Video games set to historical contexts promise verisimilitude, allowing players to explore landscapes presumptively developed with obsessive attention to historical detail. For their immersive qualities, video games hold incredible potential to present historical depictions as veridic. Many players enter these games wanting to experience emblematic locations and historical events in a way we no longer can, akin to a form of ‘historical tourism’.Achieving historical accuracy in sound and music from the past poses an obvious challenge: prior to our era of recorded sound, its ephemeral quality makes it elusive in terms of representation. Soundscapes, being simulations built from physical and cultural assumptions of a particular space, carry an ideological bias influenced by the developers’ intended message. The inaccessibility of the original references transforms soundscape design and the diegetic incorporation (or not) of historically informed musical performances of historical repertoire into sonic signs that build a hyperreality that portrays (and influences) how we perceive and understand our inaccessible past.By examining the intricate semiotic relationship between lost sonic realities, popular expectations of historical authenticity, and audio implementation and musical representation in video games such as Pentiment (Obsidian Entertainment, 2022), Card Shark (Nerial, 2022), the Assassin’s Creed franchise (Ubisoft, 2007-2023), or L.A. Noire (Team Bondi, 2011); this study aims to put into perspective the importance of historical accuracy in order to convey historical authenticity in video games, how these soundscapes allow players to perceive them as ludic time machines for ‘historical tourism’ and the cultural impact of that fictional pact.