Death Drive

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The Death Drive is a series of fictional video game consoles that have appeared in Let It Die and Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. Although presented as mere gaming devices, the Death Drives usually have some kind of ulterior purpose. The line is publicly a property of the HAZRE company, but it appears to have been linked to Central Intelligence Agency operations from the beginning.

Death Drives

Commonalities

Although functions vary, the common underlying use of the Death Drives appears to be the ability to remotely control cloned bodies. The Death Glove of the DDMKII is able to read the player's personal DNA and use it to create clones elsewhere. The DDAAA (as well as, seemingly, the C.I.A. Death Ball) has the additional function of being able to control these clones; as these Death Drives are virtual reality systems, controlling the clones would use the same technology as the video games produced for the cover story, yet conversely feel just as real as if one really was the clone. Similar technology is used in the DD128, which is used to control Fighters in the Tower of Barbs remotely from the Hater's Arcade.

Trivia

  • The concept of a video game that is secretly a shadowy government operation to collect player data is based on the urban legend of Polybius, and different Death Drives share different aspects of the tale.
  • The death drive is a Freudian psychological concept, referring to the instinct to tend towards death and self-destruction.