“Does This Game Have a Crab in It?” Twitter account makes waves, chronicling crabs in games from “Mario” to “Monster Hunter”

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-06-04 20:35 (JST)
Translated by. Ari Clark

The humble crab is a creature that can be spotted again and again in games from every time and place. Its characteristic claws make it impressive as an enemy character. However, its appearances in games go far beyond that, from being placed as ambient set dressing in ocean levels, to appearing as a delicious ingredient, to even being featured as a player character.

A Twitter account that aims to chronicle every last crab featured in a video game has been making some waves of its own within the gamer community.

The Twitter account “Does This Game Have a Crab in It?” has been busily posting information about crabs in video games. As of August 23, the popular account has amassed over 27,000 followers.

Its posts present a diverse variety of crabs, appearing in all sorts of different games. The enemy characters that it lists include creatures like the Daimyo Hermitaur and Shogun Ceanataur, which appear as major monsters in the Monster Hunter series, and the Great Crabs from Dark Souls III, whose terrifying agility (combined with the poor footing in the stages where you encounter them) has been described by players as downright traumatic.

A crab also appears as an enemy character in the original Mario Bros. The concept of the game is to “exterminate the creatures that emerge from the sewer pipes”, which is why crabs, flies, and turtles appear as enemies.

Of all the enemies in the Super Mario series, the turtle-type creatures are the most iconic, especially Bowser himself. However, as the Super Mario series has gone on, crabs have appeared pretty frequently, both as characters and as part of the scenery. Perhaps this originates from a sense of respect for the beginnings of the series.

Looking at the huge collection of crabs featured on this Twitter account makes you really notice the rich variety in how they’re drawn. It presents a broad spectrum of crabs appearing in all sorts of games, ranging from cute, cartoony, or anthropomorphized mascots, to crabs so realistic they look like they could be featured in a gourmet food magazine. The account even points out crab-shaped geographical features and crab-shaped rocks, as well as characters that straddle the line and leave you wondering, “Is that a shrimp, or a crayfish, or what?”

Among all the “realistic crabs”, the one that really made me personally laugh was the crab from Kani Douraku, which appears in some games from the Yakuza series. It serves as the signboard for a restaurant in Sotenbori, a location within the games. In fact, Sotenbori is modeled after a real area of Osaka called Dotombori, and the restaurant called Kani Douraku actually exists in real life, along with its iconic giant crab signboard. It’s a familiar sight for any Osaka local, so it’s pretty funny to see it being introduced to the world through the medium of crabs in video games.

On the other hand, the “Does This Game Have a Crab in It?” Twitter account also points out games that don’t feature any crabs. Apparently Undertale, Nier: Automata, and (surprisingly enough) Minecraft are among the unfortunately(?) crabless games. Then again, since Minecraft is always adding new mobs with its updates, they made sure to note “(as of this tweet)” for that one. One user reply also provided the information that “there is a mod called oceancraft which has crabs”.

The account has also pointed out at least one game that uses crabs as player characters. That would be Fight Crab, a physics-based crab-vs.-crab fighting game. It quipped, “There are crabs (obviously) in Fight Crab”.

At least one other game with crabby main characters exists: a third-person shooter called Crab Champions, where you control a crab. Although it hasn’t been featured yet in a post by “Does This Game Have a Crab in It?”, they seem to have followed its official account.

This is a slight tangent, but according to the official Crab Champions Twitter account, they tested the limits of Unreal Engine 5 by rendering 3 million crabs. A video of the result was shared in a tweet, and made quite a stir (see related link, in Japanese).

It’s unclear what exactly about crabs has piqued the gaming community’s interest. Still, even I have caught myself feeling delighted and disappointed by turns since following this Twitter account, thinking, “There’s a crab!” or “No crabs, huh…?” The account could also serve as a deeply interesting resource, since it provides examples of a broad variety of ways to draw a single subject (that is, crabs).