You can access these alt-forms freely once you obtain them and switching between them is always combat viable no matter how fast you become. You have to actually have a customized character from a Zone in order to take their form and cannot just freely change your appearance from unlocking the customization features.

• Zones that involve contagious elements like zombie viruses, corruptive elements, or other eldritch substances can cause a temporary transformation for anyone who doesn't pass their constitution checks if playing an 'infected' was a feature of the original media, if not then you need a Party for this rule to work right. The effect only lasts until the Zone is beaten, everyone is kicked, or the person Respawns. Corruptive elements do not spread outside the Zone as they are ultimately only a simulation of the real thing, and any powers that rely on such things will be stable versions that don't carry any harmful effects from their source.

• Zones follow the 'Main Story' of the games treating you and your Party somewhat like the Main Character, with 3rd person privileges that show you cutscenes of flashbacks or what the antagonists are up to just like the original media. You can even assign Party Members to certain characters, even the same PCs, to follow their arcs, gain their equipment, or to learn their Skills so long as it doesn't result in different endings, in the case of multiple Player Characters or huge casts of them that were available for play.

• Games that had multiple endings result in the Zone creating a hub area to select the ending you want to play through and after you've beaten it you can reset the Zone without leaving to select another version to play if you want. You can generally reset Zones without leaving to farm loot and train, but only after defeating it first.

• Save Progress and Leave Zone become available after the Zone is defeated, which requires the same achievements it took to unlock the Zone. Save Progress's availability might be altered through Perks for especially long games with hundreds of hours of content. Alternatively, you can be kicked from a Zone with all your gains if you can't complete it or by allowing your HP to hit zero, but this comes with the penalty of a 24 hour cooldown before that Zone can be accessed again. When you have a Party, all member's HP must hit zero before anyone is kicked, which can allow the group to complete more difficult Zones as members are knocked out then moved somewhere safe to recover. Respawn is only available when you have a Party and occurs if you or a PM continue to take damage after being KO'd, you'll revive with a quarter of your HP and any Status Effects removed. For multiplayer games you are allowed 5 extra lives as a saving grace to reduce frustration.

• Some games involve scripted deaths/defeats, which do not count as being kicked when they occur and won't trigger Respawn, character reassignment becomes available if you or a PM play in the role of a character who dies. If there are scripted revives, then an Incapacitated effect is applied until you're 'revived' or you switch automatically to another PC if you're alone, either temporarily until your scripted 'revive' or permanently if the PC perma-dies. Similar rules apply for any PCs that join the Protagonists briefly only to leave permanently, PCs with separate journeys where you play sections of the game as them, or PCs incapacitated by magical sleep or poison or other effects that aren't permanent death. PCs that are still controlled by the AI even when joining the Protagonists, do not count as Playable Characters.

• Zones are as large as the entire in-game maps, with everything properly adjusted to fit seamlessly, but there are no loading areas or invisible walls within the maps, and no scene transitions either, locations have to be traveled to. There is a transitional wall between places that normally load locations, which allows things like health and ammo items to respawn, as well as a mist wall with obscured scenery that borders the Zone. Traveling into the mist wall simply guides you back out the same place you entered it, except for bottomless pits or levels where you fall into an endless sky or space as the mist wall serves the same function as them and deposits you back to solid ground sans some HP.

• Everything inside the Zones are given a realistic makeover, as though done in an Unreal Engine, but everything within them are real except for the people, creatures, artificial intelligences (AI), and monsters. These are all NPCs akin to animated mannequins and animatronics, though with updated pathing and reactions compared to their game counterparts, but they'll appear real with no unintended uncanny valley, they'll even bleed if that was a game feature. The game the Zone is based on affects how animated these NPCs are, if they had little to no animation like in an I Spy game then they are just mannequins and animatronics, but fully animated creatures will move and fight more like living beings even while giving their scripted lines. For multiplayer games involving Player vs Player you fight against an AI that generates NPCs to fight against. Since there's no such thing as Hit Boxes in Zones, just touching enemies won't kill or take away HP unless they are something that couldn't be touched, fire or acid monsters for example.

• The Zones provide real loot according to the games they're based on; from enemies, from the generated environments, as rewards for completing the Zone, and items/gear the PCs had are exact and equal copies to their originals. A Halloween themed Zone may give candy and costumes as its rewards, blasters and lightsabers from Star Wars games, amulets of strength +4 from D&D based environments, etc. A character's equipment will be duplicated for Party Members such as Doomguy's armor and weapons, even if members are assigned to the same character or there's only one PC. This loot is Fiat backed unless it's a consumable or you sell it in the Store, they'll otherwise work under any fantastical metaphysics or universal mechanics, be returned to your Inventory when stolen or lost, repair and clean themselves after 6 hours, and generally don't need maintenance.

• The Store serves the same function as the shops in the original media, providing supplies based on what was available in the game, but you can generally sell any loot from any Zone at any of the shops for what they are worth. Some Zones will provide a shop or merchant for games that didn't have them to offload items and clear up Inventory space.

• The environments inside Zones are fully fleshed out and able to be interacted with dynamically without the original game limitations. Buildings that could not be accessed are filled with things as though people lived or worked there and can be entered, static items can be handled, water can be swum in that PCs weren't allowed to, the entire map explored and not just the set path, treasures acquired without completing the quests to obtain them if you know where they are, obstacles bypassed with Skills or out of context equipment, etc. There is no clipping through walls, no falling out of the world, and no glitches as those are the domain of digital worlds. Digging far enough below ground will just expose the mist wall for smaller area maps. Imagine what you could do with a whole galaxy of planets. The only thing that remains the same from the original media are the day/night cycles, weather, and their length, so some Zones will be perpetually one or the other or a mix, with time even freezing in towns, or be perpetually rainy, sunny, a mix, etc.

• There are special features for the Zones. General features are for making things more silly such as paintball bullets, rainbow blood, big heads, mini NPCs, alternate BGM, sound effects, etc. like an old school console game. There's even narration options in there for your favorite ones and their styles or to turn existing narration off. You can switch the interactive language of the Zone to any language the game was marketed in so NPCs and signs speak Japanese or have German words, these aren't translated for you or any Party Members who don't understand them. Special Features are for after you complete the Zone, these unlock mods if that game had them, including randomizers, which could allow you to obtain mod specific items, gear, or powers. Since you can't clip into a loading zone like a speedrunner, the demiplane will provide a means to enter a normally inaccessible area, such as Jabu-Jabu in the future in Ocarina of Time, offering semi-logic seeds to give you and your Party a shot at completing the Zone instead of being kicked immediately.

• Outside the Zones, you still have your new Skills, effects of Perks, and improved Attributes that neither degrade nor fluctuate, but the only two UI available to you is the Gaming Room, which has every game from Earth in a perfect format that you can play to unlock new Zones, and the Inventory. The perfect format means your games don't have any of the usual or rare technical problems; no bugs, no texture issues, no lag, no compatibility problems, none of that bullshit. This includes all existing mods, cheats, and game guides/wikis too. The Gaming Room automatically comes with all saved game files or progress you ever had across your life, so if there's any games you didn't complete you can pick up where you left off, and your "memory card" has infinite space for more files or to save progress on retro games that didn't have the means to resume play in the middle of a level.

• The Inventory holds 1'000 stackable slots to start with that can hold items as big as the largest pianos on Earth, both which may be improved with Perks, with an infinite money slot that includes a card and currency exchanger. It comes with a 305 meter radius Auto Loot function, the size of your average New York city block, which can be reduced in size and works in all directions through walls, floors, ground, etc. to scoop up all discarded or lost things. That's a lot of pocket change lost in couch cushions or down the drain, as well as abandoned stashes. The Inventory window can be directed 3 meters away from you and expanded in size for weaponization purposes. Aside from the usual sorting and sharing tabs, there are also tabs to age certain items to perfection like wines and cheeses or 2'000 year old herbs, properly clean or polish items, pack stuff in containers to save space, import similar things into each other such as melee weapons together or even more narrowly shields into shields, or destroy any items by sending it to Trash. And yes, it has quick equip.

• Zones are not foolproof containment dimensions or sanctuaries, they can be broken out of or into with enough power or with dimension related abilities, such as portals. It is significantly harder for most beings to break into Zones due to the extreme time dilation effects. Anything that could cause a glitch like in a game would collapse the Zones and Zones that collapse or are left via portal are handled as if the users were kicked. Leaving the Zones or being kicked puts users in the same location they were before they entered, except when using a portal or teleport to leave, moving around the Zones does not sync to locations outside them.

• As a matter of fanwank, you can choose to be transported to whatever setting you have a game for or had a game for, or put the ability to travel to other worlds the games are based on in the Perks section, using Zones as your means of travel when you complete them.