So I've spent quite some time trying to remember a game. I was in fourth grade or so and my friend, who was about four years older than me, would always play the touching game.... No, no! Just kidding. He and I would go down to the woods and play a game that, I think, was based on some sort of pencil and paper RPG game. The basis was that there was this man-made planet and there were all these different levels. Whoever was running the planet had fucked up or died or whatever so it's now generations later and the levels are all at different technologies. You get cavemen and future stuff and so on. So then you can pass through to certain levels and adventure ensues.
This has appeared many times over -- Space: 1999 had an episode like this (
http://www.fanderson.org.uk/epguides/spaceyr1eg5.html#Episode%20Twenty%20Two), Dr. Who (of course, and they hit it a few times), and there were elements of David Wingrove's excellent Chung Kuo series (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Kuo).
But I think there's a seed game or novel where all of that came from.
And while we're at it -- A big J.G. Ballard fan friend of mine got, on his 16th birthday (when we were all 16), a book (not by Ballard) about time travelling Nazi's that was horror comedy goofball sci-fi at its best. Does that ring a bell? I've forgotten everything about it, but I want it!
