Whether players are just finishing Thanksgiving leftovers or preparing for Christmas dinner, food is pretty big on people's minds this season. In video games, food can be so delicious and hearty that it can literally save your life—or even give you several.
In recent years, foods have become even more iconic in video games, as titles like Breath of the Wild add cooking as a major game mechanic. However, Here are some of the most iconic foods in gaming history. From Burger Time to Cooking Mama, food is as essential to gaming as it is to surviving the real world, and these five gaming-related foodstuffs stand head and shoulders above the rest.
1-Up Mushroom – Super Mario
As expected from a place called the "Mushroom Kingdom," there's a lot of mushrooms to be found in Mario's home. The vast majority of them typically increase Mario in size, and considering how frequently he gets them, it seems like Mario really enjoys them, especially the 1-Up Mushroom.
A rare drop, often found in hidden blocks, Mario loves this mushroom so much that he gets one extra life from it. In RPGs like Mario and Luigi or Paper Mario, 1-Up Mushrooms are also used for bringing party members back to life.
Lon Lon Milk – The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda series is known for its various food items that can restore one or more of Link's hearts, from pumpkin soup to potions. A particularly noteworthy food item is absent from Breath of the Wild: Lon Lon Milk.
First appearing in Ocarina of Time, Lon Lon Milk is sold by Talon of Lon Lon Ranch. It is unique from potions in that it has two services, each granting five hearts. Apparently being one of Hyrule's most delicious milks, Lon Lon Milk also makes appearances in Wind Waker and Minish Cap.
Wall Meat - Castlevania
Healing items in Castlevania are rather rare, lending to the game's reputation as notoriously difficult. The only way to receive health was rather obtuse: whipping random walls to receive a piece of meat.
Not only is it strange to find cooked meat stored in walls, but it also seems that the kind of meat found changes every time. From massive "pork chops" to poultry-looking "pot roasts," wall meat in Castlevania deserves remembrance for its odd placement, which only added to the exhilaration of finding one while whipping a random wall when down to your last pip of health.
Ration – Metal Gear
Solid Snake's almost-literal bread-and-butter healing item, military rations in Metal Gear are valuable in restoring the player's health after a difficult shootout with a boss. They are present in every game, albeit with some differences in function.
Ironically, despite its status as the primary healing item in Metal Gear, several characters remark how they apparently don't taste very good. This doesn't stop Snake from eating dozens, if not hundreds of them, throughout his missions.
Cake - Portal
This food item is memetically infamous, not only for how delicious it looks but also because no one ever gets to actually eat it. Promised by the deluded Aperture Science supercomputer GLaDOS, it is slowly revealed by the mysterious Rat Man's graffiti splashes across the first Portal game that this cake is a lie.
Despite both the Rat Man and player character Chell having perfectly good reasons to hate and distrust GLaDOS, this is one of the few things she was actually telling the truth about — there really was a cake. But this is also one of those instances where the player can't have their cake and eat it too.