In The Matrix Resurrections, Keanu Reeves won the Game Awards in 1999

The reality The Matrix constructed for Thomas Anderson (aka Neo) in The Matrix Resurrections isn’t the one fans of the original trilogy will remember. Anderson is still a programmer, but far more successful than a “program writer” living in work cubicles for the respected software company MetaCortex from the original 1999 film.

In Resurrections, he is a rock star video game designer responsible for a blockbuster trilogy of games called … The Matrix. In another case of reality writing, The matrix – the layered fictional video game – is also a winner of Game of the Year at The Game Awards.

[Ed. note: This post contains minor spoilers for The Matrix Resurrections.]

In the world after The Matrix Resurrections, which premiered on Wednesday, Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards existed 15 years earlier, and The matrix, a game designed by Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), won its grand prize in 1999. Keighley announced on Sunday that director Lana Wachowski had requested a TGA statuette for a key scene, and he was excited to include it in his show’s hall of fame.

Of course, this sparked a giggling parlor game on Twitter: What games have? The matrix hit this year? While there hasn’t been an awards show with as broad an audience (and a pool of participants) as The Game Awards, the leading game publications of the day recognized some groundbreaking workswhich means that Keanu’s game really had to be something else.

Deus Machina is the name of Anderson’s studio; it is not The RPG series from Eidos come second. (Even though Deus Ex has started less than a year later.) The scene is basically a meta-joke about the popularity of the Matrix movies; Three video games that Anderson designed were big hits, so Deus Machina’s parent company – literally Warner Bros., by the way – is calling for a fourth.

I mean, can you blame them? Check out all the games The matrix cheered his first GOTY. Shareholders would fire any C-suite officer who didn’t milk this type of IP:

• Chrono cross (Square / SquareSoft)
• Tony Hawks Pro Skater (Neversoft / Activision)
• EverQuest (Verant Interactive / Sony Online Entertainment)
• Final Fantasy 8 (Square / Squaresoft)
• Soul caliber (Project Soul / Namco – launched September 1999 for Dreamcast)
• silent Hill (Team Silent / Konami)
• System shock 2 (Irrational Games / Electronic Art)
• Siphon filter (Eidetic / 989 Studios)

Others have mentioned Shenmuebut it kicked off in Japan on December 29, 1999 and a year later in the West, so it probably wouldn’t have been in the nominee pool for an awards show that airs the first week of December. As for Quake 3Although it was undoubtedly groundbreaking work among multiplayer shooters, it was released on December 2, 1999. (Another great work from 1999, Gran Turismo 2, launched December 11th in Japan and December 23rd in the west.)

The matrix would have hit too Unreal tournament

, Epic Games’ arena shooter that won multiple awards and nominations for Game of the Year in 1999. That just makes things a little uncomfortable for Epic who produced The matrix awakening in Unreal Engine 5 as a link Resurrections, and their Chief Technology Officer Kim Libreri and Chief Creative Officer Donald Mustard appear in the film as employees of Deus Machina.

Ouch! The TGAs have been called a lot of things, but that’s cold! Lana Wachowski is also fortunate that the first film premiered in 1999 – one of the few years during this time that Hideo Kojima did not bring out a game. Should have Solid metal gear Come on a year later, we’re not sure if his good friend Geoff Keighley could have been through that eye gag.

I’m just having fun. Anyway, if Keanu Reeves is hosting The Game Awards for the third year in a row, it’s a good bet that this scene will be recreated. In that case we would ask Keighley and his production company not stage it on a rooftop bar and maybe reposition the Game Awards Orchestra when it’s back at the Microsoft Theater in LA.